- Approximately 40% of users believe Len Sassaman is the anonymous creator of Bitcoin.
- The programmer’s wife has refuted this theory.
Members of the crypto community have increasingly come to believe that Len Sassaman is the creator of Bitcoin. However, his wife has previously asserted that this is not true.
It’s a very well-researched and respectful article, but to the best of my knowledge, Len was not Satoshi. Worth reading for the history and the conclusions about mental health, though. https://t.co/am4EG57YvC
— Meredith L. Patterson ?? (@maradydd) February 23, 2021
HBO has announced the release of a documentary titled Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery on October 9, promising to reveal the identity of the anonymous creator of the first cryptocurrency.
The film is directed by Cullen Hoback, whose previous work, Q: Into the Storm, focused on exposing the popular QAnon conspiracy theory in the United States.
The filmmakers have not provided any hints to the media.
“In the film, we present some damn convincing arguments, and I think the person we focus on will surprise and spark a lot of debate. I am sure people will argue about it regardless of how convincing our arguments are, and that’s okay. That’s the nature of this space. We had far more evidence than we could include in the film,” the director stated.
Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy Digital, wrote that he “heard” they will name Len (Leonard Harris) Sassaman, who took his own life on July 3, 2011. This speculation was also made in 2021 by Evan Luehn Hatch, founder of the gaming project Worlds and a Bitcoin supporter.
It was to his article that Meredith Patterson, who was married to Len since 2006, responded on February 23, 2021.
However, a significant portion of users believe Hatch is correct. On the decentralized prediction platform Polymarket, nearly 40% of participants are betting on Sassaman as Satoshi Nakamoto.
Who Was Len Sassaman?
The programmer was born in a small town in Pennsylvania. A self-taught cryptographer and protocol developer, he joined the support group for TCP/IP, the foundation of the internet, at the age of 18. During his teenage years, he was diagnosed with depression.
In 1999, Sassaman moved to California, where he became an active member of the cypherpunk community. He interacted with Mojo and Bittorrent creator Bram Cohen, joined a specialized mailing list, and studied under David Chaum, the creator of the first known blockchain.
At 22, the programmer founded a startup in the field of public key cryptography. The company collapsed with the dot-com bubble, but such developments form the basis of Bitcoin.
Sassaman collaborated with Hal Finney while working on the concept of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). The renowned cryptographer was reportedly one of the first Bitcoin users after the cryptocurrency’s creator.
During Bitcoin’s development, Sassaman was in Belgium. The white paper of the first cryptocurrency contains phrases characteristic of British English. The headline of the genesis block features an article from the European edition of The Times.
“It’s a very well-researched and respectful article. But, to the best of my knowledge, Len was not Satoshi. Worth reading for the history and the conclusions about mental health,” Patterson commented on Hatch’s post.
In Bitcoin block #138725, Sassaman’s memory is immortalized (image above left). The memorial inscription describes him as “a friend, a brilliant mind, a kind soul, and a cunning schemer.”
Back in court, the so-called “fake Satoshi” Craig Wright opened a new account on X. In accordance with the ruling, the account features a statement that the entrepreneur is not Satoshi Nakamoto.