TL;DR Breakdown
- Elon Musk says Nick Szabo is most likely Satoshi Nakamoto.
- Gives reasons, other clues why he picks Szabo as Satoshi Nakamoto.
World’s second richest man and Tesla CEO, Elon Musk, has predicted that hyper-secretive cryptocurrency expert Nick Szabo could be the original Satoshi Nakamoto.
Musk said this on Tuesday when he was featured in Lex Fridman’s popular podcast, where he discussed various topics, including AI, Tesla, and cryptocurrencies.
While predicting who he thought the pseudonym Bitcoin creator was, Musk said, “You can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas. 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 I’m not sure that’s neither here nor there. But he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind bitcoin than anyone else.”
Ever since the creation of Bitcoin in 2009, it has become a $2 trillion asset class over the past decade. The mystery around it, however, is who the pseudonym creator of the number one cryptocurrency is.
Speculations around the identity of the original creator is still a hot topic and those who have speculated have not been able to prove enough who it is.
Why Musk says Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto
Back in 2014, a team of linguistics indicated certain similarities in Bitcoin white paper and Szabo’s writing. They claimed that the number of linguistic similarities between the two is something that makes him the closest guess to be the original Satoshi.
Nicholas “Nick” Szabo is a computer scientist, legal scholar, and cryptographer known for his research in digital contracts and digital currency. He graduated from the University of Washington in 1989 with a degree in computer science and received a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School.