[1] Why was Satoshi the first person to design a viable crypto?
I mean there must have been legions of computer scientists, IT people, hackers, mathematicians and really really smart people thinking about this
but what was it that allowed Satoshi to make the breakthrough,
both in terms of insight and surrounding tech/maths/ etc
This article might be of interest to you:
http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/3140000/3136559/p20-narayanan.pdf?ip=213.47.139.106&id=3136559&acc=OPEN&key=4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E4D4702B0C3E38B35%2E6D218144511F3437&__acm__=1531246903_43cea13ebff559f61941f2610ceb21ccIn essence, all of the pieces that nowadays lie at the foundation of cryptocurrencies were already conceptualized by other researchers -- linked timestamping, Merkle trees, proof of work... it's just that Satoshi happened to be the first one to put these pieces together and applied them in a wholly new way that led to Bitcoin.
In other words, Satoshi too, merely stood on the shoulders of giants. Whether it was his brilliance, pure luck or lateral thinking that led to the conception of cryptocurrencies -- who knows. But they definitely timed it quite well, with the 2008 banking crisis still fresh in everyone's mind and the internet becoming ever more prevalent while still lacking a native currency.