How Len Sassaman Got a Memorial on the Bitcoin Blockchain - Story of the Passing of a Good Friend

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Back in 2010 I was at a party in my home town of Leuven, where I first met someone who would later become a very good friend of mine. The person I met at that party was Meredith L. Patterson, a talented programmer, biohacker, science fiction writer, and journalist. She was married to Len Sassaman, who was pretty famous in the cypherpunk movement and contributed to a lot of privacy-related FOSS projects. I'm really omitting a lot of their achievements here, so check out their Wikipedia pages to learn more.

Over the course of about a year and a half, we must have met up at a weekly basis at some point. I'm not a programmer myself, but I'd always found it extremely interested to hear both of them talk about technical and privacy-related topics. During those conversations, I think my jaw hit the floor quite a number of times and I often wondered how the hell someone could be an expert at so many different topics.

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Then, around July the 3rd in 2011, Len had committed suicide in his apartment in Leuven while his wife Meredith was out of town. I remember it quite well, I was just back from Rock Werchter and heard the news from Meredith right after I got back to Leuven.

Since she's an American who's living in Belgium, arranging everything for the funeral was fairly difficult, so I'd helped her with everything as best as I could. The funeral itself was simple, just as Len had planned it, but it was 'good' to see that a lot of people showed up. It's one of those few moments in life that I will never forget and I've thought about it many times afterwards. Wherever he is, I hope he has found peace.

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Dan Kaminsky Creates a Memorial on the Bitcoin Blockchain

A few weeks after the funeral, I had heard that Len's good friend Dan Kaminsky had created a tribute to Len and embedded it in the Bitcoin blockchain. You can still see the tribute today, by running run strings -n 20 over blk0001.dat.

That should give you this memorial:

---BEGIN TRIBUTE--- 
#./BitLen           
::::::::::::::::::: 
:::::::.::.::.:.::: 
:.: :.' ' ' ' ' : : 
:.:'' ,,xiW,"4x, '' 
:  ,dWWWXXXXi,4WX,  
' dWWWXXX7"     `X, 
 lWWWXX7   __   _ X 
:WWWXX7 ,xXX7' "^^X 
lWWWX7, _.+,, _.+., 
:WWW7,. `^"-" ,^-'  
 WW",X:        X,   
 "7^^Xl.    _(_x7'  
 l ( :X:       __ _ 
 `. " XX  ,xxWWWWX7 
  )X- "" 4X" .___.  
,W X     :Xi  _,,_  
WW X      4XiyXWWXd 
"" ,,      4XWWWWXX 
, R7X,       "^447^ 
R, "4RXk,      _, , 
TWk  "4RXXi,   X',x 
lTWk,  "4RRR7' 4 XH 
:lWWWk,  ^"     `4  
::TTXWWi,_  Xll :.. 
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-= 
LEN "rabbi" SASSAMA 
     1980-2011      
Len was our friend. 
A brilliant mind,   
a kind soul, and    
a devious schemer;  
husband to Meredith 
brother to Calvin,  
son to Jim and      
Dana Hartshorn,     
coauthor and        
cofounder and       
Shmoo and so much   
more.  We dedicate  
this silly hack to  
Len, who would have 
found it absolutely 
hilarious.          
--Dan Kaminsky,     
Travis Goodspeed    
P.S.  My apologies, 
BitCoin people.  He 
also would have     
LOL'd at BitCoin's  
new dependency upon 
   ASCII BERNANKE   
:'::.:::::.:::.::.: 
: :.: ' ' ' ' : :': 
:.:     _.__    '.: 
:   _,^"   "^x,   : 
'  x7'        `4,   
 XX7            4XX 
 XX              XX 
 Xl ,xxx,   ,xxx,XX 
( ' _,+o, | ,o+,"   
 4   "-^' X "^-'" 7 
 l,     ( ))     ,X 
 :Xx,_ ,xXXXxx,_,XX 
  4XXiX'-___-`XXXX' 
   4XXi,_   _iXX7'  
  , `4XXXXXXXXX^ _, 
  Xx,  ""^^^XX7,xX  
W,"4WWx,_ _,XxWWX7' 
Xwi, "4WW7""4WW7',W 
TXXWw, ^7 Xk 47 ,WH 
:TXXXWw,_ "), ,wWT: 
::TTXXWWW lXl WWT:  
----END TRIBUTE----

The transaction in which this tribute was embedded is 930a2114cdaa86e1fac46d15c74e81c09eee1d4150ff9d48e76cb0697d8e1d72 and was made by sending small amounts of BTC to addresses that didn't exist, all in a particular order so it created this memorial. In total, this cost 1 BTC to produce, 0.85 BTC for the transactions and 0.15 BTC in fees.

Sources:

• http://www.righto.com/2014/02/ascii-bernanke-wikileaks-photographs.html
• https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=33618
• http://pastebin.com/raw/BUB3dygQ
• Personally asked Meredith L. Patterson

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The ASCII art is well done, if you look at a side-by-side comparison of the ASCII art and his portrait you'll see that the resemblance is striking.

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The reason why I'm posting this story on the Steem blockchain, is because it's entirely possible that all the references to the memorial on the Bitcoin blockchain will disappear over time. Now that the story is posted here as well, these references will forever be embedded in the Steem blockchain.

Writing about the passing of a good friend is also cathartic for me. I don't think I've ever written down this story before and doing so helps me put things in perspective, even if it's 8 years after the events.

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