In the week before the documentary was released, online betting markets had Len Sassaman, a cryptographer who moved in similar online circles as Satoshi, as the most likely candidate to be revealed as the Bitcoin creator. Sassaman took his own life in 2011 at the age of 31, shortly after Satoshi disappeared.
The case for Sassaman was first outlined in 2021 by Evan Hatch, founder of crypto gaming platform Worlds. Whenever speculation about Sassaman bubbles periodically to the surface, the spotlight is thrown on his widow, software developer Meredith Patterson, who believes the theory is unfounded.
“People used to be really fucking nosy and entitled. I’d get people writing me with a two-page list of dates and locations, asking where I was at such and such a time or place,” says Patterson. “Where do you get off? A complete stranger walking up to a widow and trying to interrogate her. It’s like, fuck off Sergeant Joe Friday.”
When Patterson caught wind that the documentary might name her former husband, her first thought was for her parents, whom she worried might be targeted as a way of threatening her into handing over Satoshi’s bitcoin stash. “I called my dad and said, ‘Something weird has happened and it’s not any of our faults,’” she says. A friend who works in law enforcement in Belgium, where Patterson now lives, advised her to take refuge in her local police station if she felt unsafe.
In the end, the problem was not hers to deal with. “I was relieved for myself and my family that they named Peter Todd,” says Patterson. “But I feel sorry for Peter Todd. Frankly, nobody deserves getting a target painted on their back.”
The stance of many Bitcoin advocates, including Todd, is that there is nothing to be gained by the hunt for Satoshi. In the absence of its creator, Bitcoin has evolved under a meritocracy of ideas, in which changes are proposed and decided upon by community vote, they say. Meanwhile, there is plenty to lose for anyone accused of being Satoshi, whether accurately or otherwise.
After the documentary aired, emails began to flood into Todd’s inbox. “So far, [it’s] a bunch of people asking for money,” says Todd. In one exchange seen by WIRED, an individual sent 25 emails in the span of two days asking Todd to help repay a loan.
