An HBO documentary premiering next week claims to reveal the true identity of Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Bettors on Polymarket are putting their money behind Len Sassaman being who the doc names.
A new HBO documentary from Emmy-nominated Cullen Hoback, director of Q: Into the Storm, which unveiled who was behind the QAnon Conspiracy Theory that dominated 4chan during the 2016 election, promises to name who Satoshi is.
Polymarket bettors think that Len Sassaman will be the person the documentary names.
Sassaman, who took is own life in 2011 after a battle with depression, is thought to be Satoshi because of his long history of published academic works regarding cryptography which often showed his strong ideological commitment to privacy and decentralization.
Adding to the speculation that Sassaman is Satoshi is the date of their respective disappearances. Sassaman took his life shortly after Satoshi stopped posting on BTCTalk, once the go-to destination for crypto discussions.
This isn’t the first attempt to unmask the pseudonymous creator of the world’s largest digital asset. In 2014, Newsweek claimed to have found Satoshi by scouring a database of naturalized U.S. citizens.
The publication tracked down Dorian Prentice Satoshi Nakamoto, who uses the preferred name Dorian S. Nakamoto.
Nakamoto lives in California and is a naturalized U.S. citizen of Japanese ancestry who matches most of the criteria of a potential Satoshi: a background in math as well as engineering, a reclusive nature, and an initial refusal to discuss the topic.
“I am no longer involved in that, and I cannot discuss it,” is how Nakamoto answered the Newsweek’s reporter’s initial questions, which garnered suspicion, followed by “It’s been turned over to other people. They are in charge of it now.”
Eventually, through lawyers, Nakamoto provided a flat denial that he was Satoshi.
“I did not create, invent or otherwise work on Bitcoin. I unconditionally deny the Newsweek report,” his counsel wrote.
Bettors are also giving thought to the big reveal possibly being someone else who’s not known in the crypto industry, putting a 32% chance on it being someone else or multiple people.
But another contract on the prediction market site is giving an 89% chance to Satoshi’s identity not being definitely proven in 2024.