Meme coin traders believe they know the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, and are now trading a token of his cat. This is the degen gamble of the week ahead of a HBO documentary that claims to reveal the identity of the cryptocurrency’s elusive founder.
“Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery,” is set to release on Tuesday, Oct. 8. It promises to solve the crypto industry’s biggest mystery: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? The Bitcoin creator posted on forums under the pseudonym as early as 2008. Since then, speculation around Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity has only grown alongside the popularity of their invention, which now has a market capitalization of $1.2 trillion.
Now it appears that the grand reveal is just 24 hours away, meme coin traders are acting on what they think they know about Satoshi's identity. What do you do once you believe you’ve solved crypto’s biggest secret? Trade the Bitcoin creator’s cat, of course.
A group of degens claim that Len Sassaman, an American Cypherpunk who took his own life in 2011, is the creator of Bitcoin. A key factor to this is that two months before Sassaman passed away, Satoshi posted his final message, “I’ve moved onto other things.” This combined with a number of other details including his use of British English, which Satoshi posts also used, and an old blog post by his wife have led speculators to believe Sassaman is the real deal.
In turn, degens have found Sassaman’s cat, Sasha, and created a Solana meme coin. Bitcoin Cat (SASHA) skyrocketed to a $25 million market cap hours after launching off of Pump.fun—apparently because people think he's linked to the Satoshi pseudonym. But it has since fallen nearly 50% to a $13 million market cap.
Then Lexapro, a pseudonymous meme coin trader, claimed on Twitter to have spoken with someone who knows that Sassaman will be named as Satoshi by the HBO documentary. Another Twitter user believes he has obtained a leaked HBO email that points to the big reveal and the head of research at crypto firm Galaxy claims that Sassaman will be named in the upcoming film.
Instead of denying the rumors, it appears that Sassaman’s wife Meredith L. Patterson has leaned into the narrative by opening her Solana wallet to donations of meme coins related to her cat.
“If people are insisting on sending me memes coins about my cat, I'm not gonna say no,” she posted on Twitter. An accompanying photo shows her with what appears to be a joint in her mouth as she throws up a peace sign.
Ironically, it looks like Patterson dumped all of the tokens related to her cat almost immediately after receiving them. According to SolScan, the wallet profited over $26,000 from Sasha-related tokens sent to her. It's worth noting that these sales were mostly of tokens that are now at market caps below $10,000—less than $1 of what she sold was of the now $13 million SASHA coin.
In a weird turn of events, the posted wallet created three tokens on Pump.fun including Father of Bitcoin (FOB) with an attached photo of Sassaman. Despite the connection to his wife, the token never graduated off the protocol—achieved by reaching a market cap of $69,000.
