Polymarket starts betting market on Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity

Polymarket investors have begun placing bets on who the HBO documentary “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” will unmask as Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

On October 4, Polymarket investors opened a betting market for Bitcoin (BTC) creator Satoshi Nakamoto’s big reveal.

The market will be settled on October 8, the premiere date of a new HBO documentary titled “Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery” that promises to reveal the true identity of Bitcoin’s anonymous creator. In 2011, Satoshi disappeared from public view. Since then, a number of theories have emerged about who Satoshi really is.

Polymarket betting market to reveal Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity — October 4, 2024 | Source: Polimarket

At the time of writing, most Polymarket bettors believe Satoshi could be cryptographer Len Sassaman, as he is ranked highest on the betting board and has a 54% chance of being the Bitcoin founder.

Many believe that Sassaman could be Satoshi due to his past academic work focusing on cryptography. His work reflected his strong ideological commitment to privacy and decentralization. Another detail captured by the conspirators is the fact that Sassaman died by suicide in 2011, shortly after Satoshi stopped posting on Bitcoin’s BTCTalk forum.

The second highest voted entry was titled “Other/Multiple” with 38%; This suggests that the creator of Bitcoin could be more than one person, or someone completely unknown or outside the crypto cycle.

Many people, as well as Sassaman, believe that Hal Finney could be Satoshi. 16% probability The American software developer was known as one of the first contributors to Bitcoin. He was also the first person to receive a Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi.

In third place is Blockstream CEO Adam Back, who was one of the first two people to receive an email from Satoshi Nakamoto. It also appears in the trailer for the upcoming HBO documentary.

Who claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto?

Australian computer scientist Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto from 2016 to 2024. He made this claim after Wired magazine and Gizmodo claimed to be Satoshi in a December 2015 article.

Since then, Wright has long declared 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 compensation

But in March, Judge James Mellor ruled that the evidence proving Wright was not Satoshi was “overwhelming” after the Crypto Open Patent Alliance launched a legal battle to prevent Wright from suing Bitcoin developers. After a grueling two-month trial, the UK Supreme Court has officially ruled that Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto and is not the author of the Bitcoin whitepaper.