I can't find any information on Nick Szabo, is he is who he says he is?

[keithers]

Bitcoin creator is 100% Satoshi Nakamoto or we don't really know? Also how Satoshi Nakamoto and Nick Szabo are related? Do you think Nick Szabo could be the creator of bitcoin?

There is another possibility. Szabo wrote his essay about Bit Gold in 2005. What if Satoshi Nakamoto plagiarized parts of his essay and incorporated some of the ideas in his paper on Bitcoin in 2008?

I think the above is far more likely than Szabo being Nakamoto himself.

[Kluge]

Satoshi is from the future. In his timeline, he was very poor and bitcoin was invented in 2012 by someone else.

He sold everything he had and bought a one way ticket to come back in time to start bitcoin himself, so his future self would be a trillion-air and not need to travel back in time.

This could be reasonable. I guess there could be a completely logical reason to not time-travel to the most major events we've had in Earth's history (assuming they weren't already tampered with) - so even though we might discount time-travel theory just because we haven't noticed it, it's possible Bitcoin was the first event considered important enough to tamper with. Starry-eyed, I know. In a FTL future where Satoshi may've come from, events are likely much more significant to many more people (assuming the number of people on Earth over the past tens of thousands of years doesn't create any exponential function with regards to the number of humans colonizing in space in the future, which seems plausible). Fiat has absolutely no place in the FTL era. You go visit a moon on YX-0038 with a briefcase of USD or rubles and they might pay its fuel value... so maybe a micro-satoshi, or just a beer to cheer you up. Crypto can be sent far into space already -- there's really nothing preventing extremely long travel, though you'd probably want a particular individual planet to handle most of the actual transaction processing due to latency -- actually, I guess it'd make sense to have unique cryptos for each "sector," ironically bringing back one of the same issues Bitcoin was supposed to solve: geographical boundaries restricting value flow. I'd be surprised if there weren't already a paper or few on intergalactic Bitcoin, though.

More likely, though - Bitcoin was never invented in the "previous past" - at least, it wasn't open-source. If it was already invented and open-source, it would've been silly for Satoshi to not copy-paste the future past's code and to instead give us a kludgey, insecure client. Since he didn't copy-paste, he probably slapped together the code after a couple crash courses and tried to reverse-engineer what happened in the future, and in that case, Satoshi would not have needed all the input he took during the time he was developing. OTOH, it's also very possible the code of the future relied on so many not-currently-invented dependencies, it had to be re-coded from scratch. Satoshi may've been a coder from the future but didn't count on having to write Bitcoin in such a now-obscure, archaic language, though the original daemon being Windows-only would imply Microsoft will probably always dominate the OS market (or it was otherwise the only OS Satoshi could find a copy of in the future).

[franky1]

ok a history lesson

satoshi
hal finney
nick szabo

all frequented some cryptography and tech forums prior to january 2009 and yes thy all talked and mingled and came up with idea's. but it was the one entity known as satoshi that put all of these idea's together, formed the white paper, etc.

now to get closer to january 2009, satoshi ( a single entity) along with a few others all joined force to make bitcoin 0.1, yes hal finney szabo, even theymos helped out.

theymos made this very forum to allow the group to start cultivating idea's together. but it remains that satoshi is a single entity,

later others joined to help such as gavin andressen, luke jr and jeff garzik.. amongst many other names.. but yet again satoshi was one single entity.

to put it into a better analogy.

everyone thinks steve jobs made apple what it is.. but if it wasnt for steve wozniak, and a couple other friends tinkering around and helping out. apple wouldnt be in the position it is now,

.. but imagine steve jobs didnt make himself public, but instead stayed fully anonymous. then this 'mystery' would cause 500 topics to be made each trying to say that wozniak is jobs.

or that jobs is some elusive NSA agent or that jobs is some japanese mastermind.

either way, if you want to know about bitcoin, ask any of the bitcoin dev's about bitcoin. the identity of the single entity known as satoshi is not worth endless topics and speculation

[cyth]

who says satoshi is nick. there are many correspodence between them. what about it?

[BitCoinDream]

Dear all,

I've read recent articles pointing that linguistically that Nick Szabo is likely Satoshi who either singly created the original Bitcoin whitepaper or had some assistance.  Apparently, this is his website and this is his blog.  The email listed prominently is nszabo@law.gwu.edu in those places.  However, I cannot find Nick Szabo at George Washington University.  I found a couple of other Szabos.  I could not find any Szabo Econ Professor here, or elsewhere.

So this naturally leads me to a couple of questions.

1. What does Nick Szabo actually look like?  All the articles that reference him somehow lack a picture of him.  This is unusual because universities very often post public pictures of their professors.

2. How do we know that Szabo actually worked at George Washington University or was ever an Econ Professor there?  An email address is not absolute proof.

3. How do we know that Nick Szabo or Nicholas Szabo is his real name?  I have seen proof from his Wikipedia page that Nicholas was ever confirmed anywhere.

4. Where is Nick Szabo now?  He hasn't posted since November 2013 and this was before the first string of articles around December 2013 came out suggesting that he was Satoshi.

Any help would be appreciated.

Was Nick Szabo ever a part of this forum ?

[franky1]

Was Nick Szabo ever a part of this forum ?

nope

hal finney was

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833

[franky1]

oh and by the way nick Szabo had an american education, and satoshi had a british education..

.. should anyone actually bother to do the research rather then create myths that they are linguistically the same.

[BitCoinDream]

oh and by the way nick Szabo had an american education, and satoshi had a british education..

.. should anyone actually bother to do the research rather then create myths that they are linguistically the same.

If Satoshi account was controlled by a group of people, then no specific education applies to that entity.

[franky1]

oh and by the way nick Szabo had an american education, and satoshi had a british education..

.. should anyone actually bother to do the research rather then create myths that they are linguistically the same.

If Satoshi account was controlled by a group of people, then no specific education applies to that entity.

satoshi's account WAS NOT controlled by a group of people.. will you all please atleast do the god damn research by atleast searching for his posts.. they are well documented.

why oh why are there hundreds of threads on this very topic, yet people are still trying to spout out incorrect theories without any sign of actual investigation

[franky1]

Bitcoin creator is 100% Satoshi Nakamoto or we don't really know? Also how Satoshi Nakamoto and Nick Szabo are related? Do you think Nick Szabo could be the creator of bitcoin?

the bitcoin creator is not Dorian satoshi nakamoto..

the bitcoin creator we simply refer to as 'satoshi'

as for Nick Szabo.........
nick is american taught, and although they were on the same thought process, where nick got maybe 90%+ of the concept, but it was satoshi (different entity) who with other people on the p2p and tech forums finally knit picked the in's and outs of a concept which satoshi (single entity) made into a finalised and workable white paper,
imagine it like a group of people that wanted to solve world hunger some said supplying seeds, some said teach them to fish. but it was satoshi that ultimately came up with the plan to make a farming school that taught and supplied everything to get people started.

it was then satoshi, hal finney and a few others that grouped together to help make  the first versions of bitcoin and slowly more people helped satoshi (the single entity) such as gavin andressen jeff garzik and the other motly crew of devs.

now then.............
satoshi (the single entity) was not a group of people using one name. satoshi was just one person, although others helped under their own names..
satoshis education was british based not american, and although he knew alot of things he didnt know much about linux and that stuff. so satoshi was no Uber god.

all of this stuff can easily be found if people actually looked at the posts by him and not just spread fud and opinion over 500 threads.
atleast read his under 600 posts https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3 to learn a bit about how he talked and what he knew or didnt know, and how he interacted with people.

these FUD threads are a little annoying now

[Bill Bisco]

I think you're missing the point everybody when you look up Nick Szabo you find nothing verifiable them online I can't find any proof they were still work at the university I can't find any verifiable pictures of him as far as I know we have no idea this person actually exists under that name.

[franky1]

I think you're missing the point everybody when you look up Nick Szabo you find nothing verifiable them online I can't find any proof they were still work at the university I can't find any verifiable pictures of him as far as I know we have no idea this person actually exists under that name.

oh well it seems you have fallen off the path. so let me lead you back
https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/485970285254815745

[jonald_fyookball]

I think you're missing the point everybody when you look up Nick Szabo you find nothing verifiable them online I can't find any proof they were still work at the university I can't find any verifiable pictures of him as far as I know we have no idea this person actually exists under that name.

oh well it seems you have fallen off the path. so let me lead you back
https://twitter.com/NickSzabo4/status/485970285254815745

you're not answering Bill's point at all just because you linked to a twitter post.

[illymoka]

If you're leading to Satoshi figure, Newsweek looked into it, they concluded Nick Szabo can't possibly be Satoshi: his name is not Satoshi. Case closed.

[cccarnation]

Here's the thing, if he didn't create bitcoin, he'd be screaming bloody murder that someone stole his idea. I find it strange that he's completely silent about something that falls right into his expertise on so many levels.

[nsfsj]

Some minor additional evidence if someone still is not sure about Nick/Satoshi...

- Check how he use 'btw' here on bitcointalk. Nicks usage of it: http://unenumerated.blogspot.se/2011/05/bitcoin-what-took-ye-so-long.html
- Nick uses double spaces just as Satoshi (look at the source on his blog linked above)
- He uses 'wrt' both here and on his blog. Not that common.

[owlcatz]

Hi, I've been doing some digging around about Nick Szabo as well and ran across some things that lead me to believe he is indeed a real person - Also, there is one photo of him online, i'm not sure it's verifiable but if you google "Nick Szabo Public Figure facebook", you will find it.

Anyhow, check the links this guy posted- Especially the last one, linking a prior address of his to a cypherpunks party is pretty convincing to me - i say Nick Szabo exists. Maybe someone can call him up and ask him?   (Just kidding)...  Also, Hal Finney posted on BCT in that now-famous post that he actually met him in person, and Hal seemed like a pretty honest guy through and through to me at least.   Anyhow, judge for yourselves. I'm not saying he is or is not satoshi, i'm just saying hey, it appears he is a real person, with a home/address/phone number etc... not hiding too hard, if so... :\

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/205396/seth_roberts_on_nick_szabo_being_satoshi_nakamoto/cfzw92y
Posted from Bitcointa.lk - #A1O4jaTPm7ln18Ob

[CryptoDomains]

No one finds it odd that these people are so secretive?

What is there to hide, are they criminals, pedo's, government agents or just highly intelligent socially awkward people?

Either way it does not matter, bitcoin has taken a life of it's own, good or bad.

[Gleb Gamow]

No one finds it odd that these people are so secretive?

What is there to hide, are they criminals, pedo's, government agents or just highly intelligent socially awkward people?

Either way it does not matter, bitcoin has taken a life of it's own, good or bad...

...by criminals, government agents, socially awkward...

[LMGTFY]

No one finds it odd that these people are so secretive?

Not really, no. Phil Zimmerman was investigated by the US Customs Service for (allegedly) breaching munitions export regulations (you'll recall that that was because PGP was being "exported" (i.e. downloaded by people outside the US). Peter Gutmann has written about his career "smuggling munitions" (crypto stuff, again), etc. Cryptography pits "these people" against powerful (state) actors who have demonstrated their willingness to arrest, investigate and harass. I find it odd that they found the strength to keep going and maintain any kind of public profile!