Welcome to Back to Crypto — a Throwback Thursday with BTCMEX. Every week we will publish big life stories from the past of digital currencies, crypto exchanges, blockchain and Fintech. Dive in the past of innovations and breakthroughs in traditional and decentralized finance with us!
Throwback crypto Thursday with BTCMEX
Nick Szabo - a famous name in the Cryptoverse - and for a good many reasons! One of the main contributors to the development of Bitcoin, an influencer in economical, philosophical, political and crypto spaces. There’s even an anecdotal evidence of him being Satoshi Nakamoto, as he indeed created Bit… gold!Szabo - a University of Washington graduate - described himself as “Blockchain, cryptocurrency, and smart contracts pioneer.”
It’s a fact that he was working on his cryptocurrency project Bit gold even before the Bitcoin whitepaper was released by Satoshi Nakamoto. He also communicated on a regular basis with other famous crypto pioneers - Hal Finney and Wei Dai. Dai is also known for his attempt to create a digital currency “b-money” before Bitcoin.Szabo’s story is not documented accurately. Numerous information gaps created lots of speculations and the theory that Szabo may indeed be Satoshi.
Speaking for RT’s Keiser Report financial author Dominic Frisby provided circumstantial evidence but, as he admitted, no proof that Satoshi is Szabo.
Back in 2005 Szabo published his thoughts about creating a virtual currency independent from the third party, stating: “The problem, in a nutshell, is that our money currently depends on trust in a third party for its value. As many inflationary and hyperinflationary episodes during the 20th century demonstrated, this is not an ideal state of affairs.”Wait a second, that’s about Bitcoin! Certain conceptual similarities to Satoshi’s whitepaper are hard to miss in Szabo’s personal Blog.
The Bit gold post has a publishing date of December 27, 2008, while according to a metadata the post verifying throws us back to 2005. Some think, that Szabo changed the date for his work not to predate the Bitcoin whitepaper.
In 2009 Szabo reduces the number of his Blog posts from 25+ to several per year. The intriguing one came on January 31, 2009. It was a video of cars attempting to beat a traffic control mechanism at a red light. The post reads: “Trying to beat the protocol can get you in trouble.” Many take this post to be a reference to Bitcoin’s solution to the double-spend problem cryptographers and digital cash advocates had been struggling to solve for years, and which was now successfully addressed via Satoshi’s protocol.
During a 2017 interview on The Tim Ferriss Show, Szabo stumbled on his words almost labeling himself as the creator of Bitcoin. “I’d definitely go for a second layer, I mean, I designed Bitcoi… gold with two layers.” An accident? Maybe!
By the way, the second layer! Szabo advocated for the second layer in Bitcoin protocol, now known as the Lightning Network, which doesn’t align with Satoshi’s own method of scaling. Find the Throwback on Lightning Network by BTCMEX here.
Nick Szabo officially denies his appurtenant to Bitcoin. In a July 2014 email to mentioned above Dominic Frisby, Szabo said "Thanks for letting me know. I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it."
Dive in crypto life stories with Back to Crypto by BTCMEX! Please, note, that the article is a part of BTCMEX Blog, the views and opinions expressed here are the contributing author’s only, and do not necessarily represent the views of the company.
Julia Bulakh for BTCMEX