Bitcoin has become one of the most discussed topics recently all thanks to the huge rise in its value in the last week or so. The cryptocurrency which had zero value when it started back in 2010 is now worth 16,570 USD per bitcoin at the moment of writing this piece.
Bitcoin is said to have been founded by some Satoshi Nakamoto which is actually just a name used by some unknown person to keep his identity safe. But with the rising popularity of Bitcoin, it has become really important for people to know about the creator too.
A blogger named Skye Grey in 2013 claimed that a computer scientist Nick Szabo was the creator of Bitcoin. Nick Szabo, however denied the claim. Then in May 2016, an Australian entrepreneur Craig Wright told BBC that he was the creator of Bitcoin. He even gave some technical proofs supporting his claim.
However, he later failed to prove his identity and apologised. He said that he did not have the courage to continue to try proving his case. There were a couple of more assumptions regarding the identity but nothing was proved.
However, up recently, a former SpaceX intern named Sahil Gupta has claimed in a blog that the creator of Bitcoins could be none other than Elon Musk (founder of SpaceX) himself and he is the original person behind the name Satoshi Nakamoto.
Gupta has made this claim on the basis of some observations. As per him, Bitcoin’s source code was written by someone who is a master of C++ and Elon Musk has heavily used this language in SpaceX. He has also noted that Musk had written a paper on the Hyperloop back in 2013 that highlighted his deep understanding of the subject.
Bitcoin came into existence in 2008 which was the year of the global financial crisis. Sahil Gupta also believes that Musk’s keenness to solve large-scale problems would have motivated him to invent a currency that didn’t require any bank’s intervention.
He has also made a close observation. The original Bitcoin paper that released the currency to the world has uses of casual phrases like “bloody hard” which is quite close to how Musk speaks. He further points out this interesting tweet from Elon Musk which he posted in 2014.
@X4NWO Well, now that Satoshi Nakamoto has been discovered, I guess it is case closed … 🙂
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2014
However, Elon Musk has also confirmed on Twitter that all the reports making such claims are untrue.
Not true. A friend sent me part of a BTC a few years, but I don’t know where it is.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 28, 2017
What do you think about it?