Satoshi Nakamoto’s real identity has always been a hot topic of discussion for people in the crypto markets. With the upcoming HBO movie that claims to reveal the real identity of the Bitcoin creators, discussions on Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market platform, have picked pace with many putting Len Sassaman as the top contender in the race.
The new HBO documentary titled Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery is all set to explore the lesser known parts of the Bitcoin market, with the most intriguing claim of revealing the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.
The documentary is set to release on October 8, 2024, at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT and is helmed by Emmy-nominated director Cullen Hoback.
Who Was Len Sassaman?
Len Sassaman, a well-known cypherpunk, is a well known name in the crypto sphere. Though details about his early life are not openly known to the market, Len made a name for himself early in his career as an expert in public-key cryptography, which is the basis of Bitcoin.
By the age of 22, he was giving talks at conferences and had partnered with well-known open-source campaigner Bruce Perens to launch a public key crypto company.
A new analysis by Evan Hatch brings to light facts that correlate Len’s life with that of Nakamoto.
Len joined Network Associates to assist in developing PGP encryption, which is essential to Bitcoin, when the firm failed in the wake of the Dot-com Bubble. Len met a number of significant crypto pioneers while working on the PGP7 release in 2001 and establishing cooperative testing for OpenPGP implementations.
Along with working with Phil Zimmerman, the creator of PGP, Len also contributed to the GNU Privacy Guard version of OpenPGP and worked on a new cryptographic system.
Can Len Be The Real Satoshi Nakamoto?
While the real identity of Nakamoto is still all speculative, some facts about Len’s life coincide with those of the Bitcoin creators, making the resemblance uncanny.
Sassaman studied electrical engineering for his doctorate at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium at the time of his death. At thirty-one, he unfortunately took his own life on July 3, 2011.
But just parallel to this, Nakamoto also stopped speaking two months before Sassaman passed away. Nakamoto’s last message to the world hinted that he had moved on in his life and wanted to focus on other things.
Even today, Block 138725 on the Bitcoin blockchain contains a tribute dedicated to Sassaman.
Interestingly, wallets connected to Satoshi contain about 1.1 million Bitcoin, which is worth about $67 billion in today’s currency. However, none of this can be retrieved or used anymore.