New documentary argues Hal Finney and Len Sassaman were Satoshi

Finding Satoshi, directed by Tucker Tooley and Matthew Miele, presents a four-year investigation led by writer William D. Cohan and private investigator Tyler Maroney. The film advances a claim that the Bitcoin pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto was used by two cryptographers, Hal Finney and Len Sassaman, rather than a single person.

The documentary relies on interviews, timeline reconstruction and technical forensics. Investigators interviewed people who knew the two men, spoke with cypherpunks and encryption pioneers, and compiled a record of online posts and code activity. A data analyst compared timestamps and activity patterns attributed to Satoshi with public records of the suspects’ online behavior.

The film traces technical influences on Bitcoin, including early proof-of-work proposals and developments in encryption software. It highlights that both Finney and Sassaman contributed to projects tied to Pretty Good Privacy and to the broader privacy-minded encryption community active in the 1990s and 2000s.

Finding Satoshi presents a theory of shared authorship: the film attributes implementation of Bitcoin’s code to Finney and associates drafting and editing of the white paper with Sassaman. The filmmakers point to instances where Satoshi correspondence and code submissions align with times when Finney was recorded as participating in events such as races, and they argue those timing gaps are consistent with multiple people contributing to Satoshi-era output.

The documentary includes interviews with family members. Fran Finney, Hal Finney’s widow, tells the filmmakers she believes her husband probably played a role, a response William D. Cohan described as “very, very powerful.” Meredith L. Patterson, the widow of Len Sassaman, is also interviewed about whether her late husband could have been involved. The film notes that Sassaman died by suicide in 2011 and Finney died in 2014 from complications of ALS.

Investigators examine other named candidates, including Adam Back, Nick Szabo, David Chaum, Paul Le Roux and Wei Dai, and offer reasons the film says led them to discount those individuals. The team also consulted Kathleen Puckett, a former FBI agent who worked on the Unabomber case, to assess likely motivations; her analysis found the creator did not appear primarily motivated by personal financial gain.

A 90-minute interview recorded in 2021 with Sam Bankman-Fried is included in the film’s reporting but did not appear in the final edit. Bankman-Fried was later sentenced to 25 years in prison for fraud. The documentary also features conversations with figures in technology and finance who discussed the importance, or lack of it, that they attach to identifying Satoshi.

The filmmakers present their conclusion as the outcome of four years of investigation and do not frame it as definitive proof. The film adds testimony, timeline analyses and technical comparisons to the public record about the question of who created Bitcoin.