FX168 Financial News Agency (Asia Pacific) reported that HBO will release a new documentary "Electronic Money: The Mystery of Bitcoin" later on Tuesday (October 8). The trailer said that the content will reveal the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the father of Bitcoin. Its producer Cullen Hoback even admitted that he had personally confronted the real person. According to data from Polymarket, a large cryptocurrency betting platform, the market currently speculates that the most likely candidate is cryptography expert Nick Szabo, which coincides with the early theory of billionaire Musk.
Hoback told CNN that he had personally confronted the person he believed to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, which means that the person he believed to be Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive, which means that Len Sassaman, who died in 2011, and cryptographer Hal Finney, who died in 2014, are unlikely to be Satoshi Nakamoto.
Source: CNN
In addition, Sassaman's widow Meredith Patterson said in an interview with DL News that HBO did not contact her about the documentary. As a result, Sassaman's chances have dropped to less than 10%, while Finney's chances are only 2.7%. Other candidates include imprisoned software engineer Paul Le Roux, Craig Wright and Musk, all with relatively low chances.
However, the "Other/Multiple" option on the Polymarket betting platform currently has the highest chance, up to 57%. Although Hoback posted on October 5 that the documentary will reveal "one" specific name, the market still seems to be betting that more than one person may be involved.
At present, the market believes that the most likely person is cryptography expert Nick Szabo.
Source: Polymarket
Szabo is an American computer scientist, cryptographer, and jurist, known for his research on smart contracts and digital currencies. He graduated from the University of Washington's School of Computer Science and Engineering in 1989 with a bachelor's degree in computer science, and then received a bachelor's degree in law from George Washington University Law School.
It is reported that he created the cryptocurrency project Bit Gold in 1998. This project has never been officially launched, but many people believe that it is the predecessor of Bitcoin. Szabo once explained in detail that the inspiration for proposing Bit Gold came from solving the inefficiencies he saw in the traditional financial system.
In 2014, the Center for Forensic Linguistics at Aston University in the UK compared the Bitcoin white paper written by Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 with articles written by Szabo and 10 other possible Bitcoin creators, and found that Szabo's work and the Bitcoin white paper had a high degree of linguistic similarity.
The research team pointed out at the time that the linguistic similarities between Szabo's work and the Bitcoin white paper were incredible, and other possible authors of Satoshi Nakamoto did not match so well.
In 2015, a report in the New York Times also pointed to Szabo as the true identity of the creator of Bitcoin. However, when he was interviewed at the time, he explicitly denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto and denied the online claim that he was a law professor at the University of Washington.
Szabo said at the time: "Well, I said this to clarify the facts. I am not Satoshi Nakamoto, nor am I a university professor. In fact, I have never been a university professor."
But he also mentioned that Bit Gold has many similarities with Bitcoin. "There are a lot of similarities, I mean, the reason people label me Satoshi is because of the security ownership name and Bit Gold, there are so many similarities between the two that you can't find anywhere else."
When asked if he believed that Satoshi Nakamoto was familiar with his work, Szabo responded at the time that he understood why people had so much speculation about him, pointing out that "I would say that all these similarities are interesting to me and to a lot of other people."
On July 7, 2014, Szabo also denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto on Twitter. He wrote: "I am not Satoshi Nakamoto, but thank you."
Source: Twitter
In a 2021 Lex Fridman podcast, Musk said that Szabo was "more responsible than anyone" for the creation of Bitcoin.
Despite some compelling evidence, the computer scientist has explicitly denied that he is Satoshi Nakamoto on multiple occasions.
Musk also admitted this fact in the aforementioned podcast, which is why Musk said he didn't know who Satoshi Nakamoto was.