我的朋友，中本聪？

HBO 即将上映的一部纪录片重新引发了人们对于 Len Sassaman 是比特币创造者的猜测。我认识莱恩。这个理论是合理的。

An HBO documentary coming out Tuesday has reopened speculation that my late friend Len Sassaman was Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin. The filmmaker claims to have confronted the person he believes is Satoshi face-to-face, which would make it unlikely Len, who committed suicide in 2011, is his suspect. Nevertheless, others have written convincingly and at length about Len’s technical chops that made him a logical Satoshi candidate.

周二上映的 HBO 纪录片重新引发了人们的猜测，即我已故的朋友 Len Sassaman 就是比特币的化名发明者中本聪 (Satoshi Nakamoto)。这位电影制片人声称曾与他认为是中本聪的人面对面对峙，这使得 2011 年自杀的莱恩不太可能是他的嫌疑人。尽管如此，其他人还是以令人信服且详细的方式描述了 Len 的技术能力，这使他成为合乎逻辑的中本聪候选人。

Whatever the film claims, I’d like to share the Len that I knew, and why I, too, think it's plausible that he was Satoshi.

无论电影讲述什么，我都想分享我所认识的莱恩，以及为什么我也认为他是中本聪。

When I met Len Sassaman, he was wearing a rumpled jacket and tie. We were in another history teacher's living room at the Hill School, a boarding school in Pottstown, Pa. Len was in his junior year, and I, an alumnus working in the data center business, was back from the San Francisco Bay Area to visit Tom for a long weekend.

当我见到莱恩·萨萨曼时，他穿着一件皱巴巴的夹克，打着领带。我们当时在希尔学校（宾夕法尼亚州波茨敦的一所寄宿学校）另一位历史老师的客厅里。莱恩正在读大三，而我，一位从事数据中心业务的校友，从旧金山湾区回来参观汤姆度过了一个长周末。

Another mentor of mine had pointed out to me how technology and history influenced each other in cycles, and how great inventions change society and change the world. I shared this eureka moment with Len: that great skill in tech could be the lever that, if pulled hard enough, can move the world in the direction we want it to go.

我的另一位导师曾向我指出科技与历史如何循环相互影响，伟大的发明如何改变社会、改变世界。我与莱恩分享了这个灵光一现的时刻：伟大的科技技能可能成为杠杆，如果拉得足够用力，就可以让世界朝着我们希望的方向发展。

This was the moment in the discussion when Len went from being passive, shy, and reserved, to passionate and deeply engaged. Until that point, he had lived in a world that was shaped by the popular kids; seeing a path where he could help shape the future, without having to be in the limelight, caused a striking and immediate change in his posture, from slouching to erect and leaning forward and his eyes from downcast to wide open and looking directly at me.

这是讨论中莱恩从被动、害羞、矜持转变为热情、投入的时刻。在那之前，他一直生活在一个由受欢迎的孩子塑造的世界里。看到一条可以帮助塑造未来的道路，而不必成为众人瞩目的焦点，他的姿势立即发生了惊人的变化，从无精打彩变为直立并向前倾斜，他的眼睛从低垂变为睁大，直视着我。

At this point, Tom sat back in his chair with a knowing smile on his face, occasionally getting up to make sure Len and I both had full cups of his infamous rocket fuel to keep the conversation going. We spent the next several hours talking about the importance of freedom of communication, online anonymity, and democratization of information. The conversation included developing open source software and standards, expressing our values through code, and creating software that could change the world, and predicting some of those impacts.

此时，汤姆靠在椅子上，脸上挂着会意的微笑，偶尔站起来确保我和莱恩都喝满了他那臭名昭著的火箭燃料，以让谈话继续下去。接下来的几个小时里，我们讨论了通信自由、在线匿名和信息民主化的重要性。对话包括开发开源软件和标准、通过代码表达我们的价值观、创建可以改变世界的软件，并预测其中的一些影响。

Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles to work at NetZero, an internet service provider, Len moved to San Francisco. I introduced him to my friends in the North American Network Operators' Group (NANOG) and Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) communities, connecting him to my tribe on the path to him finding his own.

在我搬到洛杉矶在互联网服务提供商 NetZero 工作后不久，Len 搬到了旧金山。我把他介绍给北美网络运营商组织 (NANOG) 和互联网工程任务组 (IETF) 社区中的朋友，在他找到自己的道路上将他与我的部落联系起来。

We stayed in relatively close contact for about 10 years after that. We wouldn’t talk for a while, and then I’d get an email or a text message asking “Do you have time for a call?” with no context. Some of those calls were quick questions about career advice as he was considering job offers, or whether he should stay at a role that wasn’t fully engaging to him. Those were usually quick calls because he just needed someone he trusted in the field to validate what he was thinking or seeing.

此后我们保持了大约10年的相对密切的联系。我们有一段时间没有说话，然后我会收到一封电子邮件或一条短信，询问“你有时间打电话吗？”没有上下文。其中一些电话是关于职业建议的简短问题，因为他正在考虑工作机会，或者他是否应该留在一个对他来说并不完全有吸引力的职位。这些通常都是快速的电话，因为他只需要他在该领域信任的人来验证他的想法或所见。

The longer calls were similar to the conversations on Tom's couch. We spent hours talking about the value of open and permissionless innovation, and how important the networks were that allowed people to build without having to ask permission.

较长的通话类似于汤姆沙发上的对话。我们花了几个小时讨论开放和无需许可的创新的价值，以及允许人们无需征求许可即可进行构建的网络的重要性。

We talked for hours about the trade-offs of allowing bad actors to do bad things versus the benefit of letting good actors move quickly without waiting for slow, conservative institutions to say yes.

我们讨论了几个小时，讨论了允许坏人做坏事与让好人迅速采取行动而不等待缓慢的保守机构答应的好处之间的权衡。

Ultimately, we agreed that the networks themselves should be completely open, and that the controls should be built at other layers, either with technology, whenever possible, or with law when absolutely necessary.

最终，我们一致认为网络本身应该完全开放，并且控制措施应该建立在其他层，无论是在可能的情况下使用技术，还是在绝对必要时使用法律。

This principle sits at the core of Bitcoin, and is perhaps its most valuable and enduring characteristic.

这一原则是比特币的核心，也许是其最有价值和最持久的特征。

There are many people who give logical reasons that Len could not have been Satoshi, but in my view, those people don’t know who Len was. Here are my responses to their points:

有很多人给出了合理的理由，认为 Len 不可能是中本聪，但在我看来，这些人不知道 Len 是谁。以下是我对他们观点的回应：

To be clear: Len and I never discussed Bitcoin and if he was Satoshi I can readily see why he wouldn't want to discuss it with me or any of our friends. At the end of the day, I have no idea if he was Satoshi. He certainly could have been, considering both his skills and who he was as a person.

需要明确的是：Len 和我从未讨论过比特币，如果他是中本聪，我很容易理解为什么他不想与我或我们的任何朋友讨论比特币。到最后，我不知道他是否是中本聪。考虑到他的技能和他的为人，他当然可以。

In any case, Len was a wonderful person who deserved better than the world treated him. His memory shines brightly in my heart.

无论如何，莱恩是一个很棒的人，他应该得到比世界更好的对待。他的记忆在我心里闪闪发光。

Thanks to Carl Jay Pardini, one of Len's close high school friends, for reviewing and fact checking this article.

感谢卡尔·杰伊·帕迪尼 (Carl Jay Pardini)，Len 的高中好友之一，审阅并核实了本文。