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The Ghost Behind Bitcoin: Szabo's Shadow
I've been digging into the mysterious figure of Nick Szabo lately, and I'm increasingly convinced he knows more about Satoshi than he lets on. This computer scientist and legal scholar coined "smart contracts" back in '94 and created "bit gold" in '98 - suspiciously similar to what would later become Bitcoin.
The parallels between bit gold and Bitcoin are striking. Szabo's concept incorporated Proof-of-Work (borrowed from Adam Back's Hashcash), used candidate chains with random numbers for hashing, and established ownership through digital registration. Sound familiar? It damn well should.
What really gets me is how Satoshi completely ignored Szabo's work in the Bitcoin whitepaper. Not a single mention! Even stranger, when Hal Finney - one of the earliest Bitcoin adopters - suggested Satoshi should look at bit gold for inspiration, Satoshi later acknowledged Szabo's work in a Bitcoin Talk post. Why the initial silence? Something doesn't add up here.
Despite the mountain of circumstantial evidence, Szabo keeps denying he's Satoshi. A bit too emphatically, if you ask me. The New York Times even reported that "the most convincing evidence" pointed to "a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo."
I've compared their writing styles and technical approaches, and the similarities are uncanny. Both display exceptional understanding of economics, cryptography, and distributed systems. Both have that peculiar ability to merge abstract concepts with practical implementation.
Trading platforms have seen Bitcoin's value skyrocket since those early days, turning what was once Szabo's theoretical "bit gold" into the world's most valuable cryptocurrency. Whether he's Satoshi or not, his fingerprints are all over this technology.
The crypto community may never know who Satoshi truly is, but Szabo's influence on digital currencies and smart contracts is undeniable. His work laid essential groundwork for the blockchain revolution - perhaps more directly than he's willing to admit.