The biggest thing that bugs me about the Len Sassaman theory is that the original bitcoin paper, while amazing, doesn't seem like it was written by a PhD candidate. It cites just eight related works, and the W. Dai citation was famously added only after someone else suggested it, because Satoshi reportedly didn't know about it. A typical paper by a PhD candidate will cite dozens of related works, and Len Sassman would certainly have knowledge of dozens of related works off the top of his head. There should be a whole section citing the literature and enumerating the ways in which the proposals and findings in the paper are novel contributions.