An HBO documentary is promising to reveal the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin BTC +1.40% . According to speculation on the decentralized betting market Polymarket, the three most likely candidates to be named are OG cypherpunk cryptographers Adam Back, Nick Szabo and Len Sassaman. 

Traders have even begun to create memecoins commemorating these titans of privacy-preserving cryptography, looking to capitalize on the possible boost of visibility into their work. For instance, on Monday, traders spun up memecoins with the tickers LEN as well as ODIN and SASHA, reportedly in honor of the late coder’s cats. 

The HBO documentary, titled "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” is not the first time mainstream media has attempted to out Bitcoin’s creator, who stepped back from the project in December 2010 when it began to garner attention through its association with WikiLeaks. 

Perhaps the most infamous example occurred in 2014 when Newsweek erroneously ran a story linking the California-based physicist Dorian Nakamoto to Bitcoin. To no one’s surprise, Dorian-theme memecoins have been launched on Arbitrum, Ethereum and Solana.

A year later, in 2015, Gizmodo and Wired identified Australian computer scientist Craig Steven Wright as Satoshi, a perch he continued to claim until a U.K. court said in no uncertain terms that CSW did not create Bitcoin. 

Wright's late colleague David Kleiman has also been considered by some to be involved in Bitcoin's creation, with people pointing to the similarities between his and Nakamoto's coding style as evidence. Additionally, the computer security expert's surviving brother, Ira Kleiman, has made a claim to some $70 billion worth of bitcoin in the so-called Tulip Trust at the center of a long legal battle with Wright and was awarded $100 million in damages by a Florida court.

Notably, however, neither Ira Kleiman nor Wright have been able to sign a transaction that would prove either have control over said coins. The Kleiman theory was also weakened during Wright's recent trial, which found much of the evidence he or Kleiman were involved in Bitcoin's creation was doctored.

While many Bitcoiners are largely uninterested in pursuing the question of Bitcoin’s creator (or creators), several people have said in recent days that if it turns out Satoshi can be confirmed deceased, it would be a bullish catalyst for the cryptocurrency — as it would mean that the trove over 1 million bitcoins he mined would remain inaccessible. 

Over the years, a number of potential candidates have been suggested. In addition to Sassaman, Back and Szabo, people have at times variously suggested the first Bitcoin user besides Satoshi, Hal Finney, could have created the blockchain. 

Almost all of the main suspects were members of the Cryptography Mailing List and worked on projects looking to expand autonomy through internet technologies. Szabo, for instance, was the first person to suggest tools like smart contracts, which are now foundational to decentralized blockchain-based applications. 

Although the world doesn’t (yet) know the real identity of Satoshi, Bitcoin’s creator did leave behind a trove of writings in leaked emails, public forum posts and technical documentation. Several sleuths have attempted to analyze his grammar, word choices and timestamps of these posts to match against the writing style of others. 

Satoshi, for instance, often, though not always, wrote using British English spelling and would commonly put two spaces behind each period — though it’s unclear if this was an attempt to conceal his tracks. 

In 2021, Evan Leung Hatch wrote a long article on Medium where he put forward his theory that Len Sassaman, a coder who moved from Pennsylvania to San Francisco, was Satoshi. Sassaman committed suicide in 2011 at the age of 31. 

In addition to the timing of Sassaman’s suicide shortly after Satoshi announced his departure from Bitcoin development, Leung Hatch noted Sassaman helped create PGP encryption and remailers, which reportedly inspired Bitcoin.

In addition to being steeped in Cypherpunk culture, Sassaman was also closely associated with the “Godfather of Cryptography” and inventor of e-cash, David Chaum, one of Satoshi’s known inspirations. Leung Hatch also compared Sassaman’s surviving tweets and code contributions to Satoshi’s work.

However, Sassaman’s widow, Meredith L. Patterson, has said on numerous occasions that she does not believe Sassaman created Bitcoin. 

Back is one of only 10 individuals cited in the original Bitcoin whitepaper, leading some to suggest that he created Bitcoin. Indeed, prior to founding Bitcoin development company Blockstream, Back was primarily known for inventing the proof-of-work algorithm that underlays the first blockchain. 

Some suggest that Back created Blockstream, which builds Bitcoin scaling solutions and other tools, as a way to capitalize on his invention without having to sell Satoshi’s coins, which have never moved. 

He was also one of the first two people to form a correspondence with Satoshi. 

Like other figures accused of being Satoshi, Back has repeatedly denied the claim. That includes most recently on Monday. Further, Back has argued in the past that even if the identity were known, it’d be better to keep it a mystery. 

“Because Bitcoin is more like digital gold, you wouldn’t want gold to have a founder. For Bitcoin to keep a commodity-like perception, I think it’s a very good thing that Satoshi stays out of the public,” he said in 2019.

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