It’s interesting to see how the crypto community regularly returns to the question of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity. Recently, attention has turned to Len Sassaman, a deceased cryptographer who is gaining recognition amid rumors about an upcoming HBO documentary.

Len Sassaman’s profile is frankly impressive. From his youth in Pennsylvania, he had already distinguished himself as a prodigy in cryptography. He later became involved with the cypherpunks in San Francisco, a pioneering group that truly laid the foundations for digital privacy. He even studied under David Chaum, the inventor of the blockchain. Sassaman contributed to major projects such as Pretty Good Privacy and GNU Privacy Guard, and co-founded, with his wife, a SaaS startup called Osogato.

What makes Len Sassaman particularly intriguing is the convergence of several clues. First of all, he clearly had the technical skills to create Bitcoin. His publications, presentations, and academic activities are ample testimony to that. He was a member of Association internationale de cryptographie financière and constantly talked about financial cryptography. Then there is the linguistic analysis: Satoshi Nakamoto’s writing style shows similarities to Sassaman’s, and Nakamoto also disappeared two months before Sassaman’s death in July 2011.

But here’s the interesting thing: Sassaman’s wife, Meredith Patterson, herself an informatician, has always denied that her husband is Satoshi. And then there is this riddle of the 64 billion dollars in Bitcoin held by Nakamoto that has never moved.

Personally, I think the mystery surrounding Len Sassaman and his possible link to Satoshi Nakamoto deserves to be looked into. Even if we’ll probably never know the truth, the circumstantial evidence is intriguing enough to keep this a topic of debate within the community.