In July 2011, Leonard Harris “Len” Sassaman decided to take his own life. He was 31 years old, but he had already had a long battle with depression. Those who knew him explain that Len was “a true Cypherpunk: brilliant, irreverent and idealistic in equal parts.” A renowned and beloved cryptography expert, co-founder of the CodeCon conference with Bram Cohen.
His legacy was immortalized a few weeks after his suicide. In block 138,725 of the Bitcoin network a tribute to Len Sassaman was inscribed in ASCII. A small inscription in his honor that has since been seen as an argument to justify that this technologist born in Pennsylvania and who later moved to Silicon Valley is the person behind Satoshi Nakatomo, creator of Bitcoin.
HBO’s documentary ‘Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery’ promised to solve the mystery of who Satoshi Nakamoto really was, but the result has not been convincing enough. We continue as before, with many theories and possibilities but no confirmation.
Len Sassaman, the candidate who will never be able to return
The real probability that Len Sassaman was Satoshi is also in doubt. It’s just another theorybut unlike the rest, there are several components that make it special. Due to its origin far from the current crypto world; because it is a profile focused on the technical and philosophical aspects of Bitcoin and because it is no longer with us, which would partly justify why Satoshi Nakamoto’s profile stopped its activity.
In a Polymarket survey before the HBO documentary, 68% of participants indicated that Len Sassaman was going to be the person named Satoshi, but as the date approached, that possibility decreased.
According to Coinmarketcap, the most curious thing is that Satoshi Nakamoto became inactive two months after Sassaman’s death. Other details that the suicide note contained 24 random wordswhich is reminiscent of the 24-word seed phrases used for the 256-bit cryptographic security in bitcoin.
Sassaman contributed to projects such as Pretty Good Privacy and GNU Privacy Guard and assisted in the development of the TCP/IP protocol. But it is also considered one of the first users in the world of Bitcoinas he worked alongside Hal Finney, who in 2009 became the first recipient of a transaction on the Bitcoin network and is another of the historical candidates to be the creator of Bitcoin.
The figure of Len Sassaman is ideal as Satoshi, as it coincides with the ideal of a project with a strong cryptographic component. It is combined with an anonymous and private profile as the origin. It would also justify why Satoshi’s account continues to hold so much unused money.
However, Meredith L. Patterson, journalist, software engineer and Sassaman’s wife, has always denied this possibility. “The best argument against this theory is the rookie mistakes in the original design of the Bitcoin protocol, such as the ability to send BTC directly to an IP address,” Patterson argued.
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Another argument in favor of Sassaman as a possible creator of Bitcoin is given by Justin Newton, CEO of Netki and friend of Sassaman. He explains that, despite not having direct knowledge, he also believes that this theory is plausible.
“Len went from being passive, shy and reserved to passionate and deeply committed,” he describes. In one of his many calls, he explains that Sassaman defended “that the networks themselves should be completely open and that controls had to be established at other layers, either with technology, whenever possible, or with laws, when absolutely necessary.” Interestingly, Sassaman himself was an open critic of Bitcoin.
There has been a lot of speculation about Satoshi Nakamoto and it is expected to continue for quite some time. There is no data to clarify or justify that Sassaman was Satoshi, but if there is one thing it is that he matches the profile that many would like him to be.
Imagen | Alexander Klink
In WorldOfSoftware | The creator of Bitcoin disappeared 13 years ago. Now your account has just received a million-dollar transfer
