Did you catch the HBO documentary story about Satoshi Nakamoto? A few years ago, there was a lot of speculation about who the Bitcoin creator could be. And one person kept appearing: Len Sassaman, a deceased cryptographer from the Cypherpunk movement.

What fascinates me about this is the combination of details that make Len Sassaman suspicious—at least for bettors on Polymarket. When Cullen Hoback announced his documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery," suddenly 44.5% of bettors wagered on Sassaman. But who was this guy anyway?

Len Sassaman was no stranger in the crypto scene. He was an absolute genius in cryptography, moving to San Francisco as a teenager and quickly becoming part of the Cypherpunk community. He studied under David Chaum—the "Godfather" of modern cryptography—and worked on legendary software like PGP and GNU Privacy Guard. With his wife Meredith Patterson, he even founded a startup.

But here’s where it gets dark: Sassaman suffered from depression since youth and took his own life in 2011. He was only 31 years old. Interestingly, a tribute to him was inscribed in Block 138725 of the Bitcoin blockchain—"a friend, a kind soul, and a cunning tactician."

Now for the exciting part: the timing is suspicious. Nakamoto sent his last email on April 23, 2011—exactly two months before Len Sassaman died. Nakamoto wrote that he had other things on his mind and was turning to other projects. Then he disappeared.

The technical connections are also intriguing. Sassaman and Hal Finney—another candidate—worked together at Network Associates on PGP. Finney was later the first to collaborate with Nakamoto on Bitcoin and operated the first node. Both were experts in remailer technology, a precursor to Bitcoin. Len Sassaman even worked on Pynchon Gate, an evolution of that technology. He focused on the Byzantine fault problem—precisely the problem Nakamoto later solved with the blockchain.

Another point: Sassaman lived in Belgium when Bitcoin was developed. Nakamoto’s writings contain British English quirks like "bloody difficult" or "maths." The Genesis Block quotes a headline from The Times—a British newspaper.

But here’s the reality: Meredith Patterson, Sassaman’s widow, stated clearly in 2021 that her late husband, to the best of her knowledge, was not Satoshi Nakamoto. And that’s probably the best source you can have.

Ultimately, the question remains open. HBO never officially confirmed that Len Sassaman was Nakamoto—and that will probably stay that way. But the speculation around Sassaman shows how deep the Cypherpunk roots of Bitcoin go and how closely intertwined the early crypto community was.