#WeAreAllSatoshi Who was Len Sassaman, and why might HBO think he is Satoshi Nakamoto?
The late cryptographer and privacy advocate is in the spotlight because bettors on Polymarket think he may be identified as Satoshi Nakamoto.
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.
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.#WeAreAllSatoshi
