Update Oct. 5, 1 pm UTC: This article has been updated to add more information about Len Sassaman.
American cypherpunk and cryptographer Leonard Harris “Len” Sassaman has attracted the attention of the crypto space, with Polymarket punters favoring the deceased computer scientist as the figure who will be revealed to be the inventor of Bitcoin in an upcoming HBO documentary.
On Oct. 3, filmmaker Cullen Hoback announced an upcoming HBO documentary titled “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery.” Hoback promoted the film on X, saying that he was tracking down somebody else who had disappeared, implying that he had been attempting to find the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Hoback is known for his HBO miniseries titled “Q: Into the Storm,” where he claimed to have identified some authors of the QAnon conspiracy theory — an unproven speculation pitting former president Donald Trump against satanic pedophiles within Hollywood.
While the documentary’s creators did not list who they thought would be Nakamoto in the trailer, Polymarket gamblers quickly placed bets on who may be outed as the Bitcoin creator. As of Oct. 5, 44.5% of bettors favor Sassaman, with other prominent Bitcoin figures like Hal Finney, Adam Back, Nick Szabo and Paul Le Roux following in the list.
A majority of Polymarket bettors believe that Sassaman may be HBO’s Nakamoto. Source: Polymarket
Who was Len Sassaman?
Sassaman attended a private school in his native state of Pennsylvania and was a prodigy in cryptography.
While still in his late teens, Sassaman moved to San Francisco, California, and became a regular in the cypherpunks community — a computer privacy movement that started in the late 1980s. He eventually went on to study under David Chaum, who is widely dubbed the godfather of crypto.
Sassaman worked on projects such as the Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) software and its update, GNU Privacy Guard. He and his wife, computer scientist Meredith Patterson, founded the SaaS startup Osogato.
Tribute to Len Sassaman on the Bitcoin blockchain. Source: Block 138725
While Sassaman had a lot of achievements, the cryptography expert was diagnosed with depression in his teens. On July 3, 2011, Sassaman died of suicide at the age of 31. Following his death, a tribute to Sassaman was encoded into Block 138725 of the Bitcoin blockchain.
The memorial described Sassaman as “a friend, a kind soul and a devious schemer.”
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Could Len Sassaman be Satoshi Nakamoto?
One thing that fuels speculation of Sassaman being Nakamoto is the timing of the Bitcoin inventor’s departure and Sassaman’s death.
On April 23, 2011, about two months before Sassaman’s death, Nakamoto sent his final email to the Bitcoin community. The pseudonymous Bitcoin inventor said that he had a few things on his mind and had moved on to other things. After the email, Nakamoto disappeared without any further explanation.
Excerpt of final email correspondence with Satoshi Nakamoto. Source: Mike Hearn
Apart from timing, Sassaman’s working relationship with Finney, another candidate to be Nakamoto, also fuels the speculation that the deceased cryptographer could be the Bitcoin inventor. According to a blog post by Worlds founder Evan Hatch, Sassaman worked on PGP alongside Finney at the IT service provider Network Associates.
Nakamoto worked closely with Finney in the early days of Bitcoin. Apart from Nakamoto, Finney was the first to contribute code to the protocol and run a node. The software developer corresponded extensively with Nakamoto and was also the first recipient of Bitcoin (BTC).
Finney and Sassaman were also experts in remailer technology, a precursor to BTC. Blockstream CEO Adam Back previously suggested that Nakamoto might have been a remailer developer.
Hatch’s blog post also noted that Sassaman’s main project was an evolution of remailer technology called Pynchon Gate, which allowed pseudonymous information retrieval via nodes. As the work progressed, Hatch noted that Sassaman became focused on solving the Byzantine Fault, a significant obstacle for peer-to-peer (P2P) networks.
Solving the Byzantine Fault problem was necessary to introduce secure and decentralized crypto without needing trusted third parties and double-spending. Nakamoto’s triple-entry accounting system solved the problem using the blockchain.
Apart from these, Sassaman’s location during Bitcoin’s development also contributes to the speculation that he could’ve been Nakamoto. The cryptographer was based in Belgium when Bitcoin was developed.
Nakamoto’s writing contains word choices unique to British English, including words like “bloody difficult,” “flat,” “maths,” or “grey.” Bitcoin’s genesis block also contains a headline from The Times newspaper, which circulated in the United Kingdom and Europe.
Sassaman’s wife says “Len was not Satoshi”
While many Polymarket gamblers may have their money on HBO outing Sassaman as Satoshi, the late developer’s widow does not believe that her husband could’ve been Bitcoin’s inventor.
Source: Meredith L. Patterson
On Feb. 23, 2021, Meredith Patterson, who married Sassaman in 2006, stated in an X post that, to the best of her knowledge, her late husband was not Nakamoto.
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Additional reporting by Derek Andersen.