I don’t buy it. Personally, I believe Len Sassaman was probably Satoshi.
A govt initiative would have had more participants so more people who would leak or fight over (spend) some of the coins. Sassaman died around the time that Satoshi disappeared.
The paper referred to in that report was a David Chaum-type ecash system. Nothing like bitcoin. Sassaman was one of the OG cypherpunks so he would have been familiar with Adam’s hashcash / proof of work, etc.
It’s more likely Sassaman might disguise his name as Satoshi Nakamoto rather than a guy named Tatsuiaki Okamoto (who probably would have used “John Smilth”).
More on Sassaman:
https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c85c2b10
Yeah. The len sassaman thread is compelling. As is Dorian and Hal angle.
Makes you wonder though. Ina web of cloak and daggers who was working for who's behalf.
It's quaint to believe it was all altruistic super shadowy coders in their basements but the truth could be a bit more... organized?
We're also forgetting that there was little foresight that even if such a decentralized monetary open sourced program COULD be put together that it would catch on and succeed.
