Recently, HBO released a documentary that allegedly reveals the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto. I immediately thought of how, every year, a new theory appears about who was behind the creation of Bitcoin. Usually, the same suspects are mentioned—Hal Finney, Dorian Nakamoto, Nick Szabo, Adam Back. But lately, the name Lena Sassaman has been appearing more and more often on prediction sites. Honestly, when I first read about him, I realized that this name deserves far more attention than it’s getting.

Lena Sassaman was a real person—a true cyberpunk in the deepest sense of the word. Not just an internet activist, but someone who devoted his life to protecting privacy through cryptography. Every Bitcoin node contains a eulogy, and it is dedicated to him—almost as if the blockchain itself wanted to preserve his memory.

To understand why Lena is even considered a possible creator of Bitcoin, you need to trace his path. The guy grew up in a small town in Pennsylvania, but by age 18, he had joined the IETF—a group that was creating the foundational internet protocols, including TCP/IP. Imagine: still a teenager, yet already working on the infrastructure of the entire network.

In 1999, Lena moved to the Bay Area—the epicenter of the cyberpunk movement. There he lived with Bram Cohen, the creator of BitTorrent. Bram developed a revolutionary P2P network called MojoNation, which used its own digital tokens to trade file storage. It was one of the first practical implementations of digital currency. What’s interesting is that the economic discussions about Mojo tokens are very similar to how Satoshi later reasoned about Bitcoin—both talked about positive feedback, where the growing number of users increases value.

But Lena Sassaman’s main specialty was completely different. He was one of the leading developers of remailer technology—specialized servers for anonymous message delivery. It was a direct predecessor to Bitcoin, even if few people realize it. Remailers worked on the principle of a distributed network, where encrypted messages were relayed between nodes, hiding the sender’s identity. The popular Mixmaster protocol that Lena worked on used exactly this kind of architecture.

Why does this matter? Because remailer operators were the first to realize the need for cryptocurrencies. When there’s no way to pay anonymously, you have to run services on your own account. That leads to problems with spam, DDoS attacks, and economic unviability. It was precisely from this pain that the first ideas about digital money were born. By the way, as early as 1994, Hal Finney proposed monetizing remailers using anonymous “coins.”

Lena Sassaman worked at Network Associates with Hal Finney on developing PGP—the cryptographic standard that became the foundation of modern information security. Finney was the second developer of PGP, and later became the first person to contribute code to Bitcoin after Satoshi. When Satoshi introduced Bitcoin, he directly referenced PGP, saying that Bitcoin should be for money what strong cryptography is for file security.

Lena also worked with Adam Back, who created HashCash—a proof-of-work system used to fight spam in remailers. Later, Satoshi used HashCash as the basis for Bitcoin mining. Both of them were co-authors of research papers and were connected through the PGP web of trust.

In 2004, Lena got his “dream job”—he became a researcher at COSIC (Research Group on Computer Security and Industrial Cryptography) in Leuven, Belgium. His academic supervisor was David Chaum, the legendary cryptographer often called “the father of digital currency.” Chaum invented digital cash in 1983 (blind signatures for untraceable payments), came up with the blockchain in 1982, and created DigiCash—the first electronic money system.

This is where the interesting part starts. Lena worked at COSIC specifically during the development of Bitcoin (2008–2010). His main project—Pynchon Gate, created with Bram Cohen—was an evolution of remailer technology. But as this project progressed, Lena increasingly focused on solving the Byzantine problem—one of the main obstacles in P2P networks. That was precisely the problem Satoshi solved with the blockchain.

Now, about the geography. Satoshi’s writing style is British English (“bloody difficult,” “flat,” “grey,” “maths”). The date format is /mm/yyyy. But he also mentioned the euro, not the pound. The genesis block contains a headline from The Times dated January 3, 2009—a newspaper circulated in the UK and Europe. In 2009, The Times was among the top ten newspapers in Belgium.

Lena Sassaman was American, but at the time he lived in Belgium. And—what a coincidence—he also used British English. Analyzing Satoshi’s commit history shows that he worked mostly at night, like a European “owl.” When Satoshi mentioned that mining difficulty increased “yesterday,” it made sense for someone in the European time zone, but not for an American.

Lena had a unique combination of skills required to create Bitcoin: public key infrastructure, academic cryptography, P2P network design, practical security architecture, and privacy technologies. He was deeply rooted in the cyberpunk community and had direct ties to key figures—Hal Finney, Adam Back, Bram Cohen, David Chaum. And most importantly, he had ideological conviction and a hacker spirit to build it anonymously.

When I look at Lena Sassaman’s life, I see many traits that match the image of Satoshi. Lena was a real cyberpunk—smart, fearless, idealistic. He took part in the development of PGP, remailers, and P2P networks. He worked with legendary figures in cryptography. He was in the right place at the right time.

But there is one tragic part to this story. On July 3, 2011, Lena Sassaman died by suicide at age 31. He had been battling depression since his teenage years, and later developed functional neurological disorders. He tried to hide how serious his condition was because he feared disappointing the people he loved. “Few people knew how far it had gotten,” his friend said.

This aligns with Satoshi’s disappearance. Two months before Lena’s death, Satoshi sent his final message: “I’ve moved on to other things, and I may no longer be around.” After 169 code commits and 539 publications, Satoshi simply vanished.

We’ve lost too many talented hackers to suicide—Aaron Schwartz, Jin Kan, Ilya Zhytomirskiy, James Dolan. All of them were victims of depression and shame. And Lena Sassaman was one of them.

I can’t bring myself to make a definitive claim about whether Lena was the creator of Bitcoin. Discussions about Satoshi’s identity often become absurd and unethical. But I’m certain of one thing: Lena Sassaman was one of the key people upon whose shoulders all of Bitcoin stands. His contributions to cryptography, P2P networks, remailers, and cyberpunk ideology were enormous.

In every Bitcoin node, his memory is preserved. It’s fitting—a person who devoted his life to defending freedom and privacy through technology is now immortalized in the very technology he may have helped create. His ideas live on, even though Lena Sassaman himself has long since passed.

What if he had been given the care and respect he deserved? What else would he have created? That’s a question each of us in the crypto community should ask ourselves. Because Lena Sassaman’s story is not just a detective mystery about Satoshi. It’s a reminder of how important it is to care for the mental health of the talented people building the future.