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Polymarket Bettors Shuffle Odds of Bitcoin’s Creator Reveal Ahead of HBO Documentary
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Sam Reynolds, Shaurya Malwa
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Len Sassaman, once a favorite with Polymarket bettors as a possible contender to be Nakamoto, is out of the lead.
The consensus amongst Polymarket bettors is that it’s someone not on the list.
The odds of the late Len Sassaman being revealed as the elusive pseudonymous founder of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, in an HBO documentary slumped to 14% after his wife, Meredith L. Patterson, said he was not and that the company had not approached her when making the documentary.
A Polymarket contract asking bettors who the documentary would name saw the odds on Sassaman, who died in 2011, as high as 55% over the weekend. They dropped sharply after DLNews published an interview with Patterson. The program will be screened at 02:00 UTC on Wednesday (9 p.m. Tuesday ET).
“I kind of wonder whether I’m screwing with the prediction markets by answering honestly when people ask me questions, but long story short, f*ck em,” Patterson told DL News.
The early speculation on Sassaman led to a number of memecoins named after him, and some even after his cat, trending on social media and within crypto circles focused on various blockchains. Some people contacted Patterson for confirmation and received an address on the Solana blockchain for token donations in return.
Patterson was not the only contender. Bitcoin proponent and businessman Samsow Mow said Blockstream CEO and early Bitcoin developer Adam Back would be unveiled as Nakamoto. Another, smart-contracts pioneer Nick Szabo, briefly led odds on Polymarket in the late U.S. hours Monday, before Sassaman retook the flag.
Back refuted Mow’s assertion, calling it a joke and tweeting a denial, saying he doesn’t know who Satoshi is. Mow is expected to appear in the documentary.
Despite no conclusive leak of the reveal, the deluge of rumors and speculaton was enough to move millions of dollars among various candidates on Polymarket in the past 24 hours.
As of Tuesday afternoon Hong Kong time, “Other/Multiple” has over 56%, with Sassaman taking 13%, ahead of Back who has just over 11%, with over $13 million bet on the question.
