Satoshi

Satoshi Nakamoto

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Evan

Bitcoin

Deceased computer scientist and privacy advocate Len Sassaman is unexpectedly in the limelight as bettors speculate on the upcoming HBO documentary that advertises itself as revealing the identity of the inventor of Bitcoin. 
Whether he was the real Satoshi Nakamoto or not, Sassaman was an interesting character.
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 <img alt="Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?" src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-10/01925a09-7f20-72a2-9772-ef4ba1e71312" title="">
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 Source: HBO Documentaries
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<h2 id="a-troubled-prodigy">A troubled prodigy</h2>
Information about Leonard Harris Sassaman’s early life is scant. He attended a tony private school in his native state of Pennsylvania and was a cryptography wunderkind, according to multiple accounts.&nbsp;
While still in his late teens, Sassaman was drawn to San Francisco, California, and fell in&nbsp;<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/learn/what-is-cypherpunk" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">with the cypherpunks</a>&nbsp;— computer privacy pioneers who formed something of a movement in the late 1980s. He eventually went on to study under blockchain inventor David Chaum.&nbsp;
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 <img alt="Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?" src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-10/01925a08-ab66-7fd7-8df0-521e6dba65e8" title="">
 <figcaption style="text-align: center;">
 Source: Cursed Skittles
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Sassaman worked on such projects as the Pretty Good Privacy software and its update GNU Privacy Guard. He and his wife, computer scientist Meredith Patterson, founded the SaaS startup Osogato.
Sassaman was a doctoral&nbsp;<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://len.sassaman.net/" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">student</a>&nbsp;in electrical engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in Belgium when he died by suicide on July 3, 2011, at the age of 31. A memorial to him was encoded into Block 138725 of the Bitcoin blockchain.
<figure>
 <img alt="Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?" src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-10/01925a07-36fe-73a5-91ae-393427cc52c4" title="">
 <figcaption style="text-align: center;">
 Tribute to Len Sassaman on the Bitcoin blockchain. Source: Evan Leung Hatch
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Related:&nbsp;<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/polymarket-odds-hbo-will-out-satoshi-nakamoto-len-sassaman" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">Polymarket odds on who HBO will out as Satoshi Nakamoto favor Len Sassaman</a>
<h3 id="len-satoshi-nakamoto-sassaman">Len “Satoshi Nakamoto” Sassaman?</h3>
Sassaman and Patterson married in 2006, and they remained married until his death. Patterson has stated that she does not believe her husband was Satoshi Nakamoto.&nbsp;
<figure>
 <img alt="Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?" src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-10/01925a05-2ecf-7c2c-ad8c-62bfcd46373e" title="">
 <figcaption style="text-align: center;">
 Source: Meredith L. Patterson
 </figcaption>
</figure>
There is circumstantial evidence to support the theory that Sassaman was Nakamoto. Sassaman&nbsp;<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://len.sassaman.net/activities.html" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">left</a>&nbsp;behind an impressive list of publications, conference presentations and other academic activity — certainly enough to convince a nonspecialist of his capability of inventing Bitcoin. He was a member of the International Financial Cryptography Association and regularly spoke on financial cryptography.
<figure>
 <img alt="Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?" src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-10/01925a04-84b7-7cb3-a3ee-19b5c3c30315" title="">
 <figcaption style="text-align: center;">
 Source: Len Sassaman
 </figcaption>
</figure>
Among other circumstantial evidence, linguistic analysis&nbsp;<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39482504" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">provides</a>&nbsp;evidence that Sassaman could be Bitcoin’s inventor. <a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/news/satoshi-nakamoto-final-email-revisited-after-13-years" rel="" target="_self" text="null" title="https://cointelegraph.com/news/satoshi-nakamoto-final-email-revisited-after-13-years">Nakamoto went silent</a> two months before Sassaman’s death.&nbsp;
<figure>
 <img alt="Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?" src="https://s3.cointelegraph.com/uploads/2024-10/01925a00-fe2c-7f16-bed9-9cd9932b83c3" title="">
 <figcaption style="text-align: center;">
 Source: r/Bitcoin
 </figcaption>
</figure>
It is also noteworthy that no one has ever touched the $64 billion in Bitcoin&nbsp;(<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/bitcoin-price" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">BTC</a>) held by Nakamoto.&nbsp;
Magazine:&nbsp;<a data-ct-non-breakable="null" href="https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/satoshi-nakamoto-saves-world-in-nft-enabled-comic-book-series/" rel="null" target="null" text="null" title="null">Satoshi Nakamoto saves the world in an NFT-enabled comic book series</a>
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Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?

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