The video explores the mystery of Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, through an interview with Justin Newton, CEO of Netkey. Newton discusses his relationship with Len Sassaman, a cryptography expert and a high school acquaintance, who some believe might have been an influential figure behind Bitcoin. Despite Sassaman's untimely death and his wife denying his involvement, circumstantial evidence and his philosophy align with the Bitcoin ethos.

Justin Newton emphasizes Sassaman's strong technical skills and impactful career choices that potentially align with Bitcoin's creation. Although Sassaman is not confirmed as Satoshi, Newton highlights his contributions to the tech world, including advice he received from Sassaman on Internet networking while he was in Silicon Valley. Newton also reflects on Sassaman's libertarian values and his critical stance on Bitcoin.

Main takeaways from the video:

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Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. synonymous [sɪˈnɒnɪməs] - (adjective) - Having the same or nearly the same meaning as another word or phrase in the same language. - Synonyms: (identical, equivalent, interchangeable)

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The synonymous creator of bitcoin.

2. pseudonymous [suːˈdɒnɪməs] - (adjective) - Using a false or fictitious name or identity. - Synonyms: (alias, fictitious, pen-named)

Len encouraged him to publish Bittorrent pseudonymously.

3. cryptographer [krɪpˈtɒgrəfər] - (noun) - A person who specializes in creating and deciphering codes and ciphers. - Synonyms: (code-breaker, cipherer, cryptologist)

That rules out the frontrunner candidate who polymarket better's forecast would be revealed as Satoshi, namely the late cryptographer, security architect and privacy advocate Len Sassaman

4. anonymity [ˌænəˈnɪmɪti] - (noun) - The condition of being anonymous, without a name or identifiable details. - Synonyms: (namelessness, obscurity, invisibility)

...giving an hour-long lecture on how to maintain your anonymity online.

5. libertarian [ˌlɪbərˈtɛəriən] - (noun / adjective) - A person who advocates for minimal government intervention and emphasizes individual freedom. - Synonyms: (freedom-loving, individualistic, anti-authoritarian)

Was he a libertarian? He wasn't a libertarian in the way that many bitcoiners are.

6. maximalists [ˈmæksɪməlɪsts] - (noun) - Advocates of the belief that a single cryptocurrency will dominate to the exclusion of all others. - Synonyms: (extremists, purists, hard-liners)

Would he fit in with the maximalists?

7. seminal [ˈsɛmɪnəl] - (adjective) - Strongly influencing later developments; having a strong and lasting impact. - Synonyms: (influential, pioneering, groundbreaking)

Satoshi was the seminal part of getting bitcoin started.

8. inclusion [ɪnˈkluːʒən] - (noun) - The action or state of including or being included within a group or structure. - Synonyms: (integration, incorporation, assimilation)

There's also financial inclusion projects that are happening in El Salvador.

9. dubious [ˈdjuːbiəs] - (adjective) - Hesitating or doubting; not to be relied upon. - Synonyms: (questionable, uncertain, skeptical)

So this HBO documentary is in dubious company.

10. ethereal [ɪˈθɪəriəl] - (adjective) - Extremely delicate and light in a way that seems too perfect for this world. - Synonyms: (delicate, heavenly, sublime)

...building layer twos for bitcoin that have functionality that's more like Ethereum...

Is Len Sassaman Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto? 'Plausible' Says Friend

Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The synonymous creator of bitcoin. The director of a new HBO documentary premiering today claims to confront the person he suspects is Satoshi, face to face. That rules out the frontrunner candidate who polymarket better's forecast would be revealed as Satoshi, namely the late cryptographer, security architect and privacy advocate Len Sassaman.

But a friend of Saseman since his high school years has penned an article for coindesk making the case for why he believes Sassamin could very well be the real Satoshi. Joining us is Justin Newton, CEO of Netkey, a provider of web three identity validation services. Welcome, Justin. Hi. Thanks so much for having me today. Thanks for joining us. So tell us a bit about your relationship with Len and how you knew him.

Yeah, so, I mean, it turned out Len and I went to the same high school, but at different times. And I stayed pretty active in the high schools and alumnus. And there was an extended, like four day, five day weekend where I went back to the school to attend a career day as one of the speakers. At the time, I was in the process of taking. I was on the leadership team, taking an Internet company public, and so they wanted me to come back and talk to the students about that.

And one of my mentors at the school, a professor teacher by the name of Tom Ruth, who was pretty well known for taking a lot of different students under his wing, introduced me to Len. At the time, Len was already into computers and computer science and programming while he was a student at the Hill, which was frankly pretty rare. There wasn't a lot of computer facilities there at the time, although there are now. And there was only you at any point in time, a handful of kids that were really into computers. And Tom asked me if I could sort of, for lack of a better term, take Len under my wing a little bit and help him sort of understand what some of his career options might be and just be a sounding board for him as he was looking to get into computer science as a career.

So what was your impression of Len in terms of, you know, what was he interested in and how did he view the world in terms of values and principles? Yeah, I mean, well, at the time he was, you know, in general, he was pretty shy. When we first started talking, he was incredibly reserved. You know, he listened more than he talked, I would say, especially in the beginning. And, you know, he kind of came from an underdog background.

He was definitely not one of the popular kids at the school and wasn't part of the most active social groups and things like that, and sort of had that kind of demeanor. He was always a really very helpful kid while he was in high school. He actually volunteered at the local YMCA to help do activities and provide support for local kids in the town the school was inside of, and also would help kids out if they did have computer issues or things like that while he was on campus. So he always, I think, looked for ways and places that he could impact the world around him in positive ways, where, frankly, it didn't seem like the world around him always took care of him in the same way.

Was he a libertarian? He wasn't a libertarian in the way that many bitcoiners are. He certainly believed in freedom for individuals, and he saw overreach from the government in many cases, but also, frankly, saw quite a lot of overreach from corporations and from the wealthy and from powerful individuals outside of government, which is a little bit in contrast with what we sometimes see in the community of cryptocurrency advocates or bitcoiners. So I would say, yes, in some ways he was a libertarian, but maybe not in exactly the ways that everyone else or many of the other people in the community are.

You also helped him find his footing in Silicon Valley. Tell me a bit about that. Yeah, so he actually moved to Silicon Valley, unfortunately, just as I moved out of Silicon Valley. So I had lived there for about three years helping with Internet startups. And I had just moved down from San Francisco to Los Angeles to be part of the early team at Net Zero, the free Internet company.

And Len moved out to San Francisco at the time. And in his early career, he actually started doing many of the things that I had been doing, which was like computer networking, Internet networking, things like that. And so I connected him into the community there. Both the Nanog group, which is, it's called the North American Network Operators Group, it's basically the backbone engineers that built the Internet inside of the US. And then the Internet Engineering Task force, which IATF is the group that writes the standards for the Internet.

So things like SMTP, TCP, IP, even. So, like, all the standards that are used, like, they write rfcs which are very similar to, like, bips for bitcoin or eips for Ethereum. Both bitcoin and Ethereum sort of copied the RFC structure in terms of the way they go about standards building. So, Justin, do you think he had the technical chops to create bitcoin? So I'm not a cryptographer myself, so from the cryptography side, I can't speak to that what I can speak to is he did in the areas where we did overlap in terms of skills, he was very highly skilled.

And when you get into the cryptography and security side, he was the lead developer on an anonymous remailer, which has some architectural similarities to bitcoin. He worked a side of Hal Finney on PGP, and so he has experience working with one of the best cryptographers out there and working on cryptography along that, which also allows him to build relationships there. Frankly, as he got into the cryptography side is when he became less involved in my orbit, because he found new mentors to work with that were more in the cryptography world than the Internet infrastructure world. And so while we still stayed in light contact throughout that period, we weren't as close as we had been previous to that.

Yep. He also studied under David Shawn, the godfather of cryptography, as a doctoral candidate. Well, back to what we were touching on before. How did he view economics and access to the financial system in America? Do you have an idea of those conversations? You know, I wasn't as deeply involved in those conversations, but I can maybe speak to a little bit about how we view technology, which I think is something that's really relevant to this discussion, which is there.

I can't count the number of hours that he and I spoke about the idea that if you have really strong technical skills, you actually have the opportunity to change the world through those skills, that you basically can use that technology that's as a lever that's long enough that you can pull on one side of it and you can move the entire world in the direction that you want it to go in. Again, from the discussions I had with him, he was more interested in creating that change than creating material wealth for himself. And so both of those things coupled together are really some of the things that, for me, make it possible that he could have been a contributor to or could have been Satoshi.

Although I do want to be transparent, I have no idea if he was. Yeah, and you do go into your op ed with coindesk that those who cast doubt on Len being Satoshi say he wasn't rich, and neither is his family right now, so how could he be Satoshi? So Toshi is a billionaire trillionaire or whatever, but you think that Len would have destroyed the private keys? I think it's possible he could have. Right. To eliminate the opportunity for it.

Again, his driving motivation wasn't making as much money as he could make. You know, he could have taken different roles in his career. He could have skipped going to get his PhD and stayed in industry. There were different roles that he could have made where taken, where he could have made quite a bit more money than it appears that he did inside of his career. But you can see the examples that he repeatedly, throughout that career, chose jobs and roles in both his professional life and his free time that created positive change from his perspective, rather than created financial outcome.

And yet Len was also a bitcoin critic on Twitter, on X. And you think this was a foil and part of his personality. Can you give an example of how this would play out in a different context? Yeah, I mean, there were a number of times that he and I had conversations about work that he did, and not necessarily as a foil in those cases, but where we would talk about some work that he had done on the networking infrastructure side or things, again, that I was more familiar with. And rather than take a compliment and take the accolades on it, he would point out all the things that were wrong with it or they could have been done better.

And, you know, I think one. I think it came a little bit from the background of early in his life. People weren't necessarily very kind to him, and that sometimes can reflect in self doubt and self criticism as well. But I think as much frequently, very talented people know the. They're competent enough to recognize the places where the thing that they built could have been better, you know, either if had they had more time or they could have started over and done it again, or where they feel like their skills were lacking rather than fully developed.

And as a result, the outcome wasn't as perfect as they, you know, as they would have hoped it would have been. So, you know, I won't say I've seen him do that kind of criticism, necessarily to be a foil to himself, but I have seen him do it just as a expression of not being totally happy with the work that he did, even though the work was very high quality. Yeah. Even as Toshi in the forums would correct people in saying it's not anonymous, encourage people to change wallets and such to that end, so that if they wanted anonymity, they would have a better chance at it.

But Len's wife, Meredith Patterson, is very direct in saying she does not believe Len is Satoshi. She told Defi Lama that Satoshi would make rookie coding mistakes in the original bitcoin design that failed to safeguard privacy, and that Satoshi initially built on Linux and sought help in building on Mac OS when Len was a Mac user. Is she making this up? I don't think she's making it up. She and I don't know each other and so I can't speak to her too much. I don't think she's making it up.

One comment I would give on that is Bram Cohen, who created BitTorrent and also does work in the cryptocurrency space, has gone on record saying when he was roommates with Len, which I think he was for a year or two years, Len had alternate accounts and identities on the cypherpunks list that he had no idea who they were. And so again, I'm not saying Glenn was Satoshi. I don't know that. I don't have enough information to make that decision. But having an identity that even someone living with you, someone who's very close to you, wasn't aware of and didn't know about isn't new for life.

You can actually find some videos online where he's actually speaking and teaching at a conference. And off the top of his head, with no notes and no slide, is giving an hour long lecture on how to maintain your anonymity online. And so this is an area that he was certainly one of the more skillful and better experts at, compared to many of us. Interesting. Yeah.

You mentioned Brian Cohen. That was Len's best friend, a former roommate and the inventor of BitTorrent. And he believes that it's possible that Len could be Satoshi. Specifically, he said Len encouraged him to publish Bittorrent pseudonymously. And just looking at other theories online, Len's whereabouts in Belgium correspond to Satoshi's online activity as well as expressions they use.

Both said bloody and maths online. That's pretty particular, pretty special there. Tragically, Len committed suicide and his death was shortly after Satoshi's last post, saying that he was moving on to other things. What also struck me is that people close to Len did not know he was depressed or suffering was at your experience as well. I mean, I didn't know he was at the time.

I certainly knew that that was a part of his history and background. Yeah, you mentioned he always felt being an underdog and. Yeah, I mean, I probably though I met him at the age where he may have had less experience in masking that. Yeah, I just think that is also a tragic part of Len's story, if he is Satoshi, that he would not have seen the brilliant project that he has created completely flourish and take over the world.

But since the director of the HBO doc told CNN that he challenged his suspected Satoshi face to face, that kind of rules out Len being identified in this documentary as bitcoin's creator Nick Zabo is now in the lead in poly market as being identified as Satoshi, followed by Adam back, who are all early cypherpunks on the original mailing list where the bitcoin white paper first appeared. So I don't think this mystery will be solved anytime soon.

Strangely, the Internet suspected Len Sassman Satoshi, but his wife says HBO never approached her. So the director may not even consider this possibility. And it's not the first time someone tried to unmask Satoshi. Prior attempts had pointed to Dorian Nakamoto and of course Craig Wright, and today those outings are pretty unconvincing. In Craig's case, a UK court has ruled he is not Satoshi.

So this HBO documentary is in dubious company. Do you think people should just drop trying to figure out who Satoshi is? I mean, I think at the end of the day, it probably doesn't matter. I think that in many ways the work speaks for itself. And I read somewhere online this week, and it may have been on coindesk, I think it likely was, that at this point, the vast majority of the contribution to bitcoin has been done by others.

And while obviously Satoshi was the seminal part of getting bitcoin started, and none of us would be working in this industry without him and deserves a ton of respect for all of that work. How much of who his personality is or who he was is relevant to where we are today or where we're going in the future, I think is pretty minimal. And to be fair, he did a lot of work to make himself not relevant. He tried very hard to not have his personality be what changed or drove the direction of bitcoin, both in terms of creating his anonymity as well as, I think exiting from bitcoin relatively early on when he saw that it was in capable hands moving forward.

So I think people are always going to be curious because we're human beings and how could we not be? But I don't know that the answer, to be honest, really matters today anymore. Kind of our perfect toshi. But I almost think it would give the bitcoin community closure to know who the identity is. Even though on the flip side, you know, he didn't want to be, or they didn't want to be outed.

So should we be respecting that privacy? What do you think Ben would think, or Len would think of the bitcoin network today? Would he fit in with the maximalists? Well, I mean, I don't think he would have been necessarily on the same page with all the maximalists, but honestly, I think that the bitcoin network isn't defined by them. I think the bitcoin network is defined by everybody that uses it.

Certainly maximalists have a very loud voice in the community, and they do drive a fair amount. But there's also financial inclusion projects that are happening in El Salvador. There's people that are building layer twos for bitcoin that have functionality that's more like Ethereum, something that frankly, maximalists kind of derided when it came out. Ethereum came out itself and other things like that.

And so I think that he would be 100% aligned with the maxis. No? Do I think that he would be happy to see the diversity of activity that's happening on top of the network? I do. That does. Again, it ties into some of the conversations that, that we had in the past, which was the most powerful things that you can build are networks that are open and permissionless for innovation, where you, as the creator, can't actually control what they do and what they're used for.

Because even if you're Satoshi, you can't think of all the good use cases that can be created. And so if you can create a platform for other people to innovate on top of, at the end of the day, that's going to be much more beneficial and much more impactful than being able for any person or any group of people to be able to decide what that future looks like. Awesome, Justin, we'll leave it there. Thank you so much for sharing your story. And folks, you can read it in full on coindesk.com dot.

Innovation, Technology, Cryptocurrency, Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin, Len Sassaman, Coindesk