'Finding Satoshi' Makes the Case for Hal Finney, Len Sassaman as Bitcoin Co-Creators

A documentary released connected Wednesday asserts that Satoshi Nakamoto was ne'er an individual, but alternatively a pseudonym shared by 2 adept cryptographers who combined forces to make Bitcoin earlier their respective deaths: Hal Finney and Len Sassaman.

Directed by Tucker Tooley and Matthew Miele, “Finding Satoshi” showcases a four-year probe guided by American concern writer William D. Cohan and backstage researcher Tyler Maroney, delving heavy into 1 of the 21st century's top unsolved mysteries.

The movie features good implicit a twelve interviews, ranging from the wealthiest radical successful the satellite to machine scientists who helped uncover Satoshi's identity, sometimes unintentionally. 

Investigations into Satoshi’s individuality tin bring unwanted ineligible oregon idiosyncratic scrutiny to the individuals—longtime Bitcoin Core developer Peter Todd, for example—yet the decision of "Finding Satoshi" provokes small consternation due to the fact that its suspects are nary longer alive.

In immoderate ways, the documentary appears to interruption caller ground, featuring an interrogation with Fran Finney, the precocious cryptographer’s widow. In the film, she concedes that her hubby astir apt played a relation successful Bitcoin’s creation. Cohan told Decrypt, “I deliberation [that] was very, precise powerful.”

Sassaman’s widow, Meredith L. Patterson, is besides included successful the documentary, assessing whether her hubby could’ve been Satoshi arsenic well. But that’s not earlier different suspects are identified first: Adam Back, Nick Szabo, David Chaum, Paul Le Roux, and Wei Dai.

In galore ways, the movie comes crossed arsenic a emotion missive to the integer underground wherever Satoshi recovered fertile ground, namely privacy-fighting cypherpunks. Phil Zimmermann is among the astir notable featured successful the film, a privateness pioneer who equipped the nationalist with “military-grade” email encryption successful the aboriginal ‘90s by creating Pretty Good Privacy (PGP). 

Sassaman, who took his ain beingness successful 2011 aft Satoshi’s last nationalist post, and Finney, who passed distant owed to complications from ALS successful 2014, some worked connected PGP’s encryption. The documentary theorizes that Finney composed Bitcoin’s code, portion Sassaman handled written matters, including Bitcoin’s foundational nine-page achromatic paper.

Before Cohan and Maroney onshore connected their suspects, Finding Satoshi’s directors give ample clip to mapping retired the cultures that Bitcoin was apt calved from—such arsenic the Extropians, a radical of techno-optimist transhumanists—and assorted Bitcoin forerunners that Satoshi combined elements of, including Adam Back’s Hashcash.

Back, the co-founder and CEO of Bitcoin infrastructure steadfast Blockstream who established the conception of proof-of-work, was precocious fingered arsenic Satoshi successful a New York Times investigation, which leaned heavy connected linguistic analysis. Following the article’s publication, Back denied that helium was Satoshi, arsenic helium has done galore times.

“If you had a $100 cardinal fortune, you’re not conscionable going to beryllium determination and unrecorded a beingness of frugality,” Cohan said, referring to the estimated 1.1 cardinal Bitcoin that Satoshi holds. “We conscionable utilized our investigation and deductive reasoning to get to a antithetic conclusion.”

The film’s investigators enlisted the assistance of Kathleen Puckett, a erstwhile FBI cause who helped bust Unabomber Theodore John Kaczynski, to measure the motivations of whoever wrote Bitcoin’s achromatic paper. Her analysis: Bitcoin’s creator didn’t look to attraction astir money.

Back is yet eliminated alongside respective Satoshi candidates pursuing a speech with Alyssa Blackburn, a information idiosyncratic who antecedently worked astatine Rice University and Baylor College of Medicine successful Houston. She provides Cohan and Maroney with information that allows them to measurement suspects’ online past against Satoshi’s. The illustration fits Finney and Sassaman.

The flick besides presents a information flagged by Jameson Lopp, CTO of information steadfast Casa, arsenic a imaginable counterpoint: Satoshi emailed backmost and distant with a developer astatine the aforesaid clip that Finney, an avid runner, participated successful a contention successful Santa Barbara, California.

That discrepancy yet backs investigators' mentation that Finney composed code, portion Sassaman composed sentences. Still, Cohan and Maroney said that they conducted plentifulness of interviews crossed the cryptosphere that didn’t determination the needle much.

Conducted astatine the tallness of his powers successful 2021, a 90-minute interrogation with FTX laminitis and erstwhile CEO Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t marque the last cut, Cohan said. The disgraced crypto mogul was aboriginal sentenced to 25 years successful situation for orchestrating a multibillion-dollar fraud scheme.

The documentary features interviews from different figures successful finance, including Strategy’s Michael Saylor and Microsoft’s Bill Gates. Cohan noted that those individuals appeared to downplay the value of Satoshi’s identity, efficaciously giving investigators a stiff-arm.

“We spent a twelvemonth and a fractional interviewing each these people,” Cohan said. “They’re fascinating, and they should beryllium their ain abstracted documentary, but we weren’t getting anywhere.”