Polymarket starts betting market on Satoshi Nakamoto's identity

Polymarket traders have started betting on who the HBO documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” will unmask as Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin.

On Oct. 4, Polymarket traders opened up a betting market for the big reveal of Satoshi Nakamoto, creator of Bitcoin (BTC).

The market is set to resolve on Oct. 8, the premiere date for the new HBO documentary titled “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” which promises to uncover the true identity of Bitcoin’s anonymous creator. In 2011, Satoshi disappeared from public view. Since then, a number of theories have emerged regarding who Satoshi truly is.

Polymarket betting market for Satoshi Nakamoto identity reveal — Oct. 4, 2024 | Source: PolymarketAt the time of writing, most Polymarket bettors believe Satoshi could be cryptographer Len Sassaman, as he holds the highest rank on the betting board, with 54% odds of him being the Bitcoin founder.

Many believe Sassaman could have been Satoshi due to his past academic works which were centered around cryptography. His work reflected his strong ideological commitment to privacy and decentralization. Another detail that conspirators have latched onto is the fact that Sassaman died by suicide in 2011, shortly after Satoshi stopped posting on Bitcoin’s forum BTCTalk.

The entry with the second highest votes is titled “Other/Multiple” with 38% odds, which predicts that the Bitcoin creator could either be multiple people or someone completely unknown or out of the crypto loop.

Aside from Sassaman, many also believe Hal Finney could have been Satoshi. With 16% odds, the American software developer was well-known for being an early Bitcoin contributor. He was also the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi himself.

In third place is Blockstream CEO Adam Back, one of the first two individuals to receive an email from Satoshi Nakamoto. He also features in the trailer for the upcoming HBO documentary.

Who has claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto?

From 2016 up until 2024, Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed that he was Satoshi Nakamoto. He made this claim after Wired magazine and Gizmodo suggested that he was Satoshi in a December 2015 article.

Since then, Wright has long proclaimed that he wrote the 2008 Bitcoin whitepaper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. He even won a libel case against crypto blogger Peter McCormack despite giving “deliberately false evidence.” The court awarded him £1 in damages

However, in March, Judge James Mellor ruled that the evidence proving Wright was not Satoshi was “overwhelming,” after the Crypto Open Patent Alliance initiated a legal battle to prevent Wright from suing Bitcoin developers. After a rigorous two-month trial, the U.K. High Court officially ruled that Craig Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto and that he is not the author of Bitcoin’s whitepaper.