Deceased computer scientist and privacy activist Len Sassaman has suddenly become well-known as bookmakers anticipate that HBO‘s next documentary would expose Satoshi Nakamoto as the enigmatic founder of Bitcoin.
Whether Sassaman was the actual Bitcoin inventor or not, his life was noteworthy. Born in Pennsylvania, Sassaman was a cryptography master drawn to the San Francisco computer environment in his late teens. He joined the cypherpunk movement, a group of privacy-oriented computer scientists influencing the direction of encryption. Working on projects like Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) and GNU Privacy Guard, both absolutely essential online privacy, Sassaman studied under blockchain creator David Chaum. Together with his wife Meredith Patterson, he also started the SaaS company Osogato.
Sadly, Sassaman died by himself in 2011 at the age of thirty-one while still a doctoral in electrical engineering student in Belgium. Bitcoin’s blockchain at Block 138725 bears a memorial to him in honor. Though Patterson, who was married to Sassaman until his death, has said publicly she does not think he was Nakamoto.
This view is supported by circumstensive evidence. Based on what would be needed to create Bitcoin, Sassaman’s broad expertise of privacy, financial systems, and cryptography fits. Further mystery is added by linguistic study of his writing style and Nakamoto’s as well as the disappearance of Nakamoto’s online presence two months before Sassaman’s death.
Still unchangeable, Nakamoto’s $64 billion worth of Bitcoin adds to the continuous mystery around the actual name of the Bitcoin inventor.
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