Who is the most likely candidate to be Satoshi Nakamoto?

Author: Pzai, Foresight News

As HBO's "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery" premieres today, the biggest mystery in cryptocurrency history—the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto—will be revealed. In a highly liberalized market, crypto traders are also placing their bets on every possible probability. Polymarket, as an important betting ground for crypto events, sees its probabilities fluctuate with market movements.

From the perspective of probability fluctuations, the previously less noticed Nick Szabo (the proposer of the "smart contract" concept) has seen his probability rise from the bottom, while the previously favored Len Sassaman has fallen from a high point. This article takes a look at the various aspects of the "Satoshi Nakamoto Mystery" from the perspectives of these individuals.

Len Sassaman

Len Sassaman, one of the earliest advocates of the Cypherpunk movement (which aims to defend privacy through cryptography and electronic currency), led research on P2P networks and worked on PGP information transmission encryption and open-source privacy technologies. Bitcoin, as one of the most recognized applications in the Cypherpunk context, pays tribute to Len in various ways. Every Bitcoin node contains an obituary for him in block 138725, achieving a form of immortality in the most Cypherpunk way, which can be seen as a response to his long-held wish.

His close friend Justin Newton also stated, "Len firmly believed in building an open and permissionless network to foster innovation. If Len had built such a network, I wouldn't be surprised." Coincidentally, the disappearance of "Satoshi Nakamoto" is not far from Len's death, which has sparked speculation. However, Len Sassaman's widow, Meredith L Patterson, recently denied the speculation that Len Sassaman was Satoshi Nakamoto in an interview with DL News, stating that HBO never even contacted her while making the documentary "Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery."

Nick Szabo

Nick Szabo, a renowned computer scientist and cryptographer, first proposed the now-popular concept of smart contracts between 1994 and 1997, and he had already introduced the idea of Bit Gold before Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin emerged. This concept is just a step away from Bitcoin itself, and Vitalik adopted and incorporated his ideas in Ethereum. It can be said that technically, Nick Szabo is absolutely capable of building the Bitcoin system.

Elon Musk also seems to lean towards this fact in public opinion. In a previous comment, he stated, "Clearly, I don't know who created Bitcoin… It seems that Nick Szabo may be more responsible for the evolution of these ideas than anyone else. He claims he is not Satoshi Nakamoto… but he seems to be more responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin than anyone else." Interestingly, in a linguistic study of the Bitcoin white paper conducted by Aston University in 2014, researchers explored the linguistic similarities that suggested Nick Szabo shares the same linguistic representation as Satoshi Nakamoto.

Adam Back

Recently, Blockstream CEO Adam Back stated, "No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is, and that's a good thing," indirectly denying that he is Satoshi Nakamoto. However, as the designer of the technical engine of Bitcoin—the proof-of-work (PoW) algorithm (Hashcash, which was originally used for spam control processes and subsequently led to some research on electronic currency)—and as someone who communicated closely with Satoshi Nakamoto in the early days, one cannot completely dismiss any connection between him and Satoshi Nakamoto. It can be speculated that Adam Back is most likely to know Satoshi Nakamoto's whereabouts. He recently stated, "In 2013, I joined the Bitcoin wizards IRC and asked many questions to understand the details of Bitcoin, such as address holding balances and UTXO coins. The logs of the IRC channel are recorded, so the developers in the channel are convinced it is not me." This further dispels many people's thoughts about him being Satoshi Nakamoto.

To promote the broader application of Bitcoin, Adam Back founded Blockstream in San Francisco in 2014, hiring several Bitcoin core developers and continuously pushing the development and application of Bitcoin and blockchain technology. If he were to appear in public as Satoshi Nakamoto, it would undoubtedly provide a strong boost to the Bitcoin ecosystem.

David Kleiman

Before HBO's revelation, the crypto space had also experienced the period of Craig Wright as "Faketoshi." This identification is also related to the lawsuit from David Kleiman's family. Additionally, he participated in military work early on and developed encryption tools later adopted by the U.S. government. He was also a regular contributor to the Cryptography and Security mailing list, where discussions included the technical aspects of cryptographic systems and the politics of cryptography. He was a long-time member of the Metzdowd Cryptography mailing list, where Satoshi Nakamoto announced Bitcoin on October 31, 2008. Such numerous connections have led people to pay more attention to this cryptographic pioneer and his relationship with Satoshi Nakamoto.

In summary, the revelation of the Satoshi Nakamoto mystery will shed light on the origins of cryptocurrency. Throughout the journey from Cypherpunk to large-scale applications, there have been many fighters who realized and defended ideas and privacy freedoms through technology. Whether or not they are "Satoshi Nakamoto," we can still follow in their footsteps, step by step, towards the vision.