The identity of the Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto has been surrounded by mystery and is among the most tantalizing enigmas of our century. The real name (and gender) of this mysterious genius who gave the world digital gold has remained undisclosed, causing endless speculation, debates, and seen multiple fruitless investigations so far.
However, the creators of a new HBO documentary whose release is expected to happen next week, hinted that they have managed or at least come really close to solving that mystery of the 21 century.
HBO Documentary Expected to Reveal Satoshi’s identity
The recently announced release of the documentary next week has gained the attention of the global cryptocurrency community. HBO has been careful while making promotional announcements and have not made any statements, promising definitive answers. Still, the crypto community has been abuzz with expectations.
According to the Polymarket service, which accepts bets on the outcomes of various approaching events, the majority of the bet makers have already chosen who they believe to be the real Satoshi named in the documentary – it is a renowned cypherpunk named Len Sassaman. Alas, he could not be filmed due to this tragic death in 2011.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s Groundbreaking Impact
While Nakamoto created Bitcoin, the crypto community’s curiosity about him goes far beyond that fact. Whoever he is or, maybe, was – he holds/held the private keys to more than 1 million Bitcoin. That is worth billions of dollars these days. Besides, his vision shaped a global movement that expands beyond cryptocurrency. His invention – Bitcoin – gave inspiration to a decentralized tech revolution, which led to the creation of other cryptos and blockchain platforms: Ethereum, first of all, with all its smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), etc.
After Nakamoto’s disappearance from the public space in late 2011, Bitcoin was left in the hands of the keen community which continued to work on it without the initial creator. By now, Bitcoin has grown into a market worth more than $1 trillion, Nakamoto’s real identity remains a mystery which crypto users are eager to solve to see it solved for them.
Len Sassaman: The Main “Suspect”
Recently, the name of Len Sassaman gained attention as a most likely candidate for Satoshi. He was famous within the cypherpunk community as an outstanding cryptographer, who advocated for privacy, anonymity on the Internet, encryption, and Internet security. He was respected even by peers. However, in 2011 a tragic suicide ended his life at the age of 31. It happened shortly after Satoshi Nakamoto left his last message on the BitcoinTalk forum.
What makes Sassaman a perfect “suspect” is his deep involvement in the cypherpunk movement and his deep understanding of cryptography. His core interests somewhat matched the ideals that underpin Bitcoin: financial privacy, decentralization, independence from banks and from the traditional financial system. Besides, Sassaman closely worked with Hal Finney – another likely candidate for being Satoshi, who became known as the recipient of the first-ever Bitcoin transfer from Satoshi. Still, nothing of the above directly proves that Sassaman indeed created Bitcoin.
Some More Satoshi Candidates
While Sassaman is the frontrunner in the rumors and guesses about who Satoshi was in real life, he is not the only candidate who is proposed to be Nakamoto. Several other individuals from the world of software creation and cryptography have been named over the years and bet on by Polymarket users.
Hal Finney. He is believed to have been Satoshi by many. Alas, he passed away in 2014 from ALS. He was a computer scientist, a pioneer of cryptography and one of the very first Bitcoin adopters. In 2009, he received the very first Bitcoin transaction sent to him by Nakamoto himself. When asked before his death about being Satoshi, Finney denied it.
Another frequently mentioned figure in this regard was Nick Szabo. Another computer scientist and cryptographer who created “bit gold” in the 1990s. That was a digital currency concept that closely resembled Bitcoin. Bit gold also used cryptographic proof-of-work and decentralized trust, similar to Bitcoin.
While he also denied being Satoshi, the linguistic analysis of his writing style brought up striking similarities to that of the Bitcoin white paper. Szabo is now 60 years old.
Yet another prominent figure from the world of cypherpunk that is believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto by many is Adam Back – a renowned cryptographer and founder of Blockstream and the creator of the Bitcoin Lightning network for micropayments in BTC.
Before Bitcoin appeared, Back also invented Hashcash – a proof-of-work-based system for limiting email spam, which was cited by Nakamoto in the Bitcoin white paper. He is also known to have exchanged several emails regarding Bitcoin before its launch with Satoshi before the latter stepped down and disappeared.
Still, Back continues to deny creating Bitcoin and in a recent tweet he said that Satoshi would not have spoken to the film makers, therefore, the community will hardly ever know who Nakamoto was in reality and whether he is still alive.
Still, despite this yet unsolved mystery, many do not care about Satoshi’s real identity. For them, it is the impact of Bitcoin on the world that matters a lot and the impact it still may have on the global financial and banking systems.
