{"id":194,"date":"2014-07-05T02:12:00","date_gmt":"2014-07-05T02:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.holytransaction.com\/nick-szabo-bitcoin-founder-satoshi\/"},"modified":"2023-01-10T03:44:05","modified_gmt":"2023-01-10T01:44:05","slug":"nick-szabo-bitcoin-founder-satoshi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/holytransaction.com\/blog\/2014\/07\/nick-szabo-bitcoin-founder-satoshi.html","title":{"rendered":"Nick Szabo (Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto?) Breaks his Silence with a Tweet"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Nick Szabo, the author of bitgold<\/a>, the most complete conceptualization of a decentralized currency prior
\nto bitcoin, the person who coined the term smart contracts in 1993, and
\nbelieved by many to be Satoshi himself, published a one line blog post
\ntoday which simply contained a link to his twitter account.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
The last known public communication from Nick Szabo was in November
\n2013, almost seven months ago, leaving many to wonder whether he would
\never post again. The seven months silence seems to have followed
\nincreasing attention on Nick Szabo after numerous suggestions that he might be Satoshi<\/a>.
\nIn April 2014, researches from Aston University\u2019s Centre for Forensic
\nLinguistics claimed that forensic analysis of Bitcoin\u2019s White Paper
\nsuggests that Nick Szabo was the author<\/a> of the paper.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Nick however has categorically denied
\nthat he is Satoshi and many argue that it is highly unlikely that he is
\nthe author of the white paper. Nick seems to have been focused on
\nbitgold, writing a blog post about bitgold two months after Satoshi
\nannounced bitcoin.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Furthermore, there are unconfirmed reports<\/a> that he attended Princeton Bitcoin<\/a> conference with Gavin Andresen in March 2014 as well as an unconfirmed job post stating that Nick was working with Vaurum on smart contracts.\u00a0 Neither Vaurum, nor Nick, have yet replied to requests for comments.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Little is currently known about Nick Szabo. There are no known
\npictures of him, no verifiable details of his age, location, profession
\nor education. Previously, in a Wikipedia article, it was claimed that he
\nwas a law professor at George Washington University, but reporters <\/a>claim
\nthat after contacting the University they found no record of a person
\nnamed Nick Szabo ever being a professor at that university, although
\nthere was one record of a person having studied at that university under
\nthat name. The name therefore might be a pseudonym, a pen name.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Nick Szabo Highlights the Dangers of Centralized Currencies<\/h2>\n
<\/div>\n
Nick\u2019s latest tweet <\/a>is a
\nretweet of a statement by Proton Mail complaining that their PayPal
\naccount had been frozen, blocking access to $275,000 of funds. In a
\nstatement in their blog Proton Mail<\/a> details what happened:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\u201cWhen we pressed the PayPal representative on the phone for further
\ndetails, he questioned whether ProtonMail is legal and if we have government approval<\/b> to encrypt emails.\u201d<\/div>\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

Paypal froze $215K in encrypted email startup, @ProtonMail<\/a>\u2018s account over \u201cgovernment approval to encrypt emails\u201d? https:\/\/t.co\/VoqpHSTrEE<\/a>
\n\u2014 lilia (@liliakai) July 1, 2014<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

This highlights the problem with centralized currencies and
\nintermediaries as emphasized by both Nick Szabo in his blog post and
\nSatoshi in his announcement on bitcointalk. We need to trust that our
\naccounts will not be blocked, our funds will not be tampered, our
\ngovernment will not arbitrarily take funds, or that our banks will not
\nbankrupt our country as they did in Greece and Cyprus.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
With bitcoin, we
\nneed no such trust. There is no authority that can block our private
\nkeys to interact with our public keys, so accessing our wealth and using
\nit in whatever way we alone see fit.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n

Open your free digital wallet here<\/a> to store your cryptocurrencies in a safe place.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nick Szabo, the author of bitgold, the most complete conceptualization of a decentralized currency prior to bitcoin, the person who coined the term smart contracts in 1993, and believed by many to be Satoshi himself, published a one line blog post today which simply contained a link to his twitter account. The last known public […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37,83,470,568],"tags":[772,1128,1224],"yoast_head":"\nNick Szabo (Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto?) 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