Netki CEO: Why do I think Len Sassaman is Satoshi Nakamoto?

Author: Justin Newton, CEO of identity verification service provider Netki, CoinDesk; Translated by: Tao Zhu, Golden Finance

An HBO documentary released on Tuesday has reignited speculation that my late friend Len Sassaman was Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous inventor of Bitcoin. The filmmaker claims to have confronted the person he believes to be Satoshi Nakamoto, making Len, who committed suicide in 2011, an unlikely suspect. Still, others have convincingly detailed Len's technical abilities that make him a logical candidate for Satoshi Nakamoto.

Whatever the film claims, I want to share what I know about Len and why I, too, believe he is Satoshi Nakamoto. Len Sassaman, circa 2006 (Simon Law/Wikimedia Commons) I met Len Sassaman, wearing a rumpled jacket and tie, in the living room of Thomas Ruth, a history teacher at the Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pennsylvania. Len was a junior, and I, an alumnus in the data center business, had just returned from the San Francisco Bay Area to visit Tom for a long weekend.

Len sat on the couch and I sat in a chair next to him. Tom was one of my mentors who was known for taking in kids who had trouble growing up or fitting in. Len was one of those kids. He had a hard time maintaining normal eye contact and would greatly downplay his own accomplishments.

Even though he was only 16, Len showed great potential to be a computer scientist, and Tom asked me if I would be willing to be a friend in the field and help Len find his footing and path. Tom had been a great help to me, so of course I agreed. That first day, we spent about two and a half hours in Tom’s living room drinking the equivalent of a Jolt Cola of hot tea, which had twice the caffeine of a teacup because of all the sugar in it.

As I look back on that conversation, I remember a lot of the things we discussed that day, and in retrospect, Len’s ideas aligned very well with Satoshi Nakamoto.

Another mentor of mine pointed out to me how technology and history feed off each other in cycles, and how great inventions change society and the world. Len and I shared this aha moment: technical prowess can be a lever that, if pulled tight enough, can move the world in the direction we want it to go.

At this point in the discussion, Len went from passive, shy, and reserved to passionate and deeply engaged. Up until that point, he had lived in a world shaped by the popular kids; seeing a path where he could help shape the future without being in the spotlight, his posture immediately changed dramatically, from slouching to leaning forward straight, his eyes going from downcast to wide open, looking directly at me.

At this point, Tom sat in his chair with a knowing smile on his face, occasionally standing up. For the next few hours, we discussed the importance of freedom of communication, online anonymity, and the democratization of information. The conversation ranged from developing open source software and standards, expressing our values ​​through code, creating software that could change the world, and predicting some of the impacts of that.

Silicon Valley Years

Len moved to San Francisco shortly after I moved to Los Angeles to work for the Internet service provider NetZero. I introduced him to my friends in the North American Network Operators Group (NANOG) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) communities.

We stayed relatively close for the 10 years after that. We would go a while without talking, and then I would get an email or text asking “Are you available for a phone call?” with no context. Some of the calls were quick questions about career advice, as he was considering job opportunities, or whether he should stay in a position that didn’t fully appeal to him. These were usually quick calls, as he just needed someone in the field he trusted to validate an idea or something he was seeing.

The longer calls were similar to the conversations on Tom’s couch. We spent hours talking about the value of open and permissionless innovation, and the importance of a network that allowed people to build without asking for permission.

We talked for hours about the pros and cons of allowing bad guys to do bad things versus allowing good guys to move quickly without waiting for slow, conservative institutions to agree.

Ultimately, we agreed that the network itself should be completely open, and that controls should be built in at other levels, either using technology when possible or laws when absolutely necessary.

This principle is at the heart of Bitcoin and perhaps its most valuable and enduring feature.

Satoshi? Maybe

Many people have given logical reasons why Len couldn’t possibly be Satoshi, but in my opinion, these people simply don’t know who Len is. Here’s how I respond to their arguments:

“Len wasn’t rich then, and his family isn’t rich now.”Len believed that the purpose of working in technology wasn’t to get rich, but to create the future we all want to live in. This fits in with the fact that Satoshi never profited from Bitcoin, as the coins mined by the Bitcoin creator never moved. I can totally imagine Len destroying the private keys to his mining wallets to ensure that he or anyone else couldn’t make money from what he was doing.

“Len is a Bitcoin skeptic and criticizes Bitcoin on Twitter.”Len often offers harsh criticisms of projects he’s deeply involved in. One of his personality traits is believing his work isn’t good enough, even if it’s excellent. Publicizing these criticisms would be a great way for him to maintain his anonymity and distance if he really is Satoshi.

A few other points:

Len was a firm believer in building open and permissionless innovative networks. This feature of Bitcoin was what initially attracted me to it, and I would not be surprised if Len had built such a network.

Len was a 100% believer in individual rights over authority. At the same time, he was not one of the libertarian types that flocked to the early Bitcoin community. I can certainly see how, if he was Satoshi, seeing his creation being exploited by people who wanted to get rich overnight might have caused him to abandon the project and possibly exacerbated his depression.

To be clear: Len and I never discussed Bitcoin, and if he was Satoshi, I can easily understand why he would not want to discuss it with me or any of our friends. At the end of the day, I don’t know if he was Satoshi. Given his skills and the person he was, he certainly could have been Satoshi.

Regardless, Len was a wonderful person and he deserved better than the world. His memory shines brightly in my heart.