In a podcast, when asked “Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?”, the famous CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, Elon Musk, identified crypto developer Nick Szabo as the possible brain behind Bitcoin.
Summary
Elon Musk: Nick Szabo could be Satoshi Nakamoto
During Lex Fridman‘s podcast dedicated to Elon Musk’s great achievements, the host asked the famous CEO of Tesla who he believes to be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin whose identity is unknown.
Musk’s response was Nick Szabo as the person responsible for the evolution of the idea behind Bitcoin. Specifically, Musk’s phrases were:
“You can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of bitcoin and see who wrote, you know, about those ideas. Obviously I don’t know who created bitcoin … it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas. he claims not to be Nakamoto … but he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind it than anyone else”.
Nick Szabo, forerunner of Bitcoin, has always been considered one of the candidates to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto. This is because of his invention of Bit Gold, from which Bitcoin is inspired, but also because of his style and language which is very similar to Nakamoto’s Whitepaper.
Not only that, Szabo is also the same person who coined the term “smart contract” with the aim of applying advanced contract law and practice to the construction of electronic commerce protocols between unknown parties on the Internet.
Elon Musk: Nick Szabo as a “name attached to an idea”
Continuing with his discussion of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, which remains unknown, Musk expresses a rather philosophical thought.
“Perhaps singular figures aren’t even as important as the figures involved in the evolution of ideas that led to things. It’s sad to think about history but maybe most names will be forgotten. What is the name anyway, it’s a name, a name attached to an idea. What does it even mean?”
In essence, Tesla’s CEO says that the importance of revealing the identity of an inventor or creator lies not in their real name, but in the name that is associated with the evolution of the idea that led to things.
In this sense, for Musk, the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto can therefore be associated with Nick Szabo as that “name associated with the idea of Bitcoin”.
13th anniversary of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block
Just yesterday, 3 January 2022, was the 13th anniversary of Bitcoin’s Genesis Block: the commemoration of the first mined block on Bitcoin’s blockchain.
Remaining on the subject, block number zero was mined by Satoshi Nakamoto himself at 6:15 PM UTC and contains a single transaction, called coinbase, which actually created the first 50 BTC allocated to the public address 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa.
The address, therefore, belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto, who never spent his BTC, but will have continued to receive them after that 3 January 2009, thanks to numerous donations made by many users over the years.
To fall in love with this idea of peer-to-peer, Bitcoin, Blockchain, and the whole evolution of the world of cryptocurrencies, there is also the former first lady Melania Trump, who, in honour of her NFT Art, “Melania Vision”, wanted to share yesterday on Twitter her wishes for the anniversary of the Genesis Block of Bitcoin.
