I noticed an interesting story in the crypto community. HBO is releasing a documentary in October, and it’s supposedly going to reveal the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. It might just be a marketing ploy, but prediction markets like Polymarket have already caught fire with speculation.

The most popular candidate among cryptographers and researchers is Nick Szabo. The guy is clearly not ordinary: he graduated from the University of Washington with a degree in computer science in 1989, and then went on to earn a doctorate in law. In 1994, Nick Szabo introduced the concept of smart contracts—something truly revolutionary for that time. It was him who tried to incorporate legal justification into digital code.

But here’s what’s really interesting. In 1998, Nick Szabo proposed something called bit gold—in essence, a digital currency without intermediaries that solved the double-spending problem through proof-of-work. Sounds familiar? Because it’s exactly like Bitcoin, except Szabo proposed it 10 years before Satoshi published the white paper in October 2008.

The main arguments in favor of the idea that Nick Szabo is Satoshi are these. First—bit gold really is very similar to Bitcoin, but a bit more rough around the edges. If Szabo had 10 years to polish the concept, why wouldn’t he create a final version? Second—his clear technical skills and his contributions to cryptography since the early 1990s. The guy definitely has the brains for a project like that.

There are also smaller details. The writing styles of Nick Szabo and Satoshi are supposedly similar. Both reference the economist Carl Menger. Both are obsessed with privacy. And most telling of all—Nick Szabo constantly denies that he is Satoshi, which sets him apart from other candidates who actively promote themselves.

Right now on Polymarket, the odds for Nick Szabo are in double digits, while the other candidates remain in single digits. The Satoshi story teaches us one thing: those who openly claim that it’s them are almost certainly not.