I watched ‘Money Electric’ so you don’t have to

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This was going to be a review, but honestly, it could be summarized as a Blockstream ad pretending to be a curious piece of entertainment journalism. So, I’m simply going to lightly edit the notes I took while watching the film, and you can take them as a summary with my hot takes. Spoilers Ahead:

Have you ever watched a political ad or a “behind-the-scenes” look at how certain public figures try to seem relatable?

I recall Elizabeth Warren awkwardly pretending she drinks cheap beer or Mitt Romney wearing “mom jeans” because he’s unsure how the typical denim-wearing population actually dresses. That’s the exact feeling you get at the start of Money Electric, the latest documentary about the search for Satoshi Nakamoto. You’re greeted by a visibly uncomfortable Samson Mow, awkwardly dressed, with a middle-schooler-on-picture-day haircut, twitching nervously while trying to appear relatable, all while clearly hoping no one asks any tough questions about Bitcoin with the cameras rolling.

The film kicks off with the usual tired B-roll of media figures and bank executives explaining how Bitcoin is a scam overlaid with Bitcoin’s historical price performance—a trick to make you feel emotionally invested in the fact that you missed out, but maybe you’ll learn something in the next two hours that can help you get ahead of the next big wave. The documentary is airing on HBO, so the odds are you’ve already missed that boat, too, but don’t worry—the film is eager to make you FOMO again, if possible.

Enter fascist South American dictator Nayib Bukele, who’s portrayed as a visionary for buying Bitcoin with taxpayer money stolen from some of the poorest people in the Western Hemisphere. Mow reappears to confidently declare that “Nation State FOMO” is about to kick in because of Bukele’s leadership. Of course, that clip is from 2021, and here in 2024, we know how the story has unfolded. Yet, somehow, Mow still tries to sell us on the idea that we’re all early—though, at this point, even I’m confused about where the movie is trying to take us.

Next, we see Mow on a helicopter, telling a Salvadoran power company executive that “Bitcoin mining is good business,” not mentioning that mining profitability has been in freefall since 2017. At this point, the film’s creator hypothesizes that for Bitcoin to truly be adopted, the world needs to know who Satoshi Nakamoto is, while Mow says that it doesn’t matter because he won’t be selling his coins anyway.

Before the 15-minute mark, Mow reminds us that his Satoshi was an altruist and that his bitcoins are a “gift to the world.” Clad in a Tether shirt, Mow explains that fiat money is a “house of cards built on a house of cards,” and when it collapses, we’ll have “hyperbitcoinization.” How this is supposed to work is never explained, especially considering that only a tiny fraction of Bitcoin holders actually hold their own keys. Most Bitcoin remains locked up in IOUs and derivatives held by custodians, and let’s not forget that the Bitcoin network itself can’t handle more transactions than a small town could generate. But again, no one presses Mow on the details.

Cue the Lehman Brothers footage…

Before long, the documentary turns into a thinly veiled Blockstream commercial, where we’re supposed to believe that Mow has authenticated emails between Adam Back and Satoshi Nakamoto. We’re also subjected to the common misconception that Bitcoin uses encryption for security (it doesn’t) and that Adam Back invented the encryption used in Bitcoin (he didn’t.)

In truth, Bitcoin relies on human incentives and race conditions for security. Cynthia Dwork and Moni Naor invented proof of work (PoW) a decade before Adam Back applied the concept to Hashcash. But the documentary brushes over such details. The film briefly discusses the Cypherpunk Mailing List as if it were the birthplace of Bitcoin, but it fails to note that Satoshi didn’t even release the Bitcoin white paper there, but instead over on the much more professional (and less political) Cryptography Mailinglist. Instead, the film lazily assumes Satoshi must have been a cypherpunk despite clear evidence that he wasn’t a classically trained coder or a cryptographic politico, but that’s about as good as this will get, I’m afraid.

Amir Taaki briefly appears, offering a rare moment of clarity in the film. Then, in a bizarre twist, the film claims Satoshi “created the BitcoinTalk forum,” a blatant falsehood. Satoshi created the Bitcoin.org forum. Michael “theymos” Marquardt later migrated that forum database to BitcoinTalk, which he launched in 2011.

Nonetheless, the documentary does get something right: Taaki and Satoshi had a falling out over Wikileaks accepting Bitcoin, a move that upset Nakamoto and seemed to lead to his disappearance. Taaki also expresses frustration with Satoshi’s distaste for open-source pull requests and collaboration, preferring a more closed development model. This segment is one of the few instances where the documentary sheds light on the ideological tensions within Bitcoin’s early days, where Satoshi was largely at odds with the anarchists and the open source community who saw Bitcoin as a community project.

Then comes Gavin Andresen, discussing his fateful presentation on Bitcoin to the CIA—a moment often cited as the reason Satoshi vanished. The timeline doesn’t add up, though. Satoshi had already signaled his departure in April 2011, while Andresen’s CIA presentation took place in June. But in Money Electric, details like this are apparently optional.

Silk Road and Roger Ver briefly appear before the screen cuts to Nouriel Roubini calling Bitcoin a scam. We’re then introduced to Peter Todd, who shares how Taaki brought him to make Bitcoin more anonymous for dark web usage. Todd explains all this while donning a “mempool full” cap and meandering through a WWII bunker as if the setting somehow adds credibility to his comments. He even claims to have learned coding before learning to read, a statement that feels less like a fact and more like a self-indulgent flex—something that any follower of Todd’s knows is the hallmark of his excuse for a personality.

As the film continues, it suggests that Blockstream was created to help anonymize Bitcoin transactions, hinting that the company knows who Satoshi is and is trying to conceal it. The stated reason by the filmmaker is that Blockstream has taken over as the “corporate Satoshi” meant to “fix Bitcoin.”

Next, the film trots out a familiar lineup of Satoshi suspects—Finney, Dai, Szabo—and then shifts focus to Back. We’re left with the insinuation that Back might be Satoshi, supported by weak arguments that barely hold up under scrutiny.

Returning to Mow and other influencers, the film takes a shallow dive into toxic Bitcoin maximalism and the block size debate. Ver waxes philosophical about babies dying due to economic repression, while the filmmakers use this as an opportunity to smear the big blockers. Then, in a wild pivot, the film finally introduces Craig Wright, casting him as a sort of clown villain for about 45 seconds of B-roll in this saga.

In one of the few redeeming moments, Ver claims that Todd is a government asset working to undermine Bitcoin. While this is quickly brushed aside, the documentary does touch on the John Dillon affair, suggesting that RBF (replace-by-fee) was a fix for a so-called “design flaw” in Bitcoin. It’s implied that Todd himself may have been John Dillon, and the film goes so far as to show Todd visibly squirming when questioned about it.

Finally, we get a token segment on Ethereum, the collapse of Ponzi schemes like Celsius and FTX, and the looming threat of central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). Mow pivots back to discussing nation-state adoption of Bitcoin while Adam Back jokes about Satoshi’s birthday, and the film sputters toward its conclusion.

Money Electric wraps up with a half-hearted attempt to frame Peter Todd as Satoshi.

In the final scenes, the film comes to its not-so-surprising conclusion with Back wearing a McLaren baseball cap and a doughy Todd walking around an abandoned factory in the Czech Republic (for reasons?) while discussing that Todd and Dillon may be the same person cleverly disguising some salvatory arc for Bitcoin. Back actually seemed to think this was the case, too.

Now, here’s where things actually got slightly compelling for me. The film shows Todd making a single post in response to Satoshi Nakamoto on the forum, where he does seem to be completing Satoshi’s thoughts as Satoshi. This was only Todd’s second post ever on the forum, and he hadn’t written another for nearly two years. This was indeed curious. Adding to the curiosity, Satoshi also quit posting at the same time.

When confronted, Todd, a notorious troll, has a circuitous explanation, and he does seem to have thought about the significance of his arrival happening in the same week as Nakamoto’s exit and that their single interaction was that of Todd correcting Nakamoto on a principle within Bitcoin. It is then discussed how Peter was young, inexperienced, would have been an unorthodox C++ coder, and had a long relationship with Adam Back… Todd then writes it all off, claiming that the filmmaker misses the point that is to make Bitcoin a global currency and Todd and Back glance at each other knowingly.

The documentary closes by showing Roubini launch a shitcoin, declaring Craig is a proven fraud, Back releasing his emails with Nakamoto, and it is implied that Peter Todd may have the Nakamoto keys…

To summarize, the movie was loose with the facts, used Blockstream propaganda as a basis for the truth, and came up with a loosely compelling theory about Nakamoto being Todd. The problem for me is that while the theory is intriguing at face value, it ignores just how deeply Todd disagreed with Satoshi on a great many issues in Bitcoin. It also ignores the fact that we know for a fact that Satoshi put Gavin Andresen in charge of things in his absence, but Todd also deeply disagreed with Andresen on core, fundamental issues in Bitcoin, so it makes little sense for Todd to do such a thing unless we are to believe it’s all a 5D chess move.

There are other reasons why it doesn’t make sense for it to be Todd, but I’m not about to write a script for a better filmmaker on the topic…

The most problematic part of the film is that Todd and Back both suffer from the narcissistic trait of laughing at their own internal monologue about their brilliance. They hear an audience applauding in their own heads about their perceived wit. So they come across as “knowing” on a subject while, in reality, they are simply self-congratulating in real-time without the situational awareness to stop smirking. To the audience, it is unclear where the gravity in the room is coming from, and I think, in this case, it is coming from the pure masturbatory hubris of two gigantic egomaniacs who love the attention the filmmaker is giving them.

1/10: Would not recommend.

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