The question had been hanging over Bitcoin since the day it launched. Who built it? For seventeen years, the answer was nobody knew. Finding Satoshi, may have just figured it out.
The documentary, directed by Matthew Miele and Tucker Tooley and produced by Tucker Tooley, Jordan Fried, and Happy Walters, completed a four-year forensic investigation into the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, and presented its conclusion to the world. The film followed investigative journalist and New York Times bestselling author William D. Cohan and private investigator Tyler Maroney of Quest Research & Investigations as they traced Bitcoin’s origins through the cypherpunk movement, early digital privacy cryptography, and the intellectual lineage that produced the white paper.
Jameson Lopp, a professional cypherpunk and Bitcoin security engineer, put it plainly after watching the film: “Easily the most expertly produced Bitcoin documentary I’ve seen. A plausible take that may finally put an end to chasing ghosts.”
The film’s interviewee list reads like a who’s who of the technology and finance world. Michael Saylor, Fred Ehrsam, Joseph Lubin, Bill Gates, Gary Gensler, Kara Swisher, and Gillian Tett of the Financial Times all appeared. So did Phil Zimmermann, creator of PGP encryption, and Kathleen Puckett, the former FBI behavioral analyst who helped identify the Unabomber.
What separated Finding Satoshi from every prior attempt to answer the same question was its refusal to speculate. The investigation was built on original reporting, forensic analysis, and previously unseen evidence. It took four years because it took four years to get it right. The team believed they had the answer after two years. They were wrong and they kept going.
Brian Armstrong, CEO of Coinbase and a named partner of the production, watched the finished film and said: “It’s the most thoughtful take on this subject I’ve seen out there, and I suspect you got to the right answer. It’s a great piece of work.”
Finding Satoshi is available exclusively at FindingSatoshi.com.