HBO Says It Solved Bitcoin's Biggest Mystery

Since Bitcoin’s inception in 2009, no one has been able to crack the identity of its founder Satoshi Nakamoto. Now, in 2024, a new HBO Documentary claims to have done just that with the help of a director who has done the impossible once before.

Before documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback led the upcoming “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” he rose to fame by exploring the authors behind the QAnon conspiracy theory in another HBO series. Whether or not his new film succeeds in delivering definitive proof where other attempts have failed remains to be seen when it debuts Tuesday — but either way it could have big impacts on Bitcoin’s price.

Keep reading for what the crypto community expects to see uncovered (and the leading guess as to who Satoshi actually is. As always, we re-caped this and the rest of crypto’s top stories in our live weekly news digest (above for NFT holders.) 👀

Trump’s Big Pick To Lead the SEC

With less than a month to go before the election, both Trump and Harris are jockeying for any breakthroughs to pick up new voters. For Trump, that has meant increasingly leaning pro-crypto. But many are skeptical that his talking points are being matched by his policy decisions. And as we discussed with Caitlin Long last week, it’s going to take new pro-crypto appointees at a number of agencies to throw the country in a pro-crypto direction.

Interestingly, one of the names we discussed was reported by Politco Monday as Trump’s leading candidate to replace the anti-crypto Chair Gary Gensler at the SEC: Robinhood’s Chief Legal Officer Dan Gallagher.

It would make a lot of sense, given Gallagher once served as an SEC Commissioner before from 2011 to 2015 and seeing as he’s currently locked in a legal battle with Gensler’s SEC for offering crypto to its retail traders. Of course, Trump still needs to win and have Gallagher be confirmed if that is indeed his final choice.

Crypto Asset Flows Swing Negative

After weeks of inflows, crypto investment products notched their first week of outflows in nearly a month, according to CoinShares. A total of $137 million moved out of crypto investment products — with $159 coming out of Bitcoin ETFs.

The excitement around advisors at Morgan Stanley finally being able to sell Bitcoin ETFs to clients hasn’t paid off yet — but that could change if we see a breakout to the upside. An ease to exit a bet on crypto via ETFs also means an easier way to enter should the tides soon change.

Satoshi Nakamoto Bets Stack Up on Early Cryptographer

Because this is crypto and everyone is a degenerate gambler, bets are already stacking up on who HBO is going to reveal as Bitcoin’s founder.

Betting site Polymarket has about 24% odds on early cryptographer Len Sassaman as the favorite to be revealed. (Sassaman was active on the early Bitcoin message boards before dying by suicide.) Other contenders include well-known names like Hal Finney, Adam Back, and Nick Szabo.

Meanwhile, whispers of activity from ancient Bitcoin wallets have added fuel to the fire. Arkham Intelligence spotted an ancient Bitcoin wallet — which hasn’t moved 77 million Bitcoin mined in Bitcoin's first two months — moving about $5 million in Bitcoin to Kraken raising questions about potential ties to the upcoming reveal.

Bitget Sparks FTX Flashbacks as Exchange Token Crashes 50%

If there’s one thing we’ve learned since the days of FTX’s crypto collapse, it’s maybe don’t trust tokens that are issued by exchanges. In the FTX crash, its native token fell 99% as the exchange went bust.

It was pretty awesome for FTX, since on paper, the token essentially made it look like FTX was sitting on billions of dollars (so long as they never dumped their own tokens onto the market.)

Enter Bitget, a crypto exchange based in Asia that also has its own token, BGB. Today BGB flash crashed by 50%, wiping $500 million off its market cap in just a matter of minutes before the exchange announced it would make affected users (presumably those who got liquidated in the crash) whole.

It’s probably a good reminder that history may not entirely repeat itself, but it does often rhyme!

Other Web3 Headlines:

• Stablecoin wars heat up in the Coinbase, USDC, Tether saga

• QCP Capital claims 'Uptober' is back on track as bitcoin recovers from last week's volatility

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