ZoneBitcoin EditorialToday we are living in a special period in world history. New technologies have radically changed the human condition, and on several levels. The development of digital technology in particular has particularly changed our way of communicating, as well as our way of informing ourselves.
And this fever affects all areas, particularly that of the economy. The creation of the first digital currency, bitcoin in 2009, by Satoshi Nakamoto shook up the world economic order. This digital currency changing our relationship to money and indirectly to the economy.
At the origin of these technological feats are specific technologies, developed by brilliant people and sometimes geniuses. Since 2009, several crypto-entrepreneurs have made their contribution to the cryptocurrency building. Some left larger and more significant footprints than others. Nick Szabo is one of them.
And despite the little information we have about him, we can say that he is a central element in the history of virtual currency. Some believe that he, along with Wei Dai and Hal Finney, two renowned cryptographers, are hiding behind the identity Satoshi Nakamoto. Indeed, let us remember that 14 years after the creation of bitcoin, we still do not know the identity of the inventor of bitcoin. We only know his "pseudonym".
So let’s take a closer look at Nick Szabo’s journey.
An early cypherpunk
We have very little information about Nick Szabo's life. He is one of the crypto-entrepreneurs about whom we have the least personal information. Nick Szabo seems to want to preserve his privacy at all costs. This is very consistent with the philosophy of Cypherpunk which he claims.
We know that he is of Hungarian origin through his father, and that his family arrived, following exile, in the United States at the end of the 1950s. After joining the Hungarian insurrection against the invasion of Soviet Union in 1956, his father left Hungary for the United States. Nick Szabo was therefore born in the USA in the 1960s, probably in 1964, according to some sources.
He studied information science at the University of Washington and graduated in 1989. He obtained another law degree from George Washington University in 2006, after returning to his studies following his discovery of “smart contracts”. This is his greatest discovery.
At a young age, he also learned programming on the Apple II, and worked for technology companies such as IBM, JPL and Cuesta Technology. He will also hold a consulting position for Digicash, a company founded by David Chaum, one of the pioneers in the creation of what we today call "ancestors of bitcoin". So, the company DigiCash developed the digital currency system "eCash". It was there that Nick Szabo became familiar with the difficulties and problems posed by digital currencies.
The libertarian inspirations of Nick Szabo
The story of his father and his exile in the United States seems to be a fundamental element in the construction of Nick's personality. The invasion of the communist army in Hungary, accompanied by collateral damage, including the exile of his family in the United States, probably shaped Sabzo's personality. The aggressiveness of the communist interventions, the purges, the tortures, the kidnappings and confinements, shaped the environment in which he grew up.
Connecting Nick Sabzo's family history to his interest in bitcoin may seem exaggerated. However, it is in a deep distrust of the centralized power of governments and their abuses that Nick Sabzo has inscribed his work since the 1990s. The creation of a virtual currency, which does not belong to any leader, totally decentralized and without borders, is part of this libertarian spirit which characterizes Nick's thinking.
Erasing the stranglehold of governments and banks on the control of currency, and allowing each contributor to control their money, and therefore their life, is one of the basic principles of the development of virtual currencies. Nick Szabo is also known for his skepticism regarding the current financial system, which confers the centralization of economic power in the hands of bankers.
Szabo, for his writings, was greatly inspired by the functioning of our current financial system, and observed how economic crises, inflation, or even unsuitable policies have left millions of people destitute. Among these people, we find the history of his family…
As such, Bitcoin was born in 2009, a year after the financial crash of 2008. This crash revealed the inconsistencies of the economic-financial system. The banks responsible for the crash were all supported by the various governments of the world, while taxpayers were left to bear the cost of all their losses.
Le Bitcoin will therefore arise from this situation, mixing social and economic progress, ideology and experimentation.
Research work
Passionate about Law as well as the development of human societies, it is through his writings and his research that we can decipher the personality of this genius of cryptography.
In 1994, he notably theorized the concept of " smart contracts » (Smart Contracts), which are a new way of considering relationships, especially economic ones, in an automated and digitalized way. He will describe his ideas in his article “Smart Contracts: Building Blocks for Digital Markets”. It can be translated as: “Smart contracts: constituent elements of financial markets”.
They are an important facet of blockchain technology, and are used today in the Bitcoin and Ethereum the smart contracts run automatically and securely. They allow transactions or agreements between users to be carried out in a decentralized manner. No regulation service is necessary.
He will also write articles on the history of money and how to protect your privacy online. His blog, still online, is a summary of articles on different subjects and in particular on the history of money, the protection of privacy, etc.
All his thoughts were largely influenced by his integration into the Extropy Institute, an organization founded in 1990, which brings together specialties from all horizons and whose objective is to “think about the future of humanity”. He was also part of the Cypherpunk, a community of digital activists, close to the anarchist movement, which uses cryptography with the aim of protecting the privacy of individuals, in particular by securing their information.
😳 Already in the 1990s, cypherpunks wanted to create a completely decentralized digital currency. In 1998, Wei Dai created b-money, “a new monetary exchange and contract execution protocol for pseudonyms”. The same year, Nick Szabo conceptualized the Bit Gold system.
Bit Gold, the ancestor of Bitcoin
“Bit Gold”, created in 1998 by Nick Szabo, is in reality the closest version of bitcoin that we know. When it was created, this secure and decentralized payment network was intended to manage the creation, exchanges and storage of virtual resources with a cryptographic structure, making it possible to assign ownership of assets to people. It was the invention of the first electronic unit that could obtain value, without any support. The objective was thus to create a store of value independent of any central authority.
And while Bit Gold was different from bitcoin, it has strong similarities. For example, the dating of transactions – timestamping – had not been implemented at that time.
Bit gold was never implemented, but nevertheless remains a relevant discovery with regard to the history of virtual currencies.
Is Nick Szabo Satoshi Nakamoto?
Even if he denies it, there are strong reasons which lead us to believe that Nick Szabo is hiding behind Satoshi Nakamoto. The similarities being numerous...They would also have the same writing style and the same knowledge about money and cryptography. Both have the same initials, for example. Nick Szabo gives NS as does Nakamoto Satoshi. (In Japan, we put the first name before the last name.). Nick would have been less prolific on his blog after the creation of bitcoin in 2009. He would even have changed the publication dates of some of his works to make them post-Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto would have cited more works by lesser-known cryptographers than those of Nick Szabo as if to better protect him…
An article on TechCrunch interview Skye Grey, a researcher who allegedly did research proving that Nick Szabo is indeed the inventor of bitcoin. Here is a screenshot and the link to the article here.
However, other researchers and other articles like that of coingeek shows that he is not Satoshi Nakamoto. Read the article : The man who is not Satoshi Nakamoto.
The Szabo mystery still relevant
Considering how little information we have about this personality, the Nick Szabo mystery remains as strong as ever. Some believe that it is indeed Satoshi Nakamoto while others refute this hypothesis. It’s up to you to form your own opinion…
Beyond his identity, the impact of Nick Szabo's work on the world of cryptocurrency is undeniable. More than ten years before the advent of the first virtual currency, Nick Szabo laid the political and economic foundation of what Bitcoin would be... His writings on his blog are in-depth research concerning the current political system and the creation of money in particular...In fact, his thoughts and writings also go beyond the world of crypto and nourish reflections related to the development of human societies, fundamental rights, the economy, etc.
This universal spirit as well as its libertarian aspirations are known, and constitute the true foundations of the existence of Bitcoin.
Read other articles:
- By the way, do you know the different players in the Bitcoin ecosystem?
- Discover the “ancestors” of Bitcoin: eCash, B-Money, BitGold…
- 14 years after its creation, what would the creator of Bitcoin think?
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