Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history | Hacker News Reader

Len Sassaman and Satoshi: A cypherpunk history

evanhatch.medium.com

252 pointsanonporridge155 comments

This is the response from Len's widow, Meredith, the last time a similar article was posted.

"It's a very well-researched and respectful article, but to the best of my knowledge, Len was not Satoshi. Worth reading for the history and the conclusions about mental health, though."

https://twitter.com/maradydd/status/1364325186372304904?t=yY...

I see this as the only rational response despite what the truth may be - can you imagine what would happen if Meredith acknowledged that Len was Satoshi Nakamoto?

I think it is also possible Len did't tell his wife about Satoshi, or alternatively asked that she never reveal Satoshi's true identity.

Satoshi came out of retirement in March 2014 to state that he was not Dorian Nakamoto, in the wake of a Newsweek article that falsely fingered the latter as Satoshi:

https://techcrunch.com/2014/03/06/satoshi-dorian/

I still think it was Hal Finney, who was in similar cypherpunk circles, created the first PoW system, received the first Bitcoin transaction, lived in the same town as Dorian Nakamoto for 10 years, was diagnosed with ALS about a year before Satoshi disappeared from Bitcoin development, died in August 2014, and was cryopreserved.

Finney must be considered a candidate, but considering that Sassaman took his own life after declining health, it's possible he may have put in place a succession plan for the ability to speak as Satoshi. Which could be separate from a succession plan for the Satoshi bitcoin hoard.

I think it's Nick Szabo. This is the article that convinced me: https://www.bitcoininsider.org/article/78686/i-designed-bitc...

Nah, it was Paul Le Roux https://www.wired.com/story/was-bitcoin-created-by-this-inte...

It was also probably not one person, but a group.

No, there is no reason to believe that.

There is reason to disbelieve it. The text analyses that have been done point at Satoshi being an individual.

Beyond that, if it were a group, they could have used someone as a spokesperson, but then you have a conspiracy of Satoshis, which is less possible. People, and especially geeks, like to talk. Someone would have tripped up by now, or moved bitcoin to fiat.

I agree that the group increases the risk of someone talking.

Would having a spokesperson that knew the identity of group members be a significant risk once this amount of money is involved? It would surely motivate serious threats to the spokesperson and their family?

By the time there was media interest in the identity of Satoshi, what would have been the value of their holding? Even then, whoever it is had to have held to their privacy even in advance of Bitcoin being worth incredible amounts of money.

> People, and especially geeks, like to talk

Is this backed up by anything?

Military / intelligence agency would not have tripped up.

Their motivation could be promoting democracy (they did make Tor for this purpose after all) and/or money for black ops.

We are all Satoshi Nakamotos.

Seems a bit far-fetched that the guy creating Bitcoin was also building up a global criminal empire. I’m sure Paul is a very talented guy, but there are only so many hours in a day. The article’s author even admits it’s a stretch by the end of the article.

I don't actually think he's Satoshi, I just think it's a great story.

John McAfee believed he tracked Satoshi down by analysing scientific papers

The author of the Mastermind said he looked into this and found no evidence for it.

It's 100% Nick Szabo with Hal Finney's help.

There's a non-zero chance that there's an NSA/IC employee who worked with them. Just based on the 1996 NSA paper "How to Make a Mint" and the potential that a government cryptocurrency is the ultimate solution for the inflation problem. Regulated stablecoins and/or a CBDC is the perfect way to disintermediate the banks from the dollar.

Source: speculation but I was around before bitcoin

The "inflation problem" is not perceived as a problem by hardly anyone (certainly not by a government agency) since central banks around the world have shown that they are very capable of keeping inflation near the intended target. And the idea that the NSA thinks a cryptocurrency would be a solution to such a non-existent problem is even more bizarre.

If it leads to stagflation it might be a real problem, that definitely worries central banks.

Several central banks around the world are working on digital currencies (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_bank_digital_currency). These would unlock more complex measures than giving people money and hope for the best to activate the economy (people might just save the money). Things like giving money to spend only in certain things, or for a limited time might come into effect then.

China’s CBDC already incorporates limited time balances, which were demonstrated with airdrops that had an expiration date. Flexa has partnered with various crypto projects and traditional business to offer crypto denominated coupons that have an expiration date as well.

I’ll admit I’m bullish on crypto generally, but not like this. It may work for CBDCs, in that it will drive spending over saving to some degree, but I suspect they will be treated like radioactive hot potatoes. What’s to stop someone from selling their CBCD and simply buying a competing stablecoin that isn’t going to expire? Inflation can be both unpredictable and devastating; yet, predictable sudden devastating devaluation via expiration dates is held up as an improvement over the non-CBDC stablecoin status quo?

> China’s CBDC already incorporates limited time balances

Citation?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-09/china-s-m...

Does anyone know what happened to Nick Szabo? He was very active on twitter (33,000 tweets, a bit crazy). He suddenly stopped tweeting from March 2nd.

Twitter isn't very functional for celebrities in the crypto space, due to the incessant spam. I bet he just got sick of it.

Being a developer, and following Nick Szabo over the years, I just don't think he's enough of a coder mindset to have created Bitcoin. Maybe he could have made it by teaming up with someone else (Not disparaging Nick Szabo, he's super smart but not a coder at heart)

> Satoshi came out of retirement in March 2014 to state that he was not Dorian Nakamoto

It appears far from certain that Satoshi posted that message on Ning in March of 2014:

Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto targeted by email hack https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/sep/09/bitcoin-c...

> An administrator of the semi-official Bitcoin Talk forum, Michael Marquardt, posted on Monday night that he had received an email from Nakamoto’s old address, “not spoofed in any way”, that made him certain the account was compromised.

> “It seems very likely that either Satoshi’s email account in particular or gmx.com in general was compromised, and the email account is now under the control of someone else,” Marquardt wrote under his username, theymos[1]. “Perhaps satoshin@gmx.com expired and then someone else registered it.”

> Shortly after Marquardt’s post, “Nakamoto” posted on the Ning messageboard, one of the first places the real Nakamoto announced the creation of Bitcoin. Using the same forum account to append a comment to that announcement, the apparent hacker warned Satoshi that his details were for sale.

[1] https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=775174.msg8734884#ms...

Hal Finney theory is too convoluted what with him talking to himself, a stark contrast in programming styles between Hal's organized manner and Satoshi's haphazard hacking, and no connection to the genesis block being a headline from UK/Europe and British lingo. A Nakamoto in town is just a common coincidence, there are 2,800 of them in the US.

Out of curiosity is there anything I can view to compare the two styles?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816037 as a starting point to poke around the difference in their commits

There is nothing more straightforward and less convoluted than some dude creating a sock puppet account to interact with in order to help launch a product.

> I still think it was Hal Finney

Finney didn't mix British and American English the way Satoshi did in his writing.

Finney was also an experienced and much better developer[0] than Satoshi[1]

[0] https://github.com/halfinney/bitcoin/commit/dc411b51e0a3cffc...

[1] https://github.com/Maguines/Bitcoin-v0.1/blob/master/bitcoin...

Nothing in that PR showed he was a much better developer, he just implemented an optimization he found in a book. Contrary to the medium post, Satoshi's code was fairly clean for a first release. The omission of unit tests just shows the uncertainty Satoshi had about the project (why make tests for something that hasn't found adoption?).

Because TDD is dumb and actual hacking and development doesn't revolve around unit testing?

"Eschew flamebait. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Besides the points others have made here, iirc Finney explicitly denied it. (Same for Szabo.) He didn't have to -- a Glomar response would be perfectly reasonable whether or not you are Satoshi.

I'd take the explicit answer of someone not known to be a liar as the first piece of evidence to mention, not an "oh by the way" far down in the list.

"I hesitate to speculate about Satoshi’s identity"

speculates with pages upon pages of satoshi's identity.

And yet, he may have literally hesitated before doing so :)

Replies to that article mention Len's tweets about Bitcoin don't necessarily seem like those of its creator, if he was tweeting earnestly.

That, and his wife not believing he was Satoshi (while not claiming it was impossible) are the biggest counterpoints I've come across.

Still, I find it a very compelling case. Sassaman as part of a Satoshi collective also seems possible.

https://twitter.com/search?q=(Bitcoin)%20(from%3Alensassaman...

Also that Len was a Unix-style C++ whereas original Bitcoin was definitely a Windows programmer

I mean this sounds like some of the best evidence to me.

That's a good data point. Although many people program for both OSs, it at least raises the question of why make a Windows app, if it's not your preferred platform?

Why did the person who published a whitepaper they hoped would change the world write an adjacent app for the most used consumer OS in the world?

Let's say it was Sassaman and that it's true that he was primarily a Unix programmer. If he didn't have any pretenses that it would become an immediate hit, he might have focused on coding in his comfort zone. Presumably the people he interacted with who were most interested were probably also Unix users.

On the other hand, he was Bram Cohen's roommate, and he saw BitTorrent take off as a mainstream product. So it's quite possible he was sensitive to the idea that a Windows program would have more viral ability to pick up users.

In any case, he probably would have assumed that if the system gained even a minimal level of adoption, it would quickly be ported to all platforms.

Satoshi left an unfinished video poker game in the source code in Bitcoin v0.1.3 ALPHA:

https://github.com/trottier/original-bitcoin/blob/master/src...

I'm curious if either Szabo, Finney, Le Roux or Sassaman have had any connections to poker or gambling in the past?

Yes, Le Roux did for sure.

“Around the same time, Le Roux was working on a gaming engine for an online casino he intended to launch in Canada and Romania.”

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Le_Roux

While I didn't know Len, I've talked to a fair number of people who knew him well (including the person who put that ascii art portrait of him into the blockchain), and none of them have expressed strong agreement with this theory.

All we know for sure about Satoshi is that s/he isn't Craig Wright.

I would highly encourage the article 'The Satoshi Affair' by London Review of Books about the person known as Satoshi Nakamoto and the person who claims to be them. It's a long one, but worth it.

[0] - https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v38/n13/andrew-o-hagan/the-s...

> the person who put that ascii art portrait of him into the blockchain

For what it’s worth, I had a pretty long conversation with this person after Len’s wake. The possibility that Len was behind Bitcoin never came up.

I know he's failed to prove it (embarrassingly), but I feel like it's not implausible that it was him and the late Dave Kleinman together as he claims. The mixing of British and American English and time zone issue then makes sense. Also, that Craig Wright boldly claims to be Satoshi likely means he is involved somehow, as he should otherwise fear that the real Satoshi call him out. It may be that Kleinman was the gear-to-the-metal guy and that's why Wright cannot prove his identity (but is somehow too proud to admit it - he's not entirely right in the head either).

Not everything checks out and everything may not have happened exactly as Wright claims, but I have trouble completely writing him off.

> otherwise fear that the real Satoshi call him out

I mean, this could just be an educated gamble. Satoshi has been unwilling or unable to communicate for many years (with the exception of one highly suspect incident that is very possibly a case of compromised credentials).

I think Wright knew or strongly suspected who Satoshi was, and waited until he was dead to make his move.

> I hesitate to speculate about Satoshi’s identity, given that the discourse has generally ranged from misguided to downright idiotic and unethical. But with Craig Wright fraudulently claiming credit and invoking a copyright claim to take down the Bitcoin whitepaper, it’s important we revisit the topic and recenter the discussion around the Cypherpunks who actually built Bitcoin.

If the author cared about the shenanigans of fraud Craig Wright, a better approach would be to deal with them directly. The only thing that's hard about that is that the false claims are so numerous.

Wright has conjured a tornado of bullshit. In the process, he has built a loyal following. This is the real story, because the Craig Wrights of the world are wising up to the power of the Internet. They're multiplying, spilling out of the woodwork, and overrunning the pantry. People have an insatiable hunger to be lied to with gusto, and the Internet gives them everything they need to satisfy that hunger. All it takes is an unethical person who understands this point and has no qualms about exploiting it. Past a point, the fact checkers just give up.

We've seen several examples now of this phenomenon. But the Internet-savvy Big Liar is on an exponential growth curve.

My money is on Paul Le Roux.. most hackers are too uppity to write windows software. Le Roux was a pragmatist with a real practical need to move dirty money without banks.

I went deep into the PLR rabbit hole because I too believed that PLR could have been Satoshi. The one dagger to the heart of the theory is that PLR lived in the Philippines at the time. If you line up Satoshi’s posting times with PLR’s local time zone, you’d have to assume that PLR was posting from 4-9ish in the Philippines.

> you’d have to assume that PLR was posting from 4-9ish in the Philippines.

Ok? Why is that a dagger in the heart? My most active posting times are 4-9 and I don't even know if you're talking AM or PM because both work for me.

You mostly sleep between 9pm and 4am?

Yes. Pretty normal sleeping hours.

Yes, but, really, the very pragmatical nature of Le Roux somehow makes me doubt he would have left the initial wallets untouched all these years. He is an interesting character, for sure, but does not seem the kind to not use a big lever at his disposal.

La Roux has been in custody since Satoshi disappeared.

If any part of it was converted to any non-distributed security, then it would likey be confiscated along with interrogation to get the rest.

Most hackers I know write software for pretty much any other OS because of how much easier it is than writing software for Windows, not because they're uppity. Some may be ideological purists, sure, but I think you'd be very hard pressed to find a hacker that says the developer experience on Windows is easier/nicer/better than the developer experience on Linux or MacOS.

It is 50/50 for me between Carmack and Torvalds. 2/1 if you add Satoshi.

Neither of them have demonstrated any significant knowledge of the extremely sophisticated, cutting edge crypto and anonymisation tech involved.

But Linux is the most secure OS! /s

The conversation was about hackers (presumably great) in general.

Is it that extremely sophisticated tho? I think both of them could crack that very easily if they wanted to

People who write open source windows software are looked down upon. Your typical hacker especially in the 90s/00s - Microsoft was the evil empire.

What do you mean _was_?

If Microsoft was a person it would be a psychopath: befriend you for economic benefits and crush you when that is the more convenient option.

It's a private company who has actively pursued monopoly by buying its way into the educational system and strongarming any competition in the OEM off the shelf OS market, literally making it damn near impossible to avoid it.

It's goddamn scary how the public sector seems to believe Windows, Word or Excel are the only professional alternatives and are necessary for society to function. Why aren't we writing in LaTeX or R on Linux? Because a very powerful market force has bought the truth and will embrace or extinguish any sane opposition.

Fuck Microsoft and fuck Bill Gates. They are evil.

Yes, thank you. Case in point, this is how you are looked upon by the community as a developer of open source windows software.

I don't know that creating an whole new currency can be considered a "practical solution" to the need of having to move dirty money around. Surely there must be easier ways to achieve that goal and with a higher chance of success as well.

For him an encryption/programming expert it might of been. There were posts back in 2005 about how to design a 'bit gold' and he was already jumping through hoops to launder money to gold bars through hong kong with all kinds of problems. The motivation was there.

Is there evidence that Le Roux used Bitcoin? Certainly he had a use for it. But the author of the Mastermind looked into this idea and didn't find any evidence for it

How could he? In 2012 Bitcoin was very niche and everyone was still very skeptical about it.

Blast from the past. Worked with him at PGP in 2000. I’m not convinced he was satoshi. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he really was.

It’s funny that people always guess that Satoshi is someone already famous as opposed to someone who is not known.

Thank you. I’ve been saying this for years. He could very well have been some listserv lurker who followed the prior art, and just went ahead and solved the outstanding problems on his own. There are far more brilliant programmers out there working quietly, than those who are known. Everybody reaches for a name they know because that’s all that’s available to reach for.

Just some lurker of that early mailing list, absorbing knowledge that eventually culminated into the code and paper. The number of unknown great programmers is a lot. What I think is interesting is that it was both code and a paper, not only code. So at least a grad student. And likely someone that starts many projects, because they left after only one year. Something else could have gotten more interesting.

Unless they really left… RIP.

Sure, at least today that is more probable and maybe by now they truly did pass on. The range of possibilities are of course endless. But at that time, if we take their statement literally[1] they just moved on to other things.

1. https://plan99.net/~mike/satoshi-emails/thread5.html

I wonder what could be more interesting

Something else, like staying anonymous and/or alive?

Also, academia gauntlet graduates aren't the only ones that can write papers.

> Finney invented the concept of Reusable Proofs of Work which Bitcoin’s mining is based on.

I had no idea someone else was involved in such a fundamental part of Bitcoin. Great article.

Many pieces to the puzzle. https://twitter.com/documentingbtc/status/141128190354668339...

Hal, Wei Dai, Nick Szabo, Adam Back, all key contributors that did prior work in the space.

Some people are convinced it's the latter:

https://news.bitcoin.com/the-many-facts-pointing-to-adam-bac...

Len wasn't going to go around writing Windows software.

Reading this article, I am struck by how BitCoin and crypto currencies had idealistic origins. Contrast that with practical realities of crypto today which seems to be fueling mostly speculation and illegality. It is also an environmental and climate disaster.

Dave Ramsey will fire employees for gossip (He's got to hear about it somehow - is this a paradox?). Here's a gossip Riddle for you to drool over:

Satoshi is Mr. Wilkinson (posturing as Mr. Slugsworth) probing for which one of you is useful enough to wield that kind of muscle.

Has anyone done a rigorous analysis of his writing style to find a human match?

Yes. If you Google “satoshi Stylometry” you’ll find a ton. IMO not very fruitful, there is other evidence that is more compelling. If you look around enough it’s easily to get a _pretty good_ idea of who it was, based on things like early interactions with satoshi, neighbors with unusual surnames, etc. but no way to know for sure.

Do you have a particular link? Because simply googling the term, I find a few things that don't even mention Sassaman. But it also seems like they may be preselecting the candidates and applying the analysis to only their works. For whatever reason, Sassaman hasn't been spoken of much as a candidate, and is unclear whether his writings (of which there are many) would have been included.

I believe the parent comment is referring to Hal Finney. Similar points are made in this other comment:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28815538

Yeah, but some of the stylometric analyses point to the other leading candidates. It doesn't seem like there is a stylometric consensus.

in the early days, crypto was sometimes used for things like illegal drugs, maybe it's some really smart addict who is paranoid

Somebody at Dice.com probably still has satoshi's IP logs.

I think Satoshi is a Stone Soup.

In my opinion Satoshi Nakamoto is not a pseudonym at all. Don't underestimate weaponized autism.

>Don't underestimate weaponized autism.

Meaning what, exactly?

Probably that there’s a real person named Satoshi Nakamoto out there, who’s an autistic savant that authored BitCoin v0.1.

Dorian graduated in physics and does programming for a living. I'm sure he can do anything if he puts his mind to it.

The linguistic analysis does not hold water. Len was born in PA. He would not start using British language patterns like that. but rather retain native tongue.

The article addresses that: he did in fact use British language patterns e.g. in his tweets.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com