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    Bitcoin Documentary ‘Money Electric’ Reopens Search for Satoshi Nakamoto

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    The identity of the pseudonymous Bitcoin creator has eluded sleuths for years. But does finding the real Mr. Nakamoto really matter?There are two ambitious missions behind “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” a new documentary by the filmmaker Cullen Hoback that was released Tuesday by HBO.The first is to solve one of the internet’s great mysteries by revealing, at long last, the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous programmer who created Bitcoin in 2008.The film’s second mission is to make the case that the identity of Bitcoin’s creator actually matters — that Bitcoin, for all its flaws, represents an important technological breakthrough with far-reaching implications, and that there are good reasons, aside from prurience, to care who created it.Let’s start with the first part. Among Bitcoin buffs and cryptocurrency journalists, the mystery of Mr. Nakamoto’s identity has been the subject of fierce debate and painstaking investigation for more than a decade. But nothing has been proved conclusively, and a handful of bungled attempts to crack the case — most notoriously a 2014 Newsweek cover story that put the blame on a physicist, Dorian Nakamoto, who turned out to have nothing to do with Bitcoin at all — have only muddied the waters.(My former colleague Nathaniel Popper suggested that Nick Szabo, who created a digital currency with similarities to Bitcoin, was most likely Satoshi Nakamoto back in 2015, but Mr. Szabo has denied it, and no conclusive evidence has emerged.)Mr. Hoback, who spent years diving down the rabbit hole of the QAnon conspiracy theory for his last film, “Q: Into the Storm,” took a similarly exhaustive approach this time. He and a camera crew spent three years flying around the world interviewing early Bitcoin contributors, following digital breadcrumbs buried in ancient message board posts and piecing together the evidence.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Andrea Riseborough Has a Hidden Agenda

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      Currently in two series, “The Regime” and “Alice & Jack,” this versatile actress has played dozens of characters. What connects them? Not even she knows.“I really do wish sometimes that I could do all of this a different way,” Andrea Riseborough said. “But I suppose I just do it the way that I do it. And there are consequences.”She paused then, pressing her lips into a thin smile. “That all sounds a bit dramatic,” she added.This was on an afternoon in early March, and Riseborough, 42, a metamorphic actress with a worrying sense of commitment, was seated at a West Village cafe, a basket of vinegar-doused French fries in front of her. She is often unrecognizable from one project to the next, a combination of makeup, hairstyle (what Meryl Streep is to accents, Riseborough is to coiffure) and marrow-deep transformation. Here, offscreen, she wore a Mickey Mouse sweatshirt under a busy leather jacket. Her hair, still growing out from the dismal pixie cut she got for the HBO series “The Regime,” was pulled back with an elastic.In person, she is a particular mix of gravity and nonchalance. She knows that she has a reputation for seriousness, which she rejects. “It would be pretty strange to apologize for being serious when you’re giggling so much,” she said. But I rarely heard her laugh. She considered each question carefully and her responses were often philosophical rather than personal. “People,” she might say in place of “I.” Or “most people.” Or “everyone.” Her face, at rest and free of makeup, isn’t especially restful. There is a watchfulness to her, a sense of thoughts tumbling behind those eyes.In her two decades in the business, goaded by a tireless work ethic that sometimes saw her completing as many as five projects per year, she has amassed credits across stage, film and television. It can be hard to find a through-line among those enterprises, mainstream and independent, comedy and tragedy and horror.In ”The Regime,” Riseborough, left, plays palace master for a despot, played by Kate Winslet.Miya Mizuno/HBOIn 2022, for example, she starred in the sex-addled queer musical “Please Baby Please,” produced by her production company; the cockeyed interwar drama “Amsterdam”; the boisterous children’s film “Matilda: the Musical”; the bleak Scandinavian thriller “What Remains”; and the wrenching Texas-set indie, “To Leslie,” for which Riseborough received her first Academy Award nomination. (That nomination was complicated by perceived campaigning irregularities, though the Academy ultimately concluded that no guidelines had been violated.) Try to connect those dots.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Gerald M. Levin, Time Warner Chief in a Merger Debacle, Dies at 84

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      He was called a visionary in cable television, but his foray into the world of the internet, in a marriage with AOL, proved disastrous.Gerald M. Levin, a “visionary” media executive, as he was often described, who became C.E.O. of the world’s largest media company, Time Warner, and an architect of its merger with America Online, widely considered the worst corporate marriage in American history, died on Wednesday. He was 84.Jake Maia Arlow, a grandchild of Mr. Levin’s, confirmed the death, in a hospital, and said he lived in Long Beach, Calif. No other details were provided. Mr. Levin had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.Mr. Levin was Time Warner’s chief executive when he and his counterpart at AOL at the time, Steve Case, devised what was then the largest business merger in U.S. history. When the deal was announced on Jan. 10, 2000, Time Warner was the world’s largest media company, and America Online was the largest internet company, with a combined market value of roughly $342 billion (the equivalent of about $600 billion today).The merger, creating AOL Time Warner, was heralded as a watershed moment — the union of old and new media, a storied 20th-century American company whose origins could be traced to the publishing baron Henry Luce and the Hollywood boss Jack Warner, hitching up with a Virginia tech company for a ride into the World Wide Web. Instead, it became shorthand for the excesses of the turn-of-the-century dot-com bubble and the era of so-called synergy.Richard Parsons, who succeeded Mr. Levin as chief executive of AOL Time Warner in 2002, said in a phone interview for this obituary in 2022 that Mr. Levin was “one of the smartest guys in the media and entertainment space,” a “visionary” who saw the digital wave coming and understood how the internet would transform Time Warner’s business.“He saw the merger with AOL as making Time Warner digital by injection,” Mr. Parsons said. “What AOL brought to the party was instant access and competence in terms of how to access the internet world.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      HBO Drops Milos Bikovic, ‘White Lotus’ Actor Criticized by Ukraine

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      The casting of Milos Bikovic, a Serbian actor, had been denounced by Ukraine’s foreign ministry, who pointed to his ties to Russia.HBO has parted ways with Milos Bikovic, a Serbian actor whose casting in the third season of “The White Lotus” had drawn criticism from Ukraine’s foreign ministry for his ties to Russia, according to an HBO spokeswoman.Bikovic’s role in the dark comedy will be recast, the spokeswoman said.In a statement provided through a spokesman on Friday, Bikovic said that he was leaving because of external pressure.“Today, a targeted campaign has been unleashed against me, seemingly as an external maneuver to influence decisions that can create a disturbing precedent shadowing the essence of artistic freedom,” Bikovic said in the statement. “The result of such a narrative is the triumph of absurdity and the defeat of art.”HBO announced on Jan. 12 that Bikovic, 36, would be joining the “White Lotus” cast. Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticized the decision on social media weeks later, writing on X, “HBO, is it all right for you to work with a person who supports genocide & violates international law?”On Instagram in 2022, in a post shared the day after the Russian invasion of Ukraine began, Bikovic said that he wished the war had not happened. “War and bloodshed on any side reminds us of how far humanity is from global unity and love,” he wrote in Russian and Serbian. “God save the lives of all those who are now in danger!”Bikovic has been celebrated by Russia’s leadership. He was awarded the Pushkin Medal, which honors contributions to Russian arts and culture, by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2018. The following year Ukraine barred Bikovic from entering the country for what it called national security reasons, prompting him to tell a Serbian publication that “the situation is absurd.” He received Russian citizenship by presidential decree in 2021.Ukraine’s foreign ministry did not immediately respond to a request for comment.Before he was cast in “The White Lotus,” Bikovic acted in movies including “South Wind,” which follows a gang member in Belgrade; “Sunstroke,” about military officers remembering the collapse of the Russian Empire; “Ice,” in which he plays a figure skater; and “The Balkan Line,” about a military operation during the Kosovo war.In his statement, he referred to his childhood growing up in a war-torn country and expressed his opposition to all armed conflict.“There are more and more active conflicts in the entire world,” he said. “Each one is different. Each one is heartbreaking. I wish all of them to stop and principles of love to prevail.”Season 3 of “The White Lotus” is set to begin production in Thailand this month and is scheduled to air in 2025. The ensemble will include Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Parker Posey and the returning cast member Natasha Rothwell. More

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      Ukraine Criticizes HBO, Saying New ‘White Lotus’ Actor Supports War

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      On social media, Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted clips of the Serbian actor Milos Bikovic receiving a medal for cultural achievement from Vladimir Putin in 2018.Ukraine’s foreign ministry criticized HBO this week after Milos Bikovic was cast in the third season of “The White Lotus,” saying without evidence that the Serbian actor had supported Russia since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.HBO announced on Jan. 12 that Bikovic, 36, would be joining the dark comedy about wealthy tourists at island resorts. On Wednesday, the foreign ministry of Ukraine made the accusations against Bikovic on social media, writing, “HBO, is it all right for you to work with a person who supports genocide & violates international law?”Bikovic was awarded the Pushkin Medal, which honors contributions to Russian arts and culture, by President Vladimir V. Putin in 2018 and received Russian citizenship by presidential decree in 2021.In February 2022, the day after the invasion began, Bikovic said on Instagram that he wished the war had not happened. “War and bloodshed on any side reminds us of how far humanity is from global unity and love,” he wrote in Russian and Serbian. “God save the lives of all those who are now in danger!”Ukraine’s foreign ministry and Bikovic did not respond to requests for comment. An HBO spokesman said questions should be directed to Bikovic’s representatives.President Biden has called Russia’s invasion genocide, and The New York Times has collected evidence of brutalities by Russia, including the willful killing of noncombatants.A 79-second video that Ukraine’s foreign ministry posted on social media interspersed scenes from “The White Lotus” with clips of Bikovic accepting the award from Putin and previous comments it said the actor had made about Russia. In a voice-over, it claimed that Bikovic was “the Kremlin’s foreign mouthpiece.”During Bikovic’s acceptance speech for the Pushkin Medal, he emphasized unity between Russia and Serbia. “What a joy for Russians and Serbs in our homeland because we have the same worldview,” he said in Russian.Ukraine barred Bikovic from entering the country in 2019 for what it called national security reasons. At the time, he told a Serbian publication that “from the human and poetic point of view the situation is absurd and interesting.”Before he was cast in “The White Lotus,” Bikovic acted in movies including “South Wind,” which follows a gang member in Belgrade; “Sunstroke,” about military officers remembering the collapse of the Russian Empire; “Ice,” in which he plays a figure skater; and “The Balkan Line,” about a military operation during the Kosovo war.Season 3 of “The White Lotus” is set to begin production in Thailand next month and is scheduled to air in 2025. It will feature Walton Goggins, Carrie Coon, Parker Posey and the returning cast member Natasha Rothwell. More