Len Sassaman and Satoshi | Hacker News Reader

Len Sassaman and Satoshi

leung-btc.medium.com

97 pointscomputerlab70 comments

My money (er, bitcoin) is on Hal Finney. I knew Hal from occupying the dorm room next to mine at Caltech. Being Satoshi is just the kind of elaborate prank Hal would have loved. Besides, I've never met anyone as smart as Hal, and I've met a lot of smart people.

In his last interview (when he could no longer speak) he was asked if he was Satoshi, and he just grinned.

As for where the missing bitcoins are, my bitcoin is placed on the wallet just being thrown out with an old computer, discarded on a floppy disk, etc.

Why do you think Hal would have been Satoshi but then also been the first developer using his real name?

A prank. Just think, a Japanese pseudonym that used british spelling. Hal loved a good prank. I also don't recall him being prideful in the way of ensuring he received credit for things.

Perhaps he didn't really care to maintain the anonymity, but still wanted plausible deniability over the ownership of his fortune

I thought that Hal denied being Satoshi in his final days?

My recollection of his last interview is he didn't respond other than grinning.

Would you please either cite the source for your recollection or retract it? Hal had always denied being bitcoin's author:

   "he confirmed that he had corresponded with Bitcoin's creator, but denied any connection to the invention of Bitcoin"[1]

Hal's family has had to endure threats of violence because people surmise they have control over millions of bitcoins. To fuel that speculation puts a very large, very violent target on their back. They deserve more respect -- especially because of the selfless contributions Hal made to cryptography and the cypherpunk movement.

[1] >In the mean time, I emailed Finney a few times. When I didn't hear back--he's been mostly absent from the Internet as his paralysis deepens--I called his wife, Fran, who now works as Finney's full-time caregiver. She explained her husband's medical situation, and patiently relayed my questions to him. Using his eyebrows and eye movements, as she described to me over the phone, he confirmed that he had corresponded with Bitcoin's creator, but denied any connection to the invention of Bitcoin or the Dorian Nakamoto Newsweek had named, just as he would when I visited a week later. "For all Hal knew, Satoshi Nakamoto could have been next door, or he could have been in Japan," Fran said.

source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/03/25/satosh...

It's like people always imagine aliens would appear in the middle of NYC.

Maybe Satoshi is a South African student in Glasgow, who moved back with his family to Germany and is shaking his head at BTC's evolution now that he grew up beyond "bruh banks bad" ?

He did an overly inefficient distributed linked list, which is replicated thousands of times by smaller projects to yield exactly the same value (the "bruh banks bad" value)

Banks are bad

Banks are like tigers: they eat gazelles and they sleep under the sun.

I mean, banks are just banks, what's bad maybe is people expecting them to do more than store your wealth for a fee ?

This is well trodden ground but the genesis block message plus the distinctly British style of his writing convinces me that Satoshi has some connection with the UK.

The British style is simply using the words flat, maths, etc. I wouldn't underestimate Hal's ability to do such an easy misdirection. I've only spent a few days in Britain before starting to talk like that.

Using word frequency analysis to determine authorship goes back at least to the 1970s.

But, in his announcement he spelt "decentralized". Which isn't the British way.

When I write code or here on HN, I try to use Americanisms... But when writing longer form or official things, I use British English.

I doubt I'm the only one.

Actually this is a common misconception. BrE allows either -ise or -ize, whereas AmE only permits -ize. The -ize spelling in BrE is called "oxford spelling" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxford_spelling

Please take a look at Bitcoin 0.1 code and at Hal Finney RPOW code.

Hal Finney's RPOW - professional UNIX-style C code, with code organized into client/server/common, clearly separated functions, etc.

Bitcoin 0.1: Win32 GUI C++ code, no separation between core and GUI. No CLI, no RPC API, only Windows GUI. No directories, just a bunch of files.

Do you think Hal Finney would unlearn everything he knew about code organization to develop his Magnum Opus? Something which should become world currency, runs only on Windows and cannot be automated?

It‘s a pretty strong case for Len to be Satoshi, admittedly. And it would explain the mysterious silence from Satoshi Nakamoto - he's dead.

Of course one could argue that Satoshi is alive and choses to be silent on purpose, since being worth tens of billions of dollars might come with some strings attached, ie kidnappings, black mail, extortions etc.

But one would have to have a rather strong personality to not give in and become a public and admired figure.

Then again, cypherpunks might just be that breed...

I've never bought the argument about kidnappings etc, with billions of dollars you can hire people with lots of guns

I think the problem is that if you are born into a family of billionaires, it comes with connections and you probably just kinda had people with guns since generations so you just keep it up

But when you suddenly become a billionaire, what do you do? Ring up some private security company? You would need to trust them not to screw you over. It's kinda boils down to you not being able to trust anyone, not even governments that might consider you a criminal.

There are plenty of publicly traded large security companies. They may not be the absolute best, but they're not going to screw you over.

I would feel pretty comfortable calling G4S, Securitas, GardaWorld, DynCorp, Brinks, Control Risks, etc.

Alternative, you call the whitest of white shoe law firms and retain them to find a good security firm for you.

It's worth mentioning that those 10s of billions have never been touched.

This is a very strong case for Len to be Satoshi.

No, it's not.

Len is a good candidate, but here's one problem: Satoshi spoke up in 2014 on a long-dormant account[1] to say "I am not Dorian Nakamoto." This was a response to a Newsweek article that claimed to have found his identity.

So maybe someone hacked that account-- but then, why didn't we get any more Satoshi activity? Or maybe Len (who took his own life in 2011) isn't Satoshi after all!

[1] http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topic/listForContributor...

Yes, 2014 in fact is when Hal Finney died, a few months after that post. He is perhaps the strongest candidate for Satoshi, and if so we'll probably never know.

Maybe if the cryonics thing works out, but that's a long shot.

Thats a serious sci-fi plot right there. Man cryonically freezes himself after inventing a cryptocurrency, wakes up in the far future the richest man in the world.

Guessing you haven't seen Futurama. Not the same exact plot of course, but I immediately thought of it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fishful_of_Dollars

Yes I've seen that episode. The crypto/most wealthy man in the world thing would be a variation of that.

They'd also be the typical Human Popsicle tropes about how horrified he'd be by how his creation was used.

Interesting to wonder if he simply memorized the keys before being frozen, hoping that he could remember them if he were ever resuscitated.

Bitcoin is already pretty freaking sci-fi-plottish.

The whole Satoshi mythology is to me one of the greatest modern mysteries.

It's also possible Satoshi gave Finney access to that email and more just in case there's something important enough, I guess.

Satoshi's email was hacked and that wasn't signed with PGP

I think the consensus is that the statement wasn't real

Satoshi never signed mailing list posts, forum posts, any private emails that we have access to or even the early Bitcoin code releases

I don't know how this became the burden to prove that writing is from Satoshi since none of the well-known Satoshi writing meets it

Satoshi's silence period began at the same time that Gavin Andressen went to the CIA (at the CIA's invitation) to present about Bitcoin. It is widely assumed that it was caused by Andressen's decision to accept the invite.

Just because Satoshi went silent for a while doesn't mean that he/they are dead.

If it was Gavin Andressen then why the hell did he support the claims that Craig Wright is Satoshi initially?

If it was Andressen, why wouldn't he support the claim that Satoshi is someone besides himself?

Why would he even have met with him?

> It‘s a pretty strong case for Len to be Satoshi, admittedly. And it would explain the mysterious silence from Satoshi Nakamoto - he's dead.

I think it's pretty likely that the person (or people) who went by Satoshi is dead, and probably died before their Bitcoin hoard was worth much.

If not, you'd have to explain why someone is giving up the opportunity to never have to work for someone else to support themselves ever again. And those are less believable to me: e.g. 1) already having so much FU money they're secure in their lifestyle w/o the Bitcoin, 2) being either extremely ascetic or happy to work for someone else to support themselves, 3) deliberately choosing to destroy it for some reason, 4) losing the all keys in an accident (more understandable for a rando playing around than the creator), etc.

I mean they probably mined other Bitcoin along the way. I’m pretty sure they could have cashed in at points without touching those earlier addresses.

Pretty sure Len thought Bitcoin was a profound abortion of an idea:

https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/77358901774917632

> Right; why would they [mention Bitcoin in the cypherpunk panel on digital currencies], though? Bitcoin pretty much fails as a cypherpunk protocol.

https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/81121594373709825

> That only works if you want to leave the inflated value of Bitcoin on the table; otherwise you must cash out before the crash.

https://twitter.com/lensassaman/status/80748374386679808

> Oh, where's #infoanarchy when you need it? I mean, we could do a serious take and do BitCoin right, you know. (P.S.: CloudCoin™)

Also, Len was a Unix guy, and whoever wrote Bitcoin was a Windows programmer, though not an incompetent one.

(And, as pointed out in other comments below, Satoshi came out of his seclusion in 02014, three years after Len killed himself, writing only one short email, to rebut Newsweek's article claiming he was Dorian Nakamoto.)

None of those tweets point to anything close to a "profound abortion of an idea" - in fact, I think these are almost supporting the claim. "we could do BitCoin right" and "it fails as a cypherpunk protocol" could be simple self-critiques or misdirections or even sly jokes. Saying bitcoin has an inflated value also doesn't mean this person didn't create it. Didn't Elon just recently say Tesla is way overvalued?

The Unix vs Windows argument is pretty silly. And as mentioned in other comments, the 2014 email is generally regarded as not legitimate.

I never heard Len say anything positive about Bitcoin. He devoted his life to guaranteeing people privacy; Bitcoin makes all transactions permanently public. If he'd managed to design a Bitcoin it would be something like Mimblewimble.

> The Unix vs Windows argument is pretty silly.

That doesn't amount to a counterargument. POSIX C++ and Win32 C++ have very distinctly different styles, and Satoshi's Bitcoin codebase is a lot more similar to the latter.

I'd argue that none of these are mutually exclusive with Satoshi's own beliefs.

Satoshi seemed to think BTC was getting too much attention too fast. They were unhappy about WikiLeaks accepting it thinking it was far too premature for that.

They also were clear that it did NOT yet provide full anonymity. The whitepaper admits that and Satoshi advised precautions like using Tor and not reusing wallets until there was better privacy. They never claimed it was mature for privacy use cases.

That's true about Windows. And that's why I believe Paul Le Roux is Satoshi.

> whoever wrote Bitcoin was a Windows programmer, though not an incompetent one.

It's worth pointing out that code of the first version was organized in a ridiculous way, even pro Windows programmers do not dump everything into one directory. So a widespread opinion is that it was written by an amateur without professional programming experience, albeit extremely bright, as organization aside, code worked very well.

I actually met Len in 2010/2011 when he was visiting the Dartmouth cs dept! We talked about noodlers being an excellent fountain pen ink and some stuff around functional programming that overlap with the language base security ideas Sergey Bratus and Meredith Patterson went on to popularize.

I also have a distinct memory that he had a very well decorated walking cane.

Edit: I do think that this post, while having valid circumstantial evidence, is at best circumstantial. And it’s more valuable to celebrate those who have passed by way of recognizing the achievements we can genuinely attribute to them

Edit edit: http://langsec.org/

I worked with him at PGP in 2000.

Do you have any opinion about whether he could be Satoshi?

Dunno, Len was a crazy smart dude, and total crypto geek. That said, I didn't work with him much, I was just handed off to his project for a few weeks while waiting for one of mine to ramp back up.

I guess the best way to sum it up is that if he was Satoshi, i wouldnt be shocked.

Also, sux hes gone.

Just checked in with a coworker/friend who was there with me. He also wouldn’t be surprised if Len was satoshi

wtf was this downvoted for?

This article has several inaccuracies

1) "blockchain inventor David Chaum"

Chaum developed methods to do blinded ecash, there's nothing "blockchain" about a central database checking blinded signatures for double spends.

D. Bayer, S. Haber, W.S. Stornetta, and N. Szabo were working on methods of how to distribute property titles and timestamp data to reduce trust requirements of the data through out time.

Chaum's design never solved the problem of how to create bits that people can inherently reason about how much they trust them as money/scarcity. He was ardent about turning fiat currencies into digital tokens -- drastically different than making bits into money.

2) Does it make much sense for Bitcoin's author to be, as the article claims, highly experienced with asymmetric cryptography but also soliciting advice from "real cryptographers" on the cryptography mailing list? Sassaman's archived site doesn't show much cryptography work (but much cypherpunk work)

3) "Len joined Network Associates to help develop the PGP encryption central to Bitcoin"

The curves used in bitcoin's -- and very limited amount of -- cryptography aren't used in PGP.

4) "the remailer technology that was a precursor to Bitcoin."

Much of this article seems to be straining to make connections. Remailers don't have anything to do with Bitcoin. If anything remailers are the precursors to Tor / i2P. Identification of bitcoin nodes in the early version of bitcoin code was as shockingly easy as... joining an IRC channel.

Having known Len I'd be surprised if he was Satoshi, but its possible as some have speculated that Satoshi was a collaboration from a number of people then I could definitely see him being a part/organizer of it.

Why would it surprise you if he was Satoshi?

Why would you be surprised if he was Satoshi, but seemingly not so surprised if he organized a collective Satoshi?

My estimate is that he wouldn't have been able to produce the Bitcoin whitepaper solo but I think he could have brought together or participated with other people in it.

> But with Craig Wright fraudulently claiming credit and invoking a copyright claim to take down the Bitcoin whitepaper, we’re forced to revisit the topic and recenter the discussion around the Cypherpunks who actually built Bitcoin.

No, we're not. We can dismiss the fraudulent claims of Craig Wright without being "forced" to do anything else.

If that's the case why has Craig continued to gain prominence and have more and more sway over BTC? Bitcion SV is worth $4B now. He's been able to monopolize the mindshare on Satoshi and misdirect the narrative.

BSV is a small cryptocurrency, the market cap is smaller than the joke coin Dogecoin. $4B is less than half of a percent of the market cap of Bitcoin.

Furthermore, an investment in BSV isn't necessarily a validation of Craig Wright's claims.

It's the 23rd largest cryptocurrency. It's not especially small and you are comparing it to a crypto currently in the 14th spot, meme or not.

It was in the top 10 only a few months ago. The trend is that it's going away.

A quick look at Len's public Twitter discussions of Bitcoin makes this seem unlikely. Yes, yes, long con, deep cover, etcetera, not totally impossible. But still.

https://twitter.com/search?q=bitcoin%20from%3Alensassaman

I felt a tinge of sadness reading this. Len may or may not be Satoshi, and the article makes a strong case that he may be, after all. But it's really sad to lose such extraordinary people to mental health related issues, especially when we can do much better, with little effort.

It’s kind of hard to believe that given the amount and technical forensic evidence that must have been left by Satoshi we don’t know who they are.

Coding style and mannerism. Windows, Mac, Linux? IP addresses or user agent logged anywhere (mailing list)? Comment structure and style. Git / SVN commits. English writing style and mannerism. Digital fingerprints.

Surely there must be a technical trail to investigate.

> Surely there must a technical trail to investigate.

The probably is, but I'm guessing the really definitive records would probably require a subpoena to obtain (e.g. business records of the domain registrar or hosting company).

Pretty awesome article. Certainly as good as any other 'proof' I've seen.

That's an understatement if you ask me. This seems much better than any other Satoshi theory I've seen.

I've always thought the best way to verify a Satoshi candidate would be to compare coding style. Presumably this guy has some open source code we can look at. Has anyone done a comparison?

I got a kick out of a quote Sassaman had in his Orkut profile, circa 2005:

"Some day, I will invent a machine that turns all marxists into ants. Then, we will all be happy."

My Bitcoin is on the government(s) and their security agencies. Satoshi is just a moniker they concocted in order to hide the fact that this is a government project through and through to be able to move fund around into and out of various economies and destabilize weaker ones. Also as a result of beng there in the beginning they have a huge amount of currency to do stuff with that will never be accounted for. Only reason it makes sense in our world as to why this stuff has not yet been banned and why Satoshi's identity is so well hidden.

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