by Rushali 
The revolution of cryptography meeting technology all started in 2008 with Satoshi Nakamoto’s first bitcoin whitepaper getting published, but, is it really the first of its kind or we had this technology before that went unnoticed?
Well, if we dig enough about people associated with this technology we can find some really impressive clues of its existence even before 2008 and not just a year or two but almost a decade of history. All we have to look at is the people or groups of people associated with this technology from its origin like the people involved in the development of bitcoin or the people associated with the underlying blockchain technology space. We can answer all the questions simply if we find the person behind the creation of bitcoin, the man himself Satoshi Nakamoto.
Unfortunately, we have a lot less knowledge about Satoshi Nakamoto and even after digging enough, we couldn’t find anything promising other than some media sites speculating of who Satoshi Nakamoto can be?
Is he a single guy or a group of guys? Where is he now? Is he alive or is he dead?
These are some serious questions we are always on the hunt for to find answers and some concrete answers.
There have been multiple attempts by people after the bitcoin white paper release to claim the status of Satoshi Nakamoto but without any concrete evidence and hence no one could be verified being the real Satoshi Nakamoto. And when we had some sufficient evidence for some people to be the real Satoshi Nakamoto, they denied being the one.
Anyway, it would be a startling discovery if we ever achieve any success to prove the real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto who has done a very good job in hiding himself.
What we can confirm is that the bitcoin technology of peer-to-peer value transfer is not new at all and has been in existence since a decade ago, to say the least.
The term bitcoin got popular after its mainstream appearance but has been in existence with other names and concepts. We can say that it was too early for a revolutionary technology to be accepted by the mainstream public. Even before the mainstream acceptance of bitcoin, it was already being used by the dark web. The mainstream public was not mature enough to see the technology as a real value and it all happened in 2008.
Today we will take a look at the life of one guy who is quoted as the real Satoshi Nakamoto many times and was one of the people who wrote the history for bitcoin with some early concepts dated way back from 1995 and 2005.
Mr. Nick Szabo is the one who came up with the idea of blockchain in 1995 and also suggested “Bitgold” which can be considered as one of the predecessors of Bitcoin technology.
Let us dive deep into his life and try to know about his achievements and why is he being quoted sometimes as the real Satoshi Nakamoto and his networth too.
Spoiler alert- he denies being the real Satoshi Nakamoto himself.
Introduction
Nick Szabo is a computer scientist, a lawyer, and also a cryptographer famously known for suggesting the concept similar to bitcoin in 2005 known as bitgold and also the smart contract technology in 1995, making him the best contender for the Nakamoto title.
Nick completed his formal education at the University of Washington earning a degree in computer science also earning a degree in law from the George Washington universities law school.
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He is also one of the proponents of the extension of human life and has quoted multiple times that humans should live forever with the help of developing science in a matter of years.
Although, very less is known about Szabo and that could be one of the reasons that he is an active candidate in the search for the real Satoshi Nakamoto disappointing everyone every time by denying the claims.
The main reason could be his proposition of “Bitgold”, a similar technology like bitcoin not only by the underlying concept but also the name itself sounds very similar to the much famous Bitcoin.
Szabo also developed the concept of Smart contracts in 1995 as the “the highly evolved” version of contract law and the practices as he himself being a mainstream law scholar.
The “bit gold” technology proposed by him contained a lot of similarities with bitcoin, according to his Wikipedia the structure of bitgold he mentions “a participant would dedicate computer power to solving cryptographic puzzles. In a bit gold network, solved puzzles would be sent to the Byzantine fault-tolerant public registry and assigned to the public key of the solver. Each solution would become part of the next challenge, creating a growing chain of the new property. This aspect of the system provided a way for the network to verify and time-stamp new coins because unless a majority of the parties agreed to accept new solutions, they couldn’t start on the next puzzle.”
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Which not only sounds similar but is almost exactly what bitcoin was designed to do. No doubt people and Satoshi enthusiasts would claim him to be the real Nakamoto.
Although, he repeatedly denies that he is the real Nakamoto. There are some pretty convincing proofs that point towards him and which cannot be denied.
Many big names have claimed with their undeniable research that Szabo could be the real Satoshi Nakamoto but addressing an email from a researcher he politely denied saying “I’m afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I’m used to it.”
Nick Szabo net worth
The disclosed networth of Nick Szabo is only 5 million dollar USD which I think is a really bad underestimation of his net worth and the verified and real ground figures are nowhere to be found just like some information on his personal life and other features.
This is not very surprising for me as if he is the real Satoshi Nakamoto who can disappear from his existence then anything can be done and expected from a man of his caliber. He is also a cryptographer, not to forget.
