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Comment by photon_lines

7 days ago

I'm almost 100% certain he's the creator of Bitcoin. I didn't need to see his technical chops to suspect it -- all I needed was to read his article from 2002 which discusses the whole concept and key ideas that Bitcoin is currently based on: https://nakamotoinstitute.org/library/shelling-out/

Coming up with the idea and implementing it in the real world are two different things. You don’t think there’s any chance someone read the paper and used his ideas to create Bitcoin?

  • There is a chance - yes, but there's a lot of other evidence that he was involved in its creation (not just the 10+ years he talked about bit-gold prior to bitcoin). Bit-gold = bitcoin. My guess is that someone (like Hal Finny) implemented it with him but he was the originator of the idea and wrote the paper on it. Finny most likely had the original keys or he intentionally got rid of them on purpose (which explains why the wallet hasn't been active). Those are my guesses but the language in the paper very much gives me the impression that it was written by Nick Szabo.

E-Gold fulfilled all of these ideas and existed long before bitcoin and this article.