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Blockspace: AI & Bitcoin
Finding Satoshi Documentary, Justin Sun Sues World Liberty Financial, CORZ Opens $3.3B Raise
00:56:05
A new documentary claims to have solved the case of Satoshi’ identity, and Justin Sun is bringing World Liberty Financial to court.
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- [00:00]
Bill
Foreign.
- [00:05]
Charlie
What is going on, y'?
- [00:06]
Bill
All?
- [00:06]
Charlie
Welcome Back to BlockSpace Live. Coming at y' all fresh on this Wednesday morning or afternoon. If you're joining us from et. Bitcoin mining is apparently super important for national security. So much so that a four star admiral is saying, quote, bitcoin shows incredible potential, end quote, as a tool for US national security. As the soft war thesis is back in the news cycle and it still doesn't make any sense to us, but we'll be unpacking that first as our lead story. And then we will get into the fact that crypto scammers are now getting involved with geopolitical events and they are extorting tankers sitting in the Strait of Hormuz, having them pay crypto thinking that they're sending it to the Iranian regime, but in fact they're actually just getting rinsed, they're getting rug pulled, as is, you know, tradition in this wonderful, wonderful industry of ours. We've also got a story on Justin sun suing World Liberty Financial as a verbal battle waltzes into the courtroom. And for today's interview, we have the folks at the Finding Satoshi documentary. They may not tell us who they think Satoshi is, but they will tell us potentially who it definitely isn't and give us an idea of what went into this years long documentary in search of the creator of bitcoin. And for our final story today, Core scientific is raising $3.3 billion, refinancing some old notes. And Bitget in partnership with Republic is launching pre IPO SpaceX. But it's not quite equity. It is a token though. More on that later block.
- [01:42]
Colin
Space goes live on Monday, Wednesday, Friday at noon Eastern featuring quick hits on the latest in bitcoin mining, bitcoin AI and emerging tech. Make sure to like and subscribe. Hit the bell if you're on YouTube so you get push notifications. This turns into a podcast after we wrap up every day. So find wherever podcasts are found. Spotify, Apple, rss. And if you like what you hear, you'll love our newsletter Dropping on Fridays. Go to newsletter blackspacemedia.com this show is brought to you by CleanSpark Ticker CLSK on NASDAQ. More on them later in the show. Let's kick it off. So Colin, do you know what the horn of Gabriel is?
- [02:27]
Charlie
I do not know what the horn of Gabriel is.
- [02:30]
Colin
Then you're not a bitcoin man. You're obviously not. You're not a bitcoiner. You're not clued in enough. Scroll down from this tweet here from the Bitcoin Policy Institute until you get to. Here we go. Oh my gosh, there it is.
- [02:47]
Charlie
This is the hoarder.
- [02:48]
Colin
Yeah, this is the. This is my favorite, like Think Boy slop. That. That is very popular among the Think Boy bitcoiners. And I'll just read this tweet you have up here. Quote, the current system is a war of attrition on your time. It's designed to bleed you dry through a debt spiral that never ends. Come interact with Gabriel's horn simulation to visualize why a fixed supply chain is the only way to shield your life's energy from infinite debasement. Basically, there is this geometric paradox called Gabriel's Horn. It's a shape with infinite surface. And there. And so some people have made this analogy to Bitcoin's supply. But I think we should just roll the clip. From former Auburn coach, from former Auburn.
- [03:46]
Charlie
I'm wondering where all of this gobbledygo and intellectual sophistry comes from. All of these jargon laden words that don't really seem to have much resonance in the real world. We are back in 2022 where the soft war thesis is alive and well. Now this is congressional member Tommy Tuberville, who used to, as Charlie said, be the head coach of the Auburn Tigers football team back sometime in the 2000s, talking to four star admiral commander of US Indo Pacific Command, Admiral Paparo. And here's what they have to say about Bitcoin as a national security interest asset and specifically proof of work as a way to project, quote, soft power across the globe.
- [04:33]
Tommy Tuberville
To another subject, our competition with China isn't just about military strength. It also includes monetary strength as well. China, you know, last year the Chinese Communist Party's main monetary think tank published research on Bitcoin as a strategic asset. You know, this came after President Trump moved to establish a strategic Bitcoin reserve. Admiral, how does leadership in Bitcoin impact leverage, resilience, deterrence for Indopacom against China? And do you think that a strategic Bitcoin reserve helps America compete against China?
- [05:07]
Admiral Paparo
Senator Art, you know, our research into Bitcoin is as a computer science tool. It's the combination of cryptography, a blockchain and a proof of work. And Bitcoin shows incredible potential as a computer science tool that through the proof of work protocols is a, actually imposes more cost than just the algorithmic securing of networks and our ability to operate. And Bitcoin is a reality. It is a valuable computer science tool as A power projection. And outside of the economic formulation of it, it has got really important computer science applications for cybersecurity.
- [05:50]
Colin
He said, power projection, man, I feel like the software guys, every time somebody with military garb on talks about Bitcoin or power projection, the software guys get hard.
- [06:02]
Charlie
So it's like power projection, you know, I mean, it's. It's, It's. It's all of the buzzwords, and you just have to nod stoically. Right. And we won't finish the clip because there's not too much. But Tuberville asks him, you know, could you go a little deeper into this thesis? And he basically says, that would take too much time. You have to read my book. Yeah, you have to read my book. Or you have to read the seminal thesis on this. So for those of you who don't know where this idea, the seed of it comes from, comes from Jason Lowry, who, depending on who you're talking to, is. Is a spook or, you know, just a guy who is. Is affiliated with the United States Air Force gone rogue. Yeah, exactly. He's a Space force Guardian Engineer, U.S. national Defense Fellow, MIT 2023, I believe, for his Ph.D. or for his master's. And he says views expressed are mine alone, not that of the US Department of War. But anyway, he came out with this thesis called softwar, a novel theory about power projection and the national strategic significance of Bitcoin. Without getting too far into this, because I want to move on to our first story, not give this too much breath. It's basically this idea that proof of work is somehow a national defense imperative, that you want the majority of Bitcoin's proof of work to be on your shore, if you are a sovereign, to make sure that you can have stake in the Bitcoin network, to make sure that you can have enough control over Bitcoin to ensure that your citizens and your government is not blacklisted from the network by miners who maybe don't mind your transactions or something like that. On the face, this idea that, like, you know, the US Would want to have a strategic. Has a strategic interest in having mining assets. It does make some sense. I don't want to, like, totally blow it out of proportion, but there's this idea that somehow it is a way to project force. And I think that's where a lot of bitcoiners kind of lose this argument, or the argument is lost on a lot of bitcoiners. Right. Like, it just. It kind of devolves into this theoretical no man's land where you can't really prove or disprove whether or not the actual, you know, the actual, the premise is valid or not.
- [08:19]
Colin
Yeah, I think it's a fun, it's a fun thing. I think everybody who is one and a half years into bitcoin indoctrination, it's just the most mind melting thing they've ever seen. I made this tweet using this example from Daniel Day Lewis in There Will Be Blood. At the final scene he says, my hash power reaches across the planet and I project my hash power. Enough about I drink your hash rate.
- [08:53]
Bill
Exactly.
- [08:56]
Colin
Let's talk about this next story. I'm going to try to keep a straight face. It's probably the funniest. It's the funniest story, but also really tragic.
- [09:06]
Charlie
And it's kind of funny that the two lead stories intersection of Bitcoin and geopolitics. You know, first one maybe loosely speaking, but for this second story, it appears that scammers are actually extorting oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and having them send false payments that they think they're sending to the Iranian regime so that they can navigate the strait. Some context for this. A week or two ago, I believe two weeks ago, we covered this on the pod. The Financial Times broke a story that the Iranian government was asking for tolls in crypto and bitcoin specifically so that ships could leave the Strait of Hormuz. They were asking for a dollar per barrel of oil. So you could look at anywhere from like a million to $2 million port per ship, depending on the size and what it's transporting. They said, look, if you pay this, you can navigate the strait. If you don't, we're going to fire on you. This is somewhat complicated by the fact that there's now a naval blockade from the US at the end of the strait. But according to reports recently that surface from Maersk Murmerisk, a Greek logistics and shipping firm. There have been reports of scammers impersonating the Iranian government and asking for these payments, but they don't actually have any legitimacy. And according to Maersk, there was at least one ship that tried to pay the toll and then ended up getting fired on. And this open intelligence. Play the clip X account apparently has audio from this. I don't know how they got this,
- [10:40]
Bill
but here we go.
- [10:43]
Tyler Moroney
This is motoring. As you gave me clearance to go. My name second on your list. You gave me clearance to go. You are fighting. Now let me turn back.
- [10:54]
Charlie
So this is really, actually, like, it's, there's something darkly comedic about this, but it is very sad. This is a, an Indian oil tanker getting fired on by Iranian military personnel, pleading for them to stop because they paid what they thought was the toll, was actually just a, you know, ransom payment to scammers. So, I mean, this is, how do you even start with a story like, yes, you tell me this five years ago? I'd say this is a, you're joking. This is a fever dream.
- [11:25]
Colin
Yeah. But my question is how in the world did this, did the deal actually go down? Like, do they reach out over telegram, you know, is it some, like email to the, like, ship's captain? Like, how did this go? Because this is some top level social finessing they had that had to happen. And you know, I, like, one of my takes was, well, you know, we don't know whether the Strait of Hormuz is open or closed. Open or closed. Well, it definitely was closed the other day. But. Yeah, but like, yeah, how does, if this story is true, and I think it's true, did they, how did this, how did the cold reach out happen? Like, is where does the email account or like the Iran National Guard website or something? Or, I don't know, like, how do you even have this, how do you even, like, get to the conversation? You're like, oh, we've got the invoice here and we've got the USDT address.
- [12:25]
Charlie
Like, I mean, it's a, it's a good question, right. I would imagine that it would be somewhat easy to fake an email address for this because this isn't like there's some long standing precedent for how to pay these tolls in crypto.
- [12:38]
Bill
Right.
- [12:38]
Charlie
I mean, in the Financial Times story, the reporter talked about how the Iranian government's basically saying, we're going to send you an email and then send you an invoice, you know, with the, with the payment address and then you're going to send it to us and then
- [12:52]
Colin
we'll let you go.
- [12:53]
Charlie
So it's not like this is like paying your taxes. You know, you're not going to go to like, you know, IRS.gov or, you know, like irancryptol.gov and pay your payment. Right. There's not probably a smooth process for this and it shows just how messy and probably fly by night this proposal has been to try to extort or levy these crypto tolls. But maybe one thing and then we'll leave it. Charlie, with final thoughts from you. When we covered this story, at first we Talked about how on the one hand, and I wrote about this for the newsletter too, you don't want to necessarily praise what the Iranian government's doing, and I'm certainly not doing that. But if we're looking at nation state adoption for bitcoin as a tool for commerce, this is one of the most consequential geopolitical news items to happen to Bitcoin in quite some time. You could argue the downstream effects of this or at least the symbolic nature of this is more consequential than, you know, the legal tender law in El Salvador, which I believe has kind of fallen to the wayside. Then that, that then raises the question the Iranian regime asking for bitcoin for tolls to leave the strait doesn't really make us look very good it does it, you know, for the establishment and for the first world. You know, the, the post war order probably doesn't like this very much. Now you add on top of that, scammers are exploiting this scheme to then, you know, steal from some of these oil tanker companies. None of it looks very good. Do you know what I mean? It's like this is coming at a time, by the way, when we just had a huge defi hack from the North Koreans and kelp dao. It's really all, these are not good headlines, man.
- [14:39]
Colin
You know, here the Iranian National Guard needs to post like an official, you know, website or something or like an official, you know, address. This is, this is common like NFT project or like crypto project 101. Just get a legitimate website up and you know, I. But oh my gosh. So just to round it out, Reuters estimates there's 20,000 seafarers. I don't know how many ships that is still in the Gulf, but that's a lot of people. This could be one of many stories. It's certainly one of the most fascinating phenomena in crypto during this rather boring spring or shall I say winter we're having right now. Let's move on to the next story. Justin Sun. It just keeps getting better.
- [15:28]
Charlie
Thank you. Yeah, it just keeps getting better with Justin sun and the Trumps now. Or I shouldn't say the Trumps Trump affiliated, World Liberty Financial going.
- [15:36]
Colin
They officially disaffiliated.
- [15:38]
Charlie
Officially disaffiliated. Formerly affiliated, Erstwhile affiliated. But as I'm reading from the coindesk headline here, quote, tron's Justin sun sues Trump link World Liberty Financial over frozen assets, end quote. So we a little context here. We covered the origins of this on a stream A while back, basically Justin sun went on the warpath on X and accused the World Liberty Financial team of fraud of implementing a backdoor without their users knowing it in the smart contracts for this defi platform. Those of you who don't know, World Liberty Fi was a DeFi project that launched in 2025. Justin sun was one of the primary backers of it and it was formerly linked to the Trump family, although all of the Trump family ambassadors, we should say, have been removed from the website since. And now Justin's son is wanting his and then some. So what he is essentially charging in this lawsuit, and it's very meaty, so I'm going to try my best to condense it here, is that not only did World Liberty Financial put in a back door to freeze and blacklist World Liberty Financial tokens, but that they specifically targeted Justin sun himself and basically made him an investor class of his own and froze his World Liberty Financial tokens with while other early backers did not have their tokens frozen at the time that they were frozen, according to the court document, the tokens were worth approximately $766 million. That's son's investment. He originally invested 45 million into World Liberty Financial back in 2025. He stepped in as an anchor investor, or excuse me, in 2024. He stepped in as an anchor investor in November 2024, buying 2 billion tokens for $30 billion. World Liberty Financial named him a project advisor, gave him another billion tokens as compensation. And then in January 2025 he purchased another 1 billion tokens for 15 billion. So he has his total investments for $45 million cash for 4 billion tokens. After Sun's involvement, the lawsuit claims World Liberties raise exploded reaching 550 million. Now that is some important context here. The lawsuit of course is going to try to make Justin sun look favorable here. He's the one filing the lawsuit. But World Liberty Financial from all reports was kind of struggling to raise money. And I do want to correct what I said, it was started, it launched in 2024 and then there were some more, you know, there was some more fundraising in 2025, but until Justin sun joined, the lawsuit claims there was not really much money coming into the project after he anchored. They claim that the investments picked up. Now here's where the meat of it comes in. On August 24, 2025, World Liberty secretly upgraded, according to the lawsuit, the World Liberty Financial smart contract to add a blacklisting function which gives it the ability to freeze any users tokens at Any wallet functions with no vote, no announcement or anything else. This is quoting directly from the complaint. While the upgrade is technically visible on the public blockchain, World Liberty Financial buried it in the code without alerting token holders to its existence or implications. And I love the flourishes that lawyers give themselves sometimes in the dark of night. The company that's created a blacklisting function that it could yield at will. And the big, I think crux of this is they are claiming that this blacklisting function was almost created with Justin sun in mind, where they say World Liberty Financial place Sun's tokens in a unique third category among early investors. Regular early investors got 20% of their tokens unlocked. Founders and advisors got a longer schedule. But sun alone, the lawsuit claims, had a total freeze of his assets and definitely with no schedule unlock. All 4 billion tokens, worth nearly 776 million at the time, were rendered unsellable. And then this is the really spicy part, when sun protested this. The suit claims World Liberty Financial didn't unlock the tokens, but instead its co founder, Chase Harrow called Sun and gave him two options. This is all allegedly, according to the lawsuit, he said, you have two options, son. Allegedly publicly post on X asking World Liberty Financial to burn the tokens. The 4 billion tokens that sun owns for the benefit of the broader token holder community or World Liberty Financial would orchestrate a governance vote to burn the tokens without compensation. A vote Harrow claimed World Liberty could control given the leadership team's token holdings. The complaints basically calling this criminal extortion. Whether or not it ends up being this, we'll see in the discovery process. We'll see where the court lands. But the whole point here is that Justin sun is basically claiming that World Liberty Financial locked him out of his investment and then also extorted him to either sell that investment or, sorry, burn that investment or that they would burn it for him. Who knows what's true. It's kind of like, you know, the worst person you know and then the other worst person you know, calling each other bad names.
- [20:37]
Colin
Yeah, exactly.
- [20:39]
Bill
Yeah.
- [20:39]
Colin
These are, these are where it's like that meme where the, there's, there's kids fighting and the one dude smoking weed in the background. I just absolutely love watching this. What's funny is like this is pretty typical for your 2021 DeFi like scam rug pull. Like if these alleged actions are true, this would be very on brand for a lot of stories in Defi Smart contract owner quietly upgrades with specific blacklisting ability. They Try to, you know, they're back and forth, finally escapes, you know, DMs and breaches of containment onto Twitter and, and everyone's just kind of like watching and hoping that it doesn't somehow, you know, create contagion to affect their own bags. I will be, I will be very skeptical that Justin sun turned 45 million into close to 800 million. And that wasn't some kind of like, you know, like, you know, not fully diluted share or some kind of like further locked token thing. But whatever, I don't know. It is wild how this is only a year and a half now. Maybe a little over a year and a half since genesis of the World Liberty Financial like spin up prior to the Trump campaign, you know, really catching speed and ultimately winning the presidency. And here we are. I just cannot wait to see what comes next because whenever Justin sun does something, it is unbelievably entertaining. So you're muted again.
- [22:17]
Charlie
Can we talk about the banana? You know he bought that like that arctic banana exhibit for like 2 million, then he just ate it. I mean this is a man who has way too much money. He doesn't know what to do with it and now he's going to be spending it on legal fees. Recommend going and looking at the filing if you're interested. There are some other juicy things including they really try to smear harrow in this and they quote an article that he is profiled in where he is a self described dirtbag of the Internet who said quote you can literally sell in a can wrapped in piss covered in human skin for 1 billion. If the story is right, who knows? Again it's all the worst people that
- [23:01]
Colin
you know and that's World Liberty Phi. We've got our feature guests this we're going to talk about who found Satoshi. But before that a word from our sponsor, CleanSpark.
- [23:13]
Charlie
We are CleanSpark, America's Bitcoin miner. A publicly traded company with the largest
- [23:19]
Colin
operating hash rate powered entirely by self
- [23:24]
Charlie
operated infrastructure across four states.
- [23:29]
Bill
This is our proof of work and
- [23:32]
Charlie
we are setting the standard for what's next. Learn more about the intersection of energy
- [23:38]
Colin
and bitcoin@cleanspark.com okay, enough about Defi. Let's talk about bitcoin. Finally took us halfway through the show to get to bitcoin and more specifically the creator of bitcoin, Pseudonymous perhaps unmasked. We have the two guys who spearheaded the documentary which just dropped Finding Satoshi this morning. Let's bring up William and Tyler.
- [24:06]
Charlie
William Cohen, Tyler Moroney. Thank you for joining us, gentlemen. Appreciate you taking the time.
- [24:12]
Colin
Okay, so I know that you guys are not going to just tell us who you identified as Satoshi because we got to get people to go watch the documentary. Let me invert this question for you then. A lot of folks have identified Satoshi over the years. Who in your mind is definitely not Satoshi during your documentary process?
- [24:38]
Tyler Moroney
Hundreds of people, thousands. I mean, look, as you know. Well, guys, this has been a curiosity for nearly a generation, and every major media organization, Internet sleuths, engineers, academics have been trying to find the answer to this question. A lot of them are based on conspiracy theories and on hunches. But what we decided to do is go out into the world and talk to people, talk to the family members, the colleagues, the friends of six or seven different candidates we had. And at the end of the day, we landed on two. And that that's public, so we could talk about it if you want, but you tell me it's up to y'. All.
- [25:27]
Charlie
I just. We didn't know if you wanted to spill the beans totally or kind of leave some breadcrumbs so people could go and watch the film. What do you think, Will?
- [25:35]
Bill
Well, first they should go to findingstatoshi.com and, you know, watch the film just to answer your question. Very good question. Who. Who is definitely not. It's definitely not Craig Wright. You know, despite that's the correct answer, his repeated efforts, which is still ongoing, which I find amazing, now he's somehow got, you know, the very highly respected film director Doug Lyman to do a film about him being Satoshi. This is a complete farce. It's definitely not the guy who was identified in the documentary that came out on HBO last fall. I don't even know the guy's name.
- [26:19]
Charlie
Peter Todd.
- [26:20]
Bill
Yeah. Is that he was running away on a subway platform, you know, or a train platform, saying it was not him. I think, you know, John Kerryou at the New York Times who dropped his big investigation a couple of weeks ago and identified Adam Back. I would say about that, that he was one of our final five finalists. We obviously rejected him. So I would say Adam Back is kind of right church, wrong pew. And I have incredible respect for John, Carrie, but I think we officially disagree with him. And, you know, I think I, you know, we could talk about who we think it is, but I think it's more fun if people actually see our logic as we developed it in this 90 minute film.
- [27:13]
Charlie
I, I will say this much, two things. First of all, Craig Wright, indefatigable literally the definition of the word. It's amazing that the guy is still on his pew, you know, on his soapbox doing his thing. And we covered the forthcoming. Or we talked briefly about the forthcoming film, and it is kind of a disappointment to see that we also have great filmmakers like y' all working on this. And the second thing I was going to say is for our viewers, because we. I think we know what y' all ended up concluding. I think a lot of our viewers and a lot of hardcore bitcoiners will be pleased with some of the findings of this. It aligns with a lot of popular theories, I think, for at least people who have very seriously looked into this. But on that note, I wanted to ask, so where did y' all even start when making this film? Because on the one hand, this seems like it could be easy in the sense of, like, there's really only a few dozen people that it could have been or could be. At the same time, though, you are looking for someone who left very few clues about their actual real world identity. So when y' all started prepping the film, you know, thinking how you were going to tackle this Leviathan, where did you start? What did you think about in terms of where's the best place to begin this story?
- [28:32]
Bill
Let me. Let me try to tackle that one, Tyler. And because, you know, look, I had. I. This was not something that originated with me. I'm a financial journalist, investigator, former Wall Street M and a banker. So, you know, I was kind of minding my own business. I got approached by the producer and the director saying, would I be interested in working on the film, being part of the film, sort of being the interlocutor on the film, and, you know, it being one of the biggest mysteries of the 21st century, you know, in financial circles, you know, the idea of trying to figure out who Satoshi was or is appealed to me greatly. So, yeah, I started going down the path and we did what you would expect, or I think what any investigative journalist would do, which is, you know, begin trying to see if any of the OG Bitcoin people, the people who are the true believers, could. Could help me help us begin to whittle down who some of the candidates might be. And, you know, so, I mean, the good news is I've got like, unbelievable interviews with people, you know, by people like, you know, Michael Saylor or Joe Lubin or Fred Hirsham or Katie Hahn or Gary Gensler, you know, Bill Gates, Joe Grundfest, on and on and on. The problem was, guys, that, that every time I brought up this question, and obviously they were on camera, they were on the record, they knew what we were doing. They knew the movie was called Finding Satoshi, but they basically gave me the Heisman every time that I would probe into this. Like, bill, you're better than this. This is not relevant anymore. Who cares who Satoshi is? You know, as Michael Saylor said, you know, prometheus has given us the fire. You know, let's move on. Why don't you focus on something that's more relevant and more important? So literally, after a year and a half of that and we're getting all these great interviews, I got like 90 minutes of Sam Bankman fried at his peak power and net worth before it all came crashing down, none of which is in the film. You know, that's a decision that was made basically because he didn't help us or wouldn't help us or didn't know who, who Satoshi was. And to, to the credit of the producer and the director, they were very focused on that, and rightly so. So that's when, you know, we turned to my friend Tyler, who is a private investigator and could get behind, you know, and help us dig deeper into this, because we weren't going to get any help from the OG types. So with that, I think Tyler is best able to explain how we got to where we got.
- [31:31]
Tyler Moroney
So I had the good fortune of coming after Bill. Having interviewed dozens and dozens and dozens of blue chip names. What we decided to do is, in addition to things like pattern recognition analysis and linguistic analysis, was to talk to people in the cryptography community, including people who'd been part of this group of mathematicians who are essentially activists called the cypherpunks from the 1990s. This is the world that Satoshi comes out of, we suspected. And I ended up going to a conference in Santa Barbara called Crypto, which has been around since the 1980s. When they say crypto, they mean cryptography, not cryptocurrency, because it's been around for that long. And you guys will appreciate this. At one point, three or four people at this conference said, I'll talk to you as long as you can confirm to me that Craig Wright is not one of your candidates. Because they felt very much, I realized, like Satoshi was one of their own, meaning somebody who was a coder, a developer, who understood, had kind of libertarian ideas about what the world should look like and using computer code to try to protect privacy. And so we spent a lot of time with these cryptographers who were surprisingly open to speaking. I feel a little guilt, actually. Bill, I don't think I've ever said this to you, that so many people I asked to contribute to this film did so very openly and they thought it was a fascinating question. So in that sense, we were able to gain the trust of many people in the cryptography world.
- [33:04]
Colin
So you guys, you mentioned you identified two candidates, which I think is pretty interesting. A lot of folks have speculated Satoshi was multiple people. It sounds like that's what you guys land on. Do you think that's why it's been so difficult over the years for a lot of other people who've tried to identify who it is? Because satoshi might not match one specific person. I'm curious, like, about the idea of satoshi being a group of people.
- [33:37]
Tyler Moroney
Yeah, well, as Bill said, we both started from a kind of place of ignorance. And I mean that in a very positive way. Like, we were very open minded to learning everything we could. And one of the things we started to learn pretty quickly is that not only was the code and the creation of bitcoin itself as a technology fascinating, but the white paper also was, in a way, a different animal. Right. Because the white paper is almost like a marketing for what bitcoin would be. And that takes a very particular skill to be able to write a white paper with the kind of academic skills and backgrounds and understanding of technology, which can be very different from having just the pure coding skills of the person who developed it. So after we were told that this might have been a possibility, we started looking into the possibility that there were more than one. And then beyond that, to your question about more than one person and how difficult it's been, Many of the sources talk to us about how satoshi might have actually intentionally disguised their identity by changing not just details in the code. Because oftentimes, let's say you're a C programmer, if you know that person, you can actually identify their code in a way that you can identify the writing of a novelist that you might like a lot. And that's often true of prose writing, too. So we kept this idea open in our minds that figuring out who wrote something just by analyzing the style in and of itself was not enough. We had to keep open the possibility that it was somebody who had the ability to not only code and write in prose, but then to code and write and change the style enough to prevent someone from identifying them. And that's what made it a lot of fun.
- [35:28]
Charlie
So I really do not Envy Yalls work here because you kind of pointed this out already. But most people, when you approach them on this topic, they think that you're kind of pooping in the punch bowl a little bit.
- [35:40]
Bill
Right.
- [35:40]
Charlie
They say, we don't need to look into this. This is. You're putting a target on this person's back. It's better if it's a secret. And I would. I think that that belies the fact that they actually all really want to know. Everyone wants to know. I mean, most bitcoiners will say, I want that to be a secret. It might be from a principal point of view, but at the end of the day, all of us kind of want to know this. Right. Like, it's one of the greatest mysteries, as you said, William of the 21st century. And I think that it's really great that y' all started with the cypherpunks. And I really like the idea that they asked you about, you know. Oh, you're not going to say it's Craig Wright, right? Because I do think that a lot of these efforts have been from an insider's view, looking out have been marred by this perception of outsiders. People exogenous to the bitcoin community are usually the ones investigating this, and there's sometimes an ulterior motive or they don't understand things very well. And it looks like y' all did your homework with who you went to first. All of that. To say for a closing question, there are so many people you have to interview. There are so many different perspectives and there are so many different theories. What surprised you most when you were making this film and researching it?
- [36:51]
Bill
Well, I would say to start and then Tyler can finish up. I was just surprised, as I said, by the fact that so many of these people who were so heavily invested in bitcoin, you know, like Michael Saylor. Right. The maximalist to the hilt. Just had no interest in. In talking about who Satoshi was. Or as you say, you know, we're all interested in knowing this and these guys weren't and that just like, okay, why is this happening over and over again? You know? And therefore, as an investigative journalist, I can't possibly accept that as the reason and as the conclusion. So, you know, we have to keep digging. We have to keep going about it. I think we were very Cartesian. And, you know, I think, as Tyler can tell you, the interviews with the wives of the people we identify, I think was absolutely brilliant and incredibly revealing.
- [37:59]
Tyler Moroney
Yeah, just add to that, Bill, that I think one of the biggest Takeaways and surprises was there's a benefit of doing an investigation 15 or 20 years after something happens. You know, if Bill and I had done this in 2010, 2011, it's a very different exercise. But a number of the people who appear in the film told us, in so many words, it's been long enough, I think it's okay for this information to come out. And in fact, they felt almost an emotional need for that to happen, including family members and friends of the, of the people who we believe created Bitcoin. So thank God we delayed ourselves so long to get this thing done.
- [38:38]
Charlie
Yeah, it seems like maybe letting this marinate a little bit. How long did it take, by the way? That was just as maybe a closing question before we get you all off.
- [38:46]
Bill
Started during COVID believe it or not. You know, we had to go through that year and a half of getting the Heisman before we figured out, okay, now what are we going to do? So there were all sorts of weird Covid related, you know, interviews, including one with Joe Lubin in a warehouse in Brooklyn that had been the Ethereum office, but that nobody had been in in months. And he, like, he sat in one corner of the office and I was in another corner, and we had the cameras between us and he was kind of like, very condescending towards me, like, how could I dare to ask these questions? And, you know, why didn't I know more about Ethereum and, you know, not surprised, Frank.
- [39:29]
Colin
Yeah, frame in. In a very austere camera angle and, you know, warehouse corner. I get that. So, yeah, where again, one last cta. Where could people find the documentary and go watch it?
- [39:44]
Bill
Findingsatoshi.com go to your favorite findings atochi.com nearest you.
- [39:51]
Charlie
And if you're a Coinbase user, you can watch it on Coinbase as well. They are supporter of the film. Tyler, William, thank you all so much for joining. Congrats on the documentary. Looking forward to cracking it open tonight. Thank you very much for all the work.
- [40:04]
Bill
Take care.
- [40:05]
Tyler Moroney
Thank you for having us.
- [40:12]
Charlie
Super interesting. I will say I'm actually usually not that interested in these kinds of investigations, but I'm. I actually really do want to watch this one, particularly because I think they. They might have nailed it, but, you know, may have. Go watch the film.
- [40:26]
Colin
Go watch God Strike me Down. They may have gotten it, so.
- [40:31]
Charlie
They may have gotten it. Indeed. All right, we're going to keep moving on, but first a quick word from our sponsor, Luxor. This episode is brought to you by Luxor's Commander Bitcoin Miner management software built for enterprise operations Commander gives you real time fleet monitoring bulk remote commands across your fleet and Intelligent Miner which is an automated profitability engine that runs every five minutes adjusting power settings to live hash rate markets through Luxor and energy markets. ERCOT backtests show over 10% more profitability versus Binary Mining Commander Pro is $100 per megawatt or a 25 basis points pool fee adder roughly half the cost of the competition and and there's a 60 day free trial so try it and buy it if you like it. Get started at Luxor Tech Commander and we are moving right along here. Thank you again to the Finding Satoshi folks for our next story, little bit of Bitcoin mining AI news going back to the roots a little bit coresci
- [41:32]
Colin
Got to go back to where we came from.
- [41:34]
Charlie
$3.3 billion notes for coresight again eye popping numbers. We're just dealing with more money than we ever thought we would when we were just slinging ASICS core scientific planning a $3.3 billion secured notes offering for site construction and debt payments. We've got this coming at y' all from the Block Space website and the headline kind of says it all. We'll get into a few details here for the nitty gritty so Core Scientific has not closed this note offering. It is being I assume it's being underwritten currently. We'll get confirmation when they close I assume in the next few weeks. But if, if fully realized it will be for $3.3 billion and 1 billion of this will go towards paying off a 1 billion dollar loan with JP Morgan Chase that Core Scientific took out recently. In March 2026 Core Scientific added 500 million under a debt facility that it has with JP Morgan bringing the total to 1 billion. It is a short term loan 364 day loan facility so they want to obviously get it paid off as soon as possible. Carried an interest rate of SOFR +250 basis points. The idea here as I understand it and some finance heads can correct me after the stream if the I think I got this wrong. This is like a bridge to bond refinancing. Cord's basically moved on this short term financing from JP Morgan so that it could fund its AI expansion in its business. Now it is raising this bond to pay that off so that it doesn't have to be yoked by the short term financing deals which are no doubt going to be worse than what it can get for something like this bond right now I think the interesting question here is where does a lot of this money go? As most of y' all probably know, Core Scientific has this AI deal with coreweave. Now, the capex for that deal is largely being fronted by coreweave. The vast majority of it is fronted by coreweave across a number of Core Scientifics campuses. This note is guaranteed by five project level subsidiaries. It's AI data centers in Austin, it's Denton facility, Dalton, its Marble facility, and its Muskogee, Oklahoma facility. Most of those are in Texas, except for the Muskogee one.
- [44:03]
Colin
It's pronounced Muskogee. Yeah, Muskogee. It's a. Yeah, it's.
- [44:09]
Charlie
Sorry. Tulsa, man. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Forgive my. Forgive my garbled command of Native American words.
- [44:18]
Colin
Yeah.
- [44:18]
Charlie
All that being said, though, Core Scientific has the capex for most of its AI expansion with Core. We've covered. So I would imagine that the rest of this 2 billion would probably be going into AI projects that it has yet to announce. I could be wrong about this. Obviously, this is me projecting. This is me kind of forecasting into the future. But I would imagine that some of this will be going towards future AI endeavors. And if we look at Core Scientific stock price, the market, the seem to really like this. Now, granted, Bitcoin is moving other the stock market's moving again now that there's hope for an end of the conflict in Iran. So there's a little bit of noise here. Maybe this signal isn't just this raise, but Core scientific is up 11% over the last five days and up 3%, 3.2% today. So a massive raise. We're starting to see some deals and some raises hit the wire again. We covered hive with their 100 million raise that they upsized again. It was originally 75. They upsized 100. I believe they closed it at somewhere just north of 100 million, but starting to see some of these public miners that are pivoting to AI Back in the news for fundraising. Capex boom is not quite what it was last year. We're still getting some of the drags of it, though. We'll see how much longer this party has to last. Charlie, any thoughts?
- [45:40]
Colin
No. I'm going to drive by the Core Scientific site in Muskogee sometime in the next month, so I'll put some eyeballs on it and report back.
- [45:49]
Charlie
Send a drone over it. Maybe not.
- [45:52]
Colin
Maybe not.
- [45:52]
Charlie
I'll be able to do that. There are weird airspace regulations. All right. And we'll move on to our final story of the day. But first, a quick word from Lygos, one of our other sponsors. Hedge funds are getting liquidated. Is your Bitcoin safe? It's not just Bitcoin's price drying up. Hedge funds, large institutions and other lenders are reeling after the October 10th and February 5th liquidation events. Counterparty risk is rampant. People are running around losing their shirts. So it's more important than ever to know who controls your Bitcoin. And with Lygos, that person is never anyone but you. Lygos uses Bitcoin native smart contracts to allow you to take control of your stack and self custody it while lending it out. Don't be the next FTX or Celsius victim. Use Lygos Finance. They are our preferred Bitcoin backed lender. And there's no rehypothecation, no wrapping, no bridging. Once again, you always control your keys, you know where your Bitcoin is and you can get competitive rates as low as 10% APR. Go to Lygos Dot Finance to learn more. All right, next final, final story of the day. This one's really interesting and I ended up picking this one because I think that there's a lot of nuance to it. The headline here from CoinDesk is Bitget Exchange brings pre IPO tokens to masses starting with SpaceX on Solana. Context here. SpaceX is purportedly going public. They filed for a confidential IPO registration I believe sometime within the last few months or maybe within the last year. And now this. This crypto exchange, Bitget in partnership with this other company called Republic. We'll get to how they both factor in here in a second, are now offering Solana based tokens that are tied to SpaceX equity. Now my first question when I saw this is how, how are they doing this? How is this compliant? This sounds like a scam. Maybe this is something that we wouldn't have gotten if the SEC weren't more favorable. If this were Gary Gensler's sec, maybe this wouldn't even be possible. That was one of the questions that I had. But it seems to be kosher from what I've seen currently and here's why. What's actually happening here? Bitget is listing the Solana token, but for lack of a better way to describe it, Republic is basically sponsoring it. So Republic actually holds pre IPO shares of SpaceX, they hold SpaceX stock and they can essentially issue a token that mirrors that stock. It's called a mirror token in parlance here. And it's essentially a contingent Note, it does not represent equity. It is basically a form of. It's a liability. You can maybe look at it kind of like a form of debt. But these mirror tokens, each of them is a contingent note paying out if the pre IPO company has a liquidity event. So in this case for SpaceX going public now, you can issue these to non to US investors through a Regulation CF and Regulation S exemption. You can also issue this to. That's only for accredited investors, by the way. I think non accredited can buy this and invest in it up to a certain limit, there are certain restrictions. But it can also be available to non US investors through Regulation S. So what you're basically looking at here is Republic creates the mirror tokens. These tokens, again are debt instruments. They do not represent equity. They represent the promise to payout on the SpaceX equity should there be a liquidity event. And Bitget essentially runs these on its exchange for the investors who wish to take a stake in SpaceX. But again, you're not actually getting SpaceX equity, you're getting a synthetic form of SpaceX equity that's really a debt instrument and it's contingent on it. It's an IOU. Exactly. It's an IOU. If SpaceX doesn't go public, you know, too bad you probably won't get anything from this. But I thought that this was just really interesting because we're starting to see the real world asset narrative pick up and we're starting to see the idea of creating these synthetic stocks and trading them on crypto. Rails is gaining momentum. There is this kind of, I think for a lot of traders and people who are immersed in crypto think that it's kind of a foregone conclusion that eventually the same 247 trading, or at least maybe 24. 5 trading or 247 trading that you get with Bitcoin will eventually be 24 7, maybe 24. 5 with equities. And I will say it's hard to separate what's BS and real from the rwa, the real world assets subsector of crypto. That being said, seeing something like this, assuming it's kosher, it's kind of in a gray area from, from the digging that I did and from. And consulting the AI gods. It doesn't look like the SEC is going to put the stopper in this, but they conceivably could. Again, a lot of this is kind of building the car as we drive it, but it's an interesting case study for where things might be headed for Equity and for tokenizing those real world assets in the future.
- [51:11]
Colin
We are building the clown car as we drive it. I'm like a bitcoin guy, but I see this and this is a very. Everybody wants this type of product and it makes sense to put it on Solana. It's the one where it's going to put all the capital markets on there and SpaceX is the hottest private company. Everybody wants to own it. I want to own some SpaceX but unfortunately, you know, Elon didn't call me 25 years ago or whenever he started the company. If in fact this is legal and this thing launches and SpaceX does go public and the debtors or the people, the debt, the token debtors, if you will get the payout, it could be one of the best plays ever. I'm kind of curious, did they say what's going to be valued at? Because if they do that this would be a proxy to get a real pre IPO valuation which everybody wants to know is SpaceX going to IPO at a trillion dollars or over or under? Yeah, there's a lot going on here and dare I say it like this is a very in demand product. This is one of those things where I clearly see what crypto broadly is doing and I like it because otherwise I as a normie here can't buy my SpaceX. I'll also note Colin, the name of the token. Guys, let me in the boardroom for this conversation. The name of the token is quote pre spax lowercase prt, capital S, capital P, capital A, capital X, pre spacs. Come on guys, there's a bunch of jokes I could make. I'm not going to make them but it's just, it's just a, it's just oh, it's such a bad token. It sounds like a liquid staking like restake token on crypto just called SpaceX.
- [53:19]
Charlie
Yeah, it is really bad and I haven't been able to find any pricing information. I'm not sure how public that is yet, at least not from my cursory glances. But you can Google Bitget and the platform is called IPO prime that the token is on. So go ahead and search for pre spacs. Terrible name.
- [53:41]
Colin
Like I'm not going to be googling that. I mean I will say I think if I'm not mistaken, I think there's a MicroStrategy token on Solana that's actually similar to this. But the thing is with that is like most people who want MicroStrategy can buy it especially if they're. And this would be a clear example of something you can't buy this. And now this is the problem. If this is in fact real and does get delivered, this is probably the best bet that I'm aware of that you have to get your hands on the hottest rocket ship company, soon to be Data center rocket company.
- [54:23]
Charlie
Yeah, 100%. And just one last note on the price discovery. It'd be curious if this garners enough liquidity to get us close to what investors are actually thinking because there's a chance that this market is pretty dislocated from the actual capital allocators for SpaceX. In fact there's a great chance of that. So to me it's kind of an open ended question as to whether or not this proves useful to elucidate any sort of real valuation for SpaceX before it IPOs.
- [54:47]
Colin
Yeah, yeah. So like yeah the funny thing is like it could create because I can imagine like if this is real, this is such an in demand like token that I wonder if like because it doesn't represent the fully liquid, you know, amount of SpaceX shares, the token could rip and give a false vastly overinflated pre IPO valuation just due to investor demand. So there's a lot interesting going on here that we could watch. So yeah, if, if Elon wants to come on the stream, we'll let him and we'll talk about it.
- [55:25]
Charlie
I'd love to have Elon on the stream for a number of reasons, but we'll leave that where it is. Thank you all so much for hanging out with us today on this beautiful Wednesday, Wednesday morning PT and Mountain time and ET Central or PM ET and Central time. We will see y' all back on Friday for another edition of Blockspace Live. As Charlie said at the top of the show you can catch us on rsslockspace. Also find this on YouTube. Check out our newsletter at Newsletter Blogspace Media and with that we will see y' all on Friday. Have a beautiful week everyone.