In the basement of the US Justice Department, there's a
file called Fanu Lenu. First name unknown.
Last name unknown. It's the official government
investigation into the. Creator.
Of Bitcoin. In this episode, Hollywood
producer Tucker Thule and veteran private investigator
Tyler Maroney joined me to talk about their four year quest to
finish what the government couldn't.
We'll discuss their journey, the smoking gun clues that they
found, the suspects they ruled out and the reality of unmasking
alleged and take around as we also explore the one thing that
matters even more than a name. I think the film that Tucker and
Tyler made doesn't feel like a hunt, but rather like a tribute
to Bitcoin as a gift given to the world.
If you are enjoying my content, it would mean a lot to me if you
could subscribe to the channel and like my video to support my
journey. Thanks a lot.
Now let's dive in to this episode.
All right, Tucker Thule and Tyler Maroney, welcome to
Bitcoin for Millennials. Thank you.
Happy to be here.
Yeah, nice to have you guys here, Tucker.
We met exactly on this day of recording one year ago in in
Vegas. I don't know how we got
connected, but we, we ended up talking about this film that you
were making and it was almost coming out for.
I remember when we talked last year and it, it took, it took a
little longer, but along the way you sent me a preview of finding
Satoshi And I, I remember finishing this documentary at
like 11 AM in the, in the, in the morning and I, and I called
you to, to, to tell you that, that I, I loved it.
And I think I know there's a lot of ideas around who Satoshi,
there's a lot of searches, right?
There's a lot of publications around it, etcetera.
But, and we'll talk about this. I, I, I think this is also a
really great tribute to what Bitcoin is, right?
And kind of like the ethos behind it.
So I'm, I'm happy to have you guys here.
I first kind of wanted to start, Tucker, I mean, you, you
produced a lot of Hollywood films, kind of like in this
traditional system, right? And for this film, you decided
to be more like self distributed, you partnered with
Coin Base did did looking into Bitcoin and the decentralization
et cetera kind of like change your view on on your own
industry can share a bit about that?
Well, it certainly did on this film.
And from the beginning we were having debates initially, but I
think those quickly turned into we've, we've formed a pretty
definitive opinion, opinion that we wanted to honor the structure
of Bitcoin, right? So no, no one in between person
A and person B. And this idea of, of being able
to get the film direct to the consumer from the people who
made the film without someone in between and, you know, a big
company, you know, studio, whatever, felt just more organic
to the story we were telling. And we're really happy that we
we did it. And Tyler, you are a experienced
private investigator, you usually look for people who
don't want to be found for for a lot of.
Bad reasons, right? How did it feel for you
investigating someone who's more like like a ghost, but kind of
seen as a, as a hero globally by a lot of people?
Like it's a it's a different angle.
Eyes I I presume? Yeah.
You know, it's a great, it's a compliment to us when clients
come and they say, look, we've been trying to achieve this
thing, whatever it is, recover stolen money or find a missing
person. And we've hired lawyers and
we've, you know, done everything we could ourselves.
And we've kind of gotten to the end of that road and we don't
know what else to do. So what can you bring to it
that's new? And that's kind of what happened
in this case. I mean, Tucker had this real
fascination with this mystery that many of us didn't realize
how how kind of profound and, and, and, and ongoing it was.
I mean, unless you're really well versed in the Satoshi
mythology and the history of Bitcoin, you don't really know
how well Satoshi did, you know, hiding his identity.
And it's such an achievement in this day and age, the digital
world that we live in. So in that sense, it was a real
opportunity to do the kind of investigation we've never really
done before. So, Tucker, where did your
fascination come from? In 2020 when COVID hit and we
all had to go home and lock our front doors and clean our
packages, I was in pre production on a film.
We had to shut down and come back home, and I'd been
interested in Satoshi, but in honestly looking for something
to focus on that I didn't require traveling to some exotic
place to shoot something. I thought there might be an
interesting story there. I knew that a lot of people had
done great research before us, so I really just dove in and
started reading everything I could about Satoshi from that
point on and pretty quickly figured out, well, no one really
has a definitive answer. And in my estimation, this is
the single biggest financial mystery of all time.
Satoshi, you know, today is the Satoshi wallet at least is, you
know, has a very significant amount of wealth, somewhere
between I think 80 billion and 120 billion, depending on the
price of Bitcoin. In the last sort of six months,
that's been the vacillation. So having some entity have or
person have that amount of money, never sell it, never move
it, you know, is a fascinating thing.
And and as our partner on this film, Bill Cohan likes to say,
it's not human nature to have that kind of wealth and never
touch it. So that that just sets up a
mystery. And I'm a storyteller and, and I
love to to to try to solve mysteries or to try to tell
stories about mysteries, especially when they're very
complex and involved, you know, a lot of different people.
But pretty quickly we figured out that this was not just a
mystery, but a human story, a story about human beings.
And I think that's what different differentiates the
film potentially from other films about this.
We're not, it's not some opaque, you know, person in a mass.
This was a human being. These were human beings.
And when Tyler came on board, we really dove in to figure out not
just, you know, where the story starts in terms of Satoshi, but
all of the events that led up to the creation of Bitcoin and
probably gave Satoshi the motivation to do what Satoshi
did. Yeah.
So did you guys have any suspicions when you started?
I think, Tucker, you probably more than Tyler, like Tyler did.
Did you start from just from scratch and did that help?
Like how how is, I mean, like in the Bitcoin community, they have
all these different ideas around it, right.
And we'll and we'll get to like some people don't don't like the
kind of attempt at doxing Satoshi, for example.
And yeah, like how how did you start?
Did you know anything about Bitcoin or had you ever read
anything about Satoshi? A little bit, I mean, that was
the first thing that we did, you know, picking up on, on what
Tucker had done is we made an effort to basically read
everything that we could find. Every Medium post, every Reddit,
every subreddit, every news article to kind of figure out
what had been done already. You know, when we came across,
you know, all of the candidates that had been floated before,
whether it's Hal Finney or Steve Jobs, whether it's Elon Musk or
or Nick Zabo, right? And these are names that have
been floated out there for many years.
And so we took all of the candidates.
There might have been 15 or 20 that we had at least.
And then we said, OK, let's put them over to the side and let's
start again from scratch. Because what we'd never want to
do is begin with a hunch or a conspiracy theory, because if
you do that, you're already kind of putting blinders on like from
an investigative methodology. And so we, we put those to the
side and then we, we, we went out into the world.
Actually, one of the first things we did brand is we, we
started interviewing all of these cryptographers, you know,
computer scientists who build these privacy and security
systems, right? These are the men and women
who've written software over the last 2530 years to allow us to
send emails to each other. So no one can hack into our
emails or to send a financial transaction, a wire, for
instance, so that no one else can hack into that.
And these are the people who built these systems.
And we suspected and knew that Satoshi came out of this world
in the 90s. There was this group of people,
as you know, well called the cypherpunks, which were
essentially kind of, you know, nerdy mathematicians.
But they had this idea that they could use technology to try to
create some kind of protection for the rest of us, like as
corporate power and government power was increasing.
And so back to your question about candidates for who we
thought Satoshi would be. I started asking people in this
community kind of very open mindedly, like, you know, when
you talk amongst yourselves, I would say like, what are the
names that float to the surface? And genuinely wanting to know
what they thought, not not giving them the names of people
that we'd already considered. And that was a very valuable
exercise because they started naming people who were
fascinating in that they had been curious about digital
payment systems and various kinds of electronic cash going
all the way back to the 1980s and 1990s, which basically
taught us, oh, this is a history project, so we need to
understand the history so that we understand where we are
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That's the bitcoinway.com/brum. Yeah, it's really interesting if
if you look at also like the technologies used and, and all
the research before you could say that Bitcoin is kind of like
this culmination of even even like 70 years of computer
science type research, right. Where, you know, the cypherpunks
that you that you reference were I think really at the 1st that
we're at the point of trying to apply the actual knowledge into,
you know, practical products or examples.
There's this famous example of the the the printing of the
T-shirts from the PGP team, right?
And that they travel and that they get into the bunch of
trouble. And actually later, I don't know
if that's also in the documentary where Phil Zimmerman
PGP, he talks about that Hal Finney was actually, I think the
the person that had that idea or whatever, right?
And it Phil Zimmerman took the blame for him or something like
something like like that. But I always thought it was just
interesting to see that these ideas were kind of like old, but
they're still relevant today or like even even more relevant
today than than let's say 40 years ago, right?
And so I, I think there's an interesting tension here where
where there's a lot of people that are obviously very focused
on privacy, right? And, and you guys entered a, a
community, I think, where doxing is kind of like the, the
ultimate sin. And so like early on, like, like
you just shared, Tyler, when, when you guys went out there,
did you feel like you were being treated as outsiders to kind of
like ruin, ruin the magic or, or more like journalists and, and,
and people actually genuinely interested, you know, like
Tucker, like you shared how you know your history before kind of
like trying to find the truth, like, was there any hostility
trying to build this distrust? There wasn't as much hostility,
to be honest, as as we expected. And I think part of that is, you
know, again, I was taking Tucker's lead on.
We really wanted to go out into the world with a genuine
curiosity about what we were trying to learn.
And one of the first things I did actually is I, I called up
maybe the most famous cryptographer in history, whose
name is Wit Diffie, who Tucker knew all about by the way, to
give, to give him credit. And I, I said, hey, Wit, by the
way, Wit Diffie, for those who don't know, is most famous for
Co creating public key cryptography in the early 1970s.
And this is used by RSA and then by PGP and then Bitcoin and
countless other technologies to give us the protection in the
digital sphere that we have to this day, 2 generations later.
And I said, Rick, can I take you out for lunch?
And he and I had like a four hour lunch in Silicon Valley, in
Palo Alto. And at the end of that meeting,
he said, you know what, you should come with me to the
crypto conference in Santa Barbara, which is a cryptography
conference that's been happening since the 1980s.
You can basically be my date. And so I went with with with
Whit Diffie to this conference. And it's like I said this to
Tucker once before, it's like going to the Oscars with Robert
Redford. It's like this legendary guy
who's like introducing me around to people.
And and I realized he was doing that because he believed in the
mission and he felt that we were taking a very cautious approach
to this, not trying to unmask or dox anybody at all.
And getting wit to to literally like interrupt people in the
middle of conversations and introduce me to people was
really a wonderful way to get, you know, an introduction into
that world. Yeah, yeah, Tucker for you, I
think you said, you know, you're a storyteller and I think, you
know, I I'm deep in in Bitcoin maxi Twitter, right.
So, and I've been kind of like teasing the film I'm sharing
like I, you know, with people like, I, I think you will like,
you know, how it's portrayed, what the, what the conclusion
is, etcetera, right? And now, now that it's out, I've
seen people comment like, you know, this film is rehashing
whatever we talked about in forums like 7 years ago or
whatever. But like, how, how do you, you
know, that is obviously a way smaller group of people.
That's kind of where I want to get to.
Like I, I, I feel that you play a different role in this just a
Bitcoin story, this part of the, of the, of the Bitcoin story.
So, so yeah, the kind of like how, how do you see that where
you know, this, this could all stay obscure in some Internet
forums or some, some deep, you know, little groups that go very
deep, right? Or you can create a certain form
of a medium and then share it with a bigger audience.
Like could you maybe share a bit about how how you experienced
that, I want to say tension or maybe also kind of share about
how you view the medium of creating a documentary like this
where? It's a really good.
It's like a culmination of the of the information, right?
Like, you don't have to be an Internet sleuth to to to to get
a sense of who Satoshi could be. That's right.
And, and I think The Who is certainly important, The Who is
Satoshi, but the how and why is also really, really, really
important. And when we started this movie,
we wanted to encompass all of that, right?
So what were the conditions in the world that led to this need
for privacy? What were the conditions in the
world that that led to this sort of notion that I shouldn't have
to be subject to putting up, you know, something of value through
an institution that I have no trust in a relationship with?
So they can then go pass that on to somebody else and take fees
in the middle. You know, this, this libertarian
leaning idea that we should all be, you know, have privacy.
We should all be, have the ability to, to if I wanted to
send you Bram some money today, I should have the ability to do
that without interference. And so that the how and the
events that leading up to that, that led up to this creation and
multiple creations that preceded it were equally as important.
But I think at the end of it, we wanted to put to put what we
thought was the answer forward, but we also wanted to tell the
story of the people. It's a human story at the end of
the day. Satoshi isn't some, you know,
crazy figure somewhere, human being with family, with
ambition, with problems like we all have.
That's what's relatable and storytelling is when you can
connect to the humans in the story and the reasons that they
do what they do and their brilliance and their creativity
and the sadness and all of the emotional aspects of it.
So that's not doxing. That's just understanding,
that's context. We definitely went to great
lengths to not have this come off as a, you know, we're going
to, you know, rug pull somebody and, you know, surprise and you
know, do some irresponsible reveal.
We really wanted context to help us and I think context really
helps in those situations when you understand, you know, why,
how you know all of the ingredients that go into
something like this. Additionally, I think in terms
of appealing to a broader audience, we set out to not only
solve the mystery, but to explain in a way that didn't
feel like you were going to school why Bitcoin is good.
You know why we think it's good, what the virtues of it are, how
it came to be and how it works. Because in the movie business,
if you can't pitch something in an elevator, you know it's it's,
it's hard to sell that as a film.
And as much as I knew about Bitcoin and as much as the
people I was friends with knew about Bitcoin, when you sat down
to get an explanation of what Bitcoin was, it was like a 2535
minute explanation that went on to the next day.
I forgot about it does this right.
And so we wanted to simplify that accurately and make it
entertaining to people. And so I think the, the big part
of the movie that is overlooked when your movie is called
Finding Satoshi is, you know, the explaining what Bitcoin part
is, the explaining what the blockchain is, the explaining
about privacy. So these are all things that I
think are infinitely interesting and I think important in the
world and important if you want to, if you're interested in
finance, if you're interested in in in the economy, if you're
interested in how money works. So I think we, we do a good job
and you know, I hope, I hope people appreciate it of
explaining that and sort of deconstructing all that in a way
that very relatable and understandable.
Yeah, now this is exactly why I thought it, it was valuable,
right? As compared to this, For
example, last week or two weeks ago, there was this New York
Times article took calling Adam Beck Satoshi with extremely
simplistic reasoning. I that's that's a nice way to
say it, I think. And also, again, I think
rehashing stuff that has been debunked way before, right?
And it kind of shows that that it's it's just for the clicks,
you know, like, oh, this is this this mysterious person sitting
on 100 billion and whatever. Like, where are they?
You know, something, something, it's this guy that doesn't
really show, I think respect for, for the kind of gift that
that Bitcoin is to the world. And I personally think that is
that is very important. And, and also, I, I think kind
of shows also the difference between, you know, honest
interest in the actual subject or trying to, to get clicks for,
for the ads on the on the website, right.
And so that's, that's really also why, why I thought it was,
was valuable. There's, there's a moment in
the, in the film that I thought it was really interesting.
I learned a new term. How did what did you say?
First name unknown. Last name unknown a.
New Lenu first name a new a new Lanu.
Yeah, so you're sitting with a Justice Department official and
and they mentioned this this Satoshi file, right?
With with this first name unknown.
Yeah, We were sitting with Katie Hahn, who was in the Justice
Department during the Obama administration.
She's a prosecutor during the Obama administration.
And she was tasked with looking into what is Bitcoin, what is
this? And she was explaining that
there is a file that exists that the title of it is Fanu Lenu,
and it's not John Lenu or or Fanu Smith.
It's first name unknown, last name unknown.
And that is the investigation into Bitcoin.
And we just found that fascinating that that, you know,
that that's sort of, you know, something you would find in a
detective's office and for an unsolved crime or something like
that. And it's very relatable.
And when you're in anybody who's, you know, delved into
trying to figure out who Satoshi is starts at that same place.
Like, you know, we know Satoshi is not Satoshi's real name, you
know, so first name unknown, last name unknown is kind of the
starting place of this investigation.
And you know, where it leads you is, you know, and you referred
to the New York Times article. I just want to say like, I think
John's an incredible journalist and and reporter.
There's a tendency and we we are guilty of it as well with this
movie, to be overly optimistic about how long it will take you
to do this. And we learned the hard way.
And I certainly know this movie took twice the amount of time
that I thought it would and twice the amount of money that I
thought it would, because you can't force an answer.
You have to come. You have to come upon it.
And so if you have a deadline for, oh, I'm going to write this
now, I'm not saying that John did, but I'm, if you have a
deadline for I'm going to write this article on who Satoshi
Nakamoto is, you better come up with the answer by the deadline.
We got lucky. You know, there was a moment in
time in the movie where we almost just stopped because we
we were going down one road and we thought for sure that was the
answer. And then we found out it
couldn't be the answer and you had to start over.
And that's a hard thing to do when you're spending money and
time and, and, and so I have empathy for everybody who delves
into this. It's a lot more difficult than
it it appears at first. Yeah, I mean that that's also
why it's so intriguing, I would say, right.
So maybe Tyler, Tyler for you. So you talk to this Justice
Department lady, right? And I, I, I assume she was
tasked with looking into Bitcoin because it was used in, in Silk
Road or just, you know, in, in some criminal endeavors, right?
What, what was it like? Like talking to her and, and
realizing that there was this first name, unknown last name on
them there. There was an actual file on
that. Well, you know, it was actually
Bill Cohan who did that interview.
Tucker, were you with him during that conversation?
You were. But I think you're right, Brad,
you make you bring an important point up, which is that she was
investigating Bitcoin because it was in that period of Bitcoins
evolution in history when when people heard the word Bitcoin,
they probably thought criminal activity and fraud because all
of the news stories back then were Silk Road or Silk Road
related, right? Because bad guys were using it.
And in some ways it was like the worst period in Bitcoin because
like this was like bad PR for a company that had no PR agency.
And so, you know, it's a natural thing for a law enforcement
agency to kind of investigate it.
We found it fascinating because not only she seemed to be saying
to us, not only were we looking into people who are using
Bitcoin, but we were looking into the origins of it itself.
It's almost like saying who created cash, right?
And what are we going to do with this new form of money and how
is it used? I don't think we know to this
day if they have the answer. My personal opinion is that they
never got the answer, which makes you feel all all the more
exciting that we that we have a really a good answer to that
question. But I think that's an important
part of the history of understanding of Bitcoin, that
it did go through this phase of really negative publicity
largely around the criminal activity that was swirling
around it. Yeah, it's interesting, right,
because I, I think in in Bitcoin, we say, you know, bit
Bitcoin has the the protocol, right?
It's basically the the invention of language or math or you know,
like grammar or chess or it's just a set of rules.
So there it also isn't really that much you can ban basically
because conceptually this exists, right?
And it cannot, cannot really die.
You can create a, a different version of it, but then it's not
like chess or like English grammar or like, or like math.
And so there are many people that start very enthusiastically
to figure this out, right. And, and I think they also run
into this not only like the intellectual wall, but also
this, I don't know, like the wall of humility or, or
something like that. And they feel kind of imply to,
to, to talk about it. And, and so for example, right,
like you have now, of course, I, I don't again, like I saw a
preview of the movie. So I don't know if it's in this
version, right? But I assume you don't talk
about the Epstein, Epstein stuff, right?
Like people saying like, oh, this is Epstein.
And like, like Epstein is talking about like I met Satoshi
or like there's other people that communicate with him that
say like, oh, I met Satoshi. And there's even this video of
this special agent of, of, of Homeland Security that's like on
video where she says, like I met with the four Satoshi's and
stuff and stuff like that. Yeah.
What do you guys think about that?
Like does the government know more than they let on?
You know, are there 4 Satoshi's and, and is that a thing or is
it what you said? Tyler?
You just think like it's, it's kind of a, it's kind of a dud.
It's just people talking because it's, it's interesting.
Yeah, I mean, my personal opinion, that's kind of a dud.
We actually did ask the CIA and the NSA what they knew like, and
we filed, you know, open records requests with the agencies.
They still have not responded to our requests, which is kind of
interesting. But one thing I'll add to your
point about, you know, math is that another example in the in
the history of all this is the story of Phil Zimmerman, who you
mentioned who, who talked to us at length for our film.
And the reason that his story is so interesting is that, you
know, so Phil created PGP, which was the first truly encrypted
e-mail system in the early 1990s.
And one of the first things the government did, the State
Department is they considered launching an investigation.
And in fact, they did. And they considered arresting
and indicting Phil and his staff because they felt that this
encryption could be classified as ammunition.
So it needed a license from the federal government because they
worried that it was going to be used by terrorists and
criminals. And eventually the case was
dropped. And to the people who happened
to have been working for him at that time were Hal Finney, who
wrote almost all of the substantive code for that, and
Len Sassman, who are two key people in our film.
And the reason I tell that story is that that set the precedent,
or that was part of a precedent of the government being
skeptical of software, skeptical of coders who did something that
was so innovative and so creative in very much the same
way that Satoshi did. And so our understanding is that
the people who worked at PGP saw what Phil went through and
witnessed that attack by the government, which by the way,
eventually it was great publicity for PGP in the long
run because you can't, as John Callas, who is the Co founder of
PGP said to us, you can't outlaw arithmetic or algebra, which is
essentially what they are trying to do.
And so here we are. Fast forward to Bitcoin, where
why not be a little creative and anonymous and releasing, you
know, some open source technology because the
government has been skeptical of this before.
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set right and. This is what I alluded to
earlier, this this part of where I think they printed books,
right? And they travelled with the
books and they printed the code on, on shirts and stuff like
that to, to kind of like make a, make a joke of the ridiculous
point that, you know, words are, are ammo basically.
And I, I like that this is, this is a certain way of thinking,
right? It's not only, it's, it's a
certain way of thinking that comes from witnessing that you
might end up creating just, you know, using language to
eventually evade what turns out to be, you know, very intrusive
actions by a government that should basically leave you
alone, right? And so I love that idea or, or,
or just the seed for that thinking, I think never, never
dies. And and after PGPI think Bitcoin
and, and like the torrents, of course, like before that, right?
Which I think if you look at the branch of all the things that
came together, you have these, this part, you know, PGP and and
also the, the P2P torrents, etcetera that, you know,
eventually helped also get to, to, to Bitcoin.
So I think Bitcoin kind of feels like this masterpiece
combination because if you can transfer value without any
permission, right? Like that's, that's that's the
ultimate kind of like This is why people call Bitcoin FU
money, right? Like this is the ultimate FU
basically against anyone who wants to to control you.
So like that type of thinking, I think is just extremely
interesting. And it's not a surprise that of
course you're looking at that corner, right?
So before we kind of go to the reveal of who you ended up with,
I'd love to know. And then Tucker, you just
mentioned, you know, there was one, one point or maybe multiple
points where you kind of like wanted to, wanted to give up,
give up. Was there a point where the the
film project or or a case started to become an obsession
more like did did you get to a point where you were like, OK, I
need to, I need to know. I need to know this now?
I mean, no, we were obsessed and highly interested in solving it
and coming up with a concrete answer that said we wanted to
find the right one. And we weren't comfortable, you
know, putting out something that we didn't, we couldn't stand
behind and that we didn't believe in.
And so I think the temptation at that moment in time was what,
you know, maybe we just stopped. Like maybe we just stopped
because, you know, we were, we were definitively down a path
and we were literally going into a phase of, OK, we're going to
start finishing them. And, you know, that turned out
to be really good luck for us. Meaning the movie is infinitely
more interesting. We got a lot more great
interviews that we would not have otherwise had in the film.
And I think the answer is, is is right.
So I so thank goodness for that. You just have to, you know,
these things are expensive, right?
So as you go, you're spending money and you don't know when
that's going to stop. And so we had to, you know, try
to be we we did it all on a, you know, as, as economically as we
could. Tyler was flying, flying around
the world and coach not in first class.
And, and we were, you know, and, and we were sort of doing the
best we could. The, the obsession came when,
when you start to feel like there's a line that you can
follow and you think you're on the right path, that's where the
obsession really kicks in because because you can see the
finish line and you're obsessed from from getting to where you
are to there. And so I think that's, you know,
that drove us through, I'll call it the second-half of this film.
I think, I think there's a common critique that, you know,
people that, that investigate Satoshi only kind of like look
at the known suspects, right? I mean, Tyler, you just
mentioned, right? We we just started reading being
about what? What has everyone been saying,
etcetera. Is there a version of the world
where the real Satoshi is someone whose name has just
never been mentioned, you think? Or is it just are the bread
crumbs too too hot basically? I mean, my personal opinion is
like, we, we, we got it right. Having said that, you know, we,
we've never said things like case closed and this is a
smoking gun. Like we're, our job was really
to try to like gain insights into this world and to learn as
much as we could and then to get the people in this world to talk
to us, right? And so that's why we got, you
know, the spouses and the best friends and the former
colleagues to go on the record and be very honest and open and
in some cases cry because they remembered these people with
such dear feelings. But having said all that, like,
there were plenty of suspects, by the way, remember, Tucker, we
came up with the names of people who, you know, who had been
interested in digital cash, were excellent coders in C++ and died
in a car accident, like in 2012, right?
Like, and there were that's just that's a that's a real example.
And and many people like that who we said, OK, we need to keep
these people up on the board, right.
We have the red string. We got the whole detective thing
going. And it wasn't until we really
started getting traction with the people that we only landed
on who I can talk about. As soon as Tucker gives me
permission to say that, we started to feel feel like we
were going. And and the first person who
gave us that Bram was was John Callas who was the Co founder of
PGP, who was very good friends with Hal Finney, knew Len Sassam
and very well. And by the way, John Kallis is
today the moderator of the Mets Dowd e-mail list, which is
exactly where the Satoshi White's paper first appeared on
Halloween 2008. And John Kallis said come on
over, let's talk about this. So I went to John's house and we
spent hours and hours and hours talking about this.
And I was learning from him and I was asking him questions.
And then I did it again. And then he introduced me to
colleagues of his and to friends of his.
And then we got to meet Will Price and I went to Will Price's
house. Will Price, by the way, was the
chief architect of PGP, worked directly for Phil Zimmerman,
employed Hal Finney, gave Hal Finney all of his assignments,
knew his coding skills. And so we really started to get
into it back and forth. And in fact, and Tucker was
wonderful about his support of this.
I said to him, I want to make sure that we are not like going
through the world with blinders on.
I said, I want to make the case against Hal Finney to Will Price
on camera. And this is in the film where I
say I'm going to lay out why I think Hal is not Satoshi.
And he said good luck. And so I went point after point
after point. And it was he schooled me.
It was wonderful to to watch Will.
And he wasn't trying to be right, and he wasn't trying to
be political. This is my personal feeling.
He was memorializing a dear friend of his who he believed
deserved credit for one of the most beautiful technological
creations of the modern era. And so that kind of experience
from an investigative standpoint was groundbreaking.
Yeah, So the, the the the conclusion, right, hints at a
collaboration between Hal Finney and and Len Sessman.
Len Sessman, who also worked at at PGP, right, where your theory
is now that Hal was a coder. Len wrote the the paper
basically. And what was the, I want to call
it a smoking gun, right? But like, maybe it was that
moment that that you just mentioned.
But that's also what I really liked about the film is that you
see what you just said, right? Like they are they are
memorializing or just remembering a person that had
very deep motivation for the creation of something possibly
like this, right? That's how they talk about him.
And then later also the the the people that are connected with
with Len. How do you kind of like, what's
the trade off between like seeing that and sitting there
with someone? But also, you know, Satoshi was
like super active in forums, right?
And then I think in the film you also talk about, you know, that
people had a lot of these alternative names and they talk
to themselves and etcetera, right?
Like, so, so how do you kind of like have that trade off between
having a feeling of someone is describing, you know, the, the,
the, the perfect picture of, of hell, you know, having the
skills and the ideology and whatnot to, to be able to create
this first is OK, How do you connect that practically?
And for example, there's the point where hell goes to this
race, right? He does.
That's the famous picture of hell Finney.
But then Satoshi is also active. Like how do you kind of like
comb through that stuff to to get a clearer picture?
So I think there's a few examples that are in the film
that I'm happy to talk about, but one is this example of Len
was very public about posting about like basically shit
talking Twitter, shit talking Bitcoin.
Disliking Bitcoin? Yeah.
Disliking Bitcoin and we talked about a lot about this.
We, by the way, we weren't the first ones to discover this.
It had been known. And so we said, who can we call
to ask them about this, about Lens activity?
And so he called his very best friend in the world, Bram Cohen,
who's an amazing participant in this film.
Bram Cohen, by the way, who runs Chia, the cryptocurrency today,
and is the inventor of BitTorrent, which in many ways
is very similar to Bitcoin. And then Meredith Patterson
Lens, Len's wife, and both of them told us things that were so
powerful and so useful in helping us understand.
Like Len, for example, Meredith told us when I said to her at
one point, is it possible that Len was involved in creating
Bitcoin or created Bitcoin and never told you?
And without missing a beat, she said, yeah, of course to her
that was like something that was very possible.
But I think when we think of Bitcoin today, we think there's
no way someone creates a multi billion dollar asset and doesn't
tell their spouse, right. But back then that's not what it
was. It was like a brand new
technology that was still being like designed essentially in the
first couple of years by a small group of cryptographers and
enthusiasts. And then with Bram Cohen, the
example was, you know, why would Len speak badly about his own
invention? And he said, like, quite matter
of factly. Well, it's the perfect way of
helping create the anonymity around this, right?
It's like a deflection. And so it was wonderful to get
there almost very matter of fact responses to that.
And because of who they were and are and because of their
connection to Lynn, best friend and wife, right?
These are not people who knew him in high school, right?
Or he'll be the most important people in his life or some of
the most important people and willing to talk to us about
this. Felt very powerful.
But I'll let Tucker pick up on what I was mentioning.
Yeah. I mean, I think that you said it
really well. The specifically with regard to
that, the sort of the idea that you want as many different
points. If you're if you're trying to
create something and you're trying to do it suit anonymously
and not have people understand who it was, you're going to
attack it. You're going to attack it from
different voices. You're going to try to throw
people off the scent. And we learned in that, in that
interview with with Meredith that Len was an expert at that,
that he that he studied stylometry or stylometric
anonymity. And she talks specifically about
about that methodology and, and about how Len, you know, was
really a student of that and many people at the time were,
you know, practice the same thing.
So I think that's just a really nuanced and specific thing that
that speaks to why he would do something like that.
Yeah, you, you, you had Len's wife on camera eventually.
Also friend. Finney Hell's wife.
I saw a tweet of friend where she shared, you know, that that
you approached her in 2023, that she didn't really want to
participate. I've seen an earlier interview
of friend Finney where she talks about actually being swatted.
I think when when hell was still alive, but like very sick, like
bed bound and stuff, which I don't know the details of that
story, but you know, that sounds terrifying for her, of course.
So, so I understand the apprehension, yeah.
Why or how did you did you convince her to actually talk to
you? Like she's probably probably the
most public relative of of any of these, you know, possible
suspects of being Satoshi and makes a lot of sense that that
she doesn't want to publicity like why what?
What turned her around? Well, First off, we always knew
that having her in the film would would be very important
for us. And we tried as as you
referenced, we tried several times.
Tyler reached out and had some communication with her and she
really dismissed wanting to be involved at all.
Ultimately, we finished the film and I think that was the version
of the film that you saw about a year ago.
And we were very happy with with where it was.
And we felt that in many ways it was the opposite of a sort of
Daxing story. And it honored it really
honored, you know, how's contributions and many, many,
many of those who led up to bitcoins contributions.
And so we wanted to try a second shot and and we were fortunate
enough to to, you know, have a conversation and show the film
to Natalie Burnell, who is friendly with Fran.
And she was moved by the movie and, and sent an e-mail to Fran
suggesting that she at least watch it and, and no promises,
but that she watch it and, and, and, you know, see how she felt
about it. So we drove up Christian Parent,
who works with me, and I drove up to Santa Barbara and we
rented A screening place and we showed Fran the film.
I was very nervous about it. I, I think I called Tyler six
times in the parking lot while she was watching the movie, just
because I knew how important it was not only to me, but to the
movie that she, you know, felt protected by it and, and honored
by it. And, and, and, you know, we
really wanted ultimately to get her on camera and, and she came
out of the film and, you know, gave me a big hug and, and said
she she really, you know, was moved and, and thought the film
was, was, you know, very interesting and compelling.
And she agreed to go on camera. So we were, you know, an example
of why had we finished it earlier, that would have never
happened. And so we were fortunate in that
and we feel really lucky to have her in the movie.
She's a wonderful person, just a very genuine and, and sweet
person and we're very protective of her because of what's
happened in the past with her. And so we, we kind of wanted to
make it very clear at the end of the movie that, you know, we've
done work, you know, on whether she could potentially have any,
you know, keys or anything like that or any Bitcoin and she
doesn't, you know, and defend. It's we're very definitive on
that point. We just don't want anybody sort
of chasing that any more than they have in the past.
And and we want to we want to protect her in that regard.
But I think she was really an important part of the movie and
the sentiment and what she said and how she talked about how
comes through. Again, it's the human story.
It's, you know, this is a husband and wife who loved each
other and cared for each other and knew each other.
And, and she she maintains and, and we respect this and we put
it in in a card at the end of the movie.
She maintains that, you know, while she thinks, you know, how
certainly could have collaborated.
And, and you know, I don't want to put words in her mouth, but
but there, there's a lot saying that he did collaborate with Len
in the time before the code was released.
Both of them, you know, she knew that they were in conversation
and that they knew each other. And she, she, she still believes
that Hal is not the one who called himself Satoshi and that,
you know, he, he did not mind that the, the million Bitcoin.
But look, we, we believe that how was integral.
And, you know, it's a, it's a, it's an interesting thing to
talk about because who gets the, do you go all the way back to,
you know, PGP and give credit to those people for Bitcoin?
You know, everybody gets a little bit of a slice of credit
leading up to this invention because without any one of those
individual pieces, it would not be what it is.
So I think ultimately it feels to us and it felt to us and we
we, we stand by it that Hal and Len are the two that that
contributed the most in the end there to get this online.
Yeah, yeah, I, I think the, the part about, you know, the, it's
the combination of different types of, of technologies that
eventually culminate into Bitcoin, right?
And I think the big invention that Satoshi did was solving
the, the, the Byzantine general problem, right, which is
eventually also game theoretical type problem, which is 1 of
Len's expertise is right. So that makes a lot of sense
combined with the, the technical work that Hal did and so on that
the game theoretical part. I want to, I want to talk about
like one smoking gun type of, of evidence that, that people are
talking about now, like on on the Internet.
We kind of mentioned it before we started, but I, I, I want to
have it, have it in, in the recording, right?
Like in the white paper, there's, there's only a few
citations, right, of sources. And there the second citation is
about like a very obscure book or print only paper, right?
That that that was released at a conference in 1999 in Belgium.
And it was very hard to, to find, like you could only buy it
at the University of Louvre in Belgium, where, where Len was
active at the time. And when, when we talked before,
you know, you mentioned that you, you thought you saw the
book or you saw the book on the shelf right in, in, in the home
of, of Meredith of Len's wife. And now there's, there's people
online that say, hey, there's a, there's a picture on his Flickr
account that that shows his bookshelf and you see the book
there. Could you kind of elaborate on
if if this was the actual paper or the actual book or not?
Like did you, did you use that part?
Yeah. We did.
We didn't use in the film because we couldn't verify it.
And, and we did we, we someone actually, after, after we
finished the film, reached out to Bill Cohan with this
information and a screenshot of the Flickr account and the, and
the bookcase in the back and just in doing our own work.
And Tyler worked a little bit on it as well.
It appears that that is not the right addition that was cited
in, in the white paper kind of when you go in and you look at
the, the date of it. So, you know, we just didn't
feel, you know, like that could be used as a, as a, as a piece
of evidence. It's obviously interesting, but
those you know, after those conferences, many of those books
were distributed to the attendees of the conference.
And this one, at least the one in the in the Flickr picture,
appears to be from a from a post, you know, white paper, you
know, conference. So.
Yeah, interesting, because it was a game theoretical book,
right? So.
There's no doubt that, that, that, that you know, as, as you
point out, a lot of this stuff was floating around and, and,
and there was a general interest, as there would be
today. If, if, if you know, technical
people, if some revolutionary conference, you know, put out or
impactful conference put out a book, everybody would want to
look into it and read it, you know, whatever it was about.
So I think that these were, while they were rare in terms of
the general public in this small circle, our small, respectively
small circle, they were popular and, and a lot of people looked
at them and read them. Yeah, for you both kind of to to
wrap up some, some questions. Did did, did your personal
appreciation for Bitcoin change after understanding who who
likely build it like you, you had a certain outset from the
start. You both had different starts,
right. How how did your thoughts around
this evolve And yeah, has has Bitcoin become bigger in your
life? Go ahead.
I mean, I suppose my answer is a version of what I said earlier,
which is that I, I gained a real appreciation for the original
motives for why what went into the creation of Bitcoin that I
still think to this day is, is lost for many people.
I mean, and This is why I think some people say it's not
relevant because many things, right, like Listerine,
gunpowder, bubble wrap, these are all inventions that were
created for one reason and we use them for another, right?
And Bitcoin is like that too. And I think that's part of the
beauty of Bitcoin, that it's evolved with the community,
right? Because Bitcoin was released as
open source software. There's no CEO, there's no
board, there's no corporate entity, there's nothing.
It's just software. That's all right.
That's what the code was released to be, which means the
community jumps on board. And it's a, it's a collaboration
of those who are curious about it and interested in about it.
And that to me was in and of itself fascinating along with
this idea that, you know, if you read the white paper, like
Satoshi very clearly says that this is an electronic payment
system, right? It's a, it's a form of digital
cash to protect privacy. And although it doesn't really
do that today, I'm still to this day fascinated by those origins
and watching it become what it is today.
Like almost every day, there's new news about whether it's some
new regulation or lack of regulation or even during the
course of the making of our film, a number of countries took
on Bitcoin as sovereign currency.
I mean, whether you like that or not is a fascinating development
in world history. And so to kind of be beat, we
were involved in this investigation as this asset as
this technology is kind of exploding and and much the way
that AI is today, right? Like every other day you learn
something new about it and where it's going.
And so it's been fun to be surfing on that wave.
Yeah, that's a, that's a really, that's a good answer.
I, I would say for me, I, I really had a, an, an almost
immediate appreciation of Bitcoin when I started learning
about it. And through this process that's
only grown understanding how unique and interesting and
intelligent and, and these people were who, who sort of led
to this creation and how difficult it was at the time to
do gives me a lot of reverence for it and respect for it.
And I do believe that it's become it's, you know, we talked
about it in the movie. It's a it's gone from, it went
from zero to a trillion in sort of less than 10 years, which is
more than any ass, you know, any asset class or company has
faster than any asset class or company has ever done that.
And I think that's for good reason.
I think it's, it's here to stay. It's not going anywhere.
There's a lot of elegance about what it does and, and what it
is. There are certainly, you know,
issues down the road with Quantum and you know, different
things like that that could, you know, be challenging.
But I do believe, I do believe that something as profound as as
I believe Bitcoin is needs a great origin story.
And we wanted to contribute it to that origin story with this
movie in a way that was respectful and accurate.
So I think through that process, I've just grown to appreciate it
even more. Yeah, it's interesting.
I always, you know, use the argument of the do you know how
many ideas are released on the Internet every day, right, in
obscure Internet forums all all over the place.
And then even even 17 years later, this, you know, you could
say random idea, not so random once you get it right, but this,
this random idea is still surviving and thriving.
And I think that is the main signal.
And, and I agree with you. And I also want to emphasize
that, like on one side, I was always at the camp of, you know,
it's, it's, it doesn't matter who Satoshi is.
It's what you said, Tyler, right?
And it also, it doesn't matter because Bitcoin doesn't really
care. That's the whole point, right?
It's not attached to, to anyone. But I do think it's cool that,
you know, and, and I've talked to many people on this podcast
now that come from many different backgrounds and
interests and ages and whatever, you know, there's so many people
that are drawn to Bitcoin in their own way, you know, with
their own creativity and skills and history.
You know, Tucker, you, you, you, you have a lot of history and
telling, telling these stories. So I think it's actually very
cool that you felt compelled to, to tell that story like you just
said, right, like that, that origin story is great.
And I personally don't think it changes anything about Bitcoin.
It, it, it probably even, you know, if you, if you really
watch it and get all the other info besides, you know, Len and
Hal, I think a lot of people will grow more appreciation of,
of the, the concept and the reasoning behind this, right and
the motivation behind this as as well.
And I think that kind of, I would say is, is, is more
important than and, and I think also helps Bitcoin, you know,
and the reason of existence for Bitcoin itself more than the,
the taking away that, that anonymity.
I mean, to a degree, I'd say we're lucky that they are not
alive. I think that that would have
would, well, maybe that's a question.
Would that have changed that for you?
Like, is there a difference between, you know, them being
both deceased or or let's say it were two people that were alive
today? Sure.
There's there's there. There has to be a difference.
And I think that, you know, as, as is discussed in the sorry one
second, as is discussed in the movie, you know, if you have
people who have created something and they're alive,
they're they're looked at as founders almost.
And so attention goes as much to the creation as it does to the
people who created it. And what they say or, you know,
decisions they make become very public and and you can vacillate
in terms of what you might feel about those people versus what
you feel about their invention. I mean, you know, it doesn't
take much imagination to to think about, you know, past
creators, you know, whether it was Jobs and Wozniak or Elon or
whatever, who have created incredibly brilliant things,
which have become, you know, mass distributed and used.
And they're changed the world and impacted people's lives.
And, and sometimes, you know, one of them's in the headlines
or one of them has been in the headlines and everybody swings
in One Direction and then swings back in the other direction.
So I think it's impossible to sort of separate those two
things. I love that.
That the attention right now and in the past has really has
really been on the actual creation as opposed to, you
know, the lives of the people that, you know, created it.
And but I did want to, and we thought it was really, really
important to get into those people's lives and, and again,
honor them because what what they did was, was pretty
incredible and brilliant. So now that the film is out and
people are discussing, you know your conclusion, how have the
reactions to the to the film surprised you, Tyler?
Oh, that's a great question. I mean, it's been largely very
positive, which has been wonderful because in some ways
that's a kind of validation of all the work, the hard work that
we put into it. You know, the fact that in the
last year there have been two other attempts to other projects
like this, the HBO film Money Electric and then the New York
Times piece a few weeks ago. I think, you know, I personally
welcome those, right? Because it's it's smart people,
you know, whether it's Adam McKay or John Kerry Rue, they're
journalists, you know, taking a shot at this.
We disagree with their conclusions.
We have our own, but it's it's been wonderful, you know, as is
evidenced by this podcast. And I want to thank you, Bram,
for asking such, such smart questions because, you know, to
Tucker's point, it's, it's more than just who, but why and what
kind of person you know, And that's the benefit of having
someone like Tucker tell these stories because his job is
narrative. It's storytelling, right?
It's keeping audiences engaged, engaged.
And in fact, I would make an argument that we need more
scripted film makers like Tucker to make documentaries because
it's a really fun story that we're able to tell, you know,
basically using, by their own admission, kind of nerdy
mathematicians, right. And what an amazing project to
be able to compile with that. So All in all, I'm really happy
with the reception so far. Would you agree, Tucker?
I would, yeah. I mean, I think that people seem
to generally really appreciate the effort and the movie and
we're getting a lot of positive feedback.
So anytime that's the case, it's great.
Obviously there are people who disagree or have their own
conclusions and that that's never going to stop.
We won't be, I doubt the last, you know, documentary on, on
Satoshi. I think there will be more and
that will continue to happen. But I think we, we at least
stirred it up in a good way and we've we think we've done really
good work and, and conclusive work.
Awesome guys. Well, thank you so much for
coming on the podcast. I really appreciate your time
and and thanks for sharing how this journey went.
If people want to watch the film, they can go to
findingsatoshi.com. And yeah, if you're listening
and you watched it, let us know what you think.
And yeah, thanks again, guys. And just stay in touch.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thanks. I hope you enjoyed this episode.
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