Nick Szabo is the person who is most like Satoshi Nakamoto. He published the prototype of Bitcoin Gold in 1998, during which he absorbed David's B-money idea. David advocated that the verification results (ledgers) should be made public, which is the idea of ââthe public ledger of Bitcoin today. The verification method mentioned in Nick's Bit Gold is Hal's independent third-party verification. In comparison, David's method is more sophisticated. David's original B-money idea was published in the form of a story on the website run by Nick. In 2002, Adam published Hash Cash, which proposed the calculation method of proof of work and difficulty coefficient, and was also absorbed in Bitcoin Gold. Satoshi Nakamoto developed the difficulty coefficient calculation into automatic adjustment of the difficulty coefficient of 2016 blocks based on the negative feedback principle of automatic control, which is very exciting. It ensures the linear issuance of coins in the Bitcoin system. Satoshi Nakamoto's improvement on Bit Gold and the use of economic means to deal with the Byzantine Generals Problem. Nick agrees with this point. After studying Nick's Bit Gold white paper, we seem to have seen Bitcoin. It seems that Satoshi Nakamoto is programming with the Bit Gold white paper as a task book. Of course, if this were the case, Bitcoin would have been launched long ago, which means there are still some inconsistencies. Satoshi Nakamoto saw the Bitcoin Gold plan in 2005, otherwise he would not have said that Bitcoin is the realization of David and Nick's ideas. In addition to the Byzantine Generals Problem mentioned by Nick, Bitcoin Gold also has an incentive problem, which is a production relationship. For technicians who are generally educated in the West, this is also a cross-border area that is difficult to break through in terms of concepts. Satoshi Nakamoto's epiphany was stimulated by the financial crisis that began in 2017, and he finally figured out the things he hadn't figured out about Bitcoin.
The development of cryptocurrency research is well-documented. Nick has absorbed the nutrients of the cypherpunk community. BitGold represents the highest level in the circle. It is a relatively complete design concept. Nick is worthy of being a master of thought. In the comments on the blog of the Bitcoin Gold article, many people concluded that he is Satoshi Nakamoto because they are too similar. The last reference (8) of this article is my reading notes. It is a study of the Bitcoin Gold white paper and an analysis of the differences between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Gold.
David commented on Nick: "Nick is one of the few people who has the breadth, depth and specificity of knowledge. He is the right age, has the right background, and is in the right place at the right time. He has made many right choices." (1) What does "specific knowledge" mean here? David also said: "Only he and Nick have the ability to develop Bitcoin." This is the meaning of specific knowledge. Only people in this small circle can develop it. Guessing that Nick is Satoshi Nakamoto and guessing that Hal is Satoshi Nakamoto are both not outrageous, but Nick is closer. The gap between masters is not big. If Finney is one step away from Bitcoin, then Nick is only half a step away.
Nick was born in 1964 and graduated from the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Washington in 1989. In 2009, he was already 45 years old. This is older than our previous estimate of Satoshi Nakamoto's age, which was 33-34 years old. Nick has passed the best age for program development. If a programmer has not been developing programs all the time and has program works, by the age of 45, his thoughts will be more mature but his skills will be rusty. It will be difficult for him to independently develop a high-level program like Bitcoin. Because the development level of Bitcoin is world-class. Dan Kaminsky, a security expert, is famous for discovering the underlying vulnerability of the Internet in 2008. Kaminsky said: "When I first saw the code, I was sure I would be able to crack it," but he was unable to crack it. He thinks the programming style is meticulous. "The way the whole thing is formatted is crazy. Only the most paranoid and hardworking programmers in the world can avoid making mistakes." (2) This is the biggest gap between Nick and Satoshi Nakamoto, that is, the gap in programming ability.
In addition to programming security technology, Satoshi Nakamoto's research on cryptography has also been highly praised by experts. Satoshi Nakamoto's white paper mentions the work of Stuart Haber, a researcher at Princeton H.P. Laboratory, three times. Haber is the director of the International Cryptography Research Association and knows Bitcoin inside out. He said: "Whoever did it has a deep understanding of cryptography." (2) After reading Nick's article, you will feel his shortcomings in programming and cryptography. He is different from Hal. Hal wrote his own RPOW system. After Satoshi Nakamoto published the Bitcoin code, Hal quickly downloaded it and communicated with Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto told Adam and David the code download address by email, but Baker and David did not seem to move. Nick did not show any enthusiasm. A search on the cryptography mailing list did not find Nick's article. It seems that he is too far away from cryptography.
Nick could not develop it on his own, so he could find someone. But others could only implement his ideas. If he implemented his complete BitGold program, his verification would still be inspired by Hal and require trusted third-party verification, which is still far from the level of Bitcoin verification. Only if the programmer himself has a deep understanding of Nick's ideas and makes improvements and innovations can it be successful. But he and David both said that there are very few people who understand this knowledge. Who can help him implement it? Programming skills stumped Nick. He was still looking for suitable developers in the second half of 2008, when Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin was about to be released. After Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin was released, he deleted the recruitment post from his blog. The posts that can be found outside have been passed around many times. Interested readers can read reference (3). The reason for deleting the blog post has aroused speculation from the outside world, and even doubts about his character. In fact, the reason is very simple. Satoshi Nakamoto created Bitcoin, which is better than Nick's BitGold idea. He did not have the ability to think and develop a product that surpasses Bitcoin, so he deleted the post looking for people, which represented his attitude. 13 years have passed, and no project has surpassed Bitcoin. A master is a master, whether it is Satoshi Nakamoto or Nick, masters have first-class judgment. Nick gave up the idea of ââfurther development. This is the awesomeness of Satoshi Nakamoto, he did it to the extreme and you can't surpass it, you can only improve the details. There was a man named Steve Jobs in the world, the mobile phone he designed was followed by later generations. The mobile phone came out in 2007, he was 52 years old, experienced and mature. Satoshi Nakamoto was only 33-34 years old.
Nick's characteristic is his imagination, while Satoshi's characteristic is his strong programming ability. Nick is a prolific writer who covers a wide range of topics, including computer science, law, politics, economics, finance, history, and biology. The web.archive.org website shows that Nick made 803 saves in the unenumerated blog between February 3, 2006 and August 23, 2022. (4) That is, he published about 803 posts. In addition to the white paper, the only text left by Satoshi is nearly 80,000 words of customer service posts and emails. The quality of the posts is not as good as the white paper. The two versions of the white paper were released a few months apart, but there were few changes, and almost no changes to the text. This shows that the white paper was a lot of work, perhaps with the help of the sponsor. In other words, the English level of Satoshi's casual posts is plain English, unlike Nick's eloquent writing, so Satoshi doesn't like to write articles. Satoshi thinks his programming skills are better than his writing skills. He said this in his reply to Hal on the forum, and (5) he also said the same thing in an email to Martti, an early participant in Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto is better at programming than writing articles, because the instruction set of code is small and it is easy to format what you write, while the instruction set of language is too large and changes too much, making it difficult to manipulate. Who would find programming easy but writing articles difficult? Nick doesn't. Satoshi Nakamoto also speaks fluent English, so why would he find it difficult to express himself? This is the content of behavioral analysis. Decryption is a very interesting thing.
In addition, Nick does not hide himself. People who like to use blogs want more people to know him. He can openly find someone to program him and realize his Bitcoin Gold. Why would he create a false identity for himself for Bitcoin? It doesn't make sense. He is an output-oriented person who prefers to communicate publicly rather than privately. In an inconspicuous corner of his blog, I finally found an email address nszabo@law.gwu.edu, which is probably his email address. There is no PGP encrypted public key on it. This behavior is very different from Satoshi Nakamoto. Satoshi Nakamoto does not disclose any more information. People who hide will not open a blog to introduce their thoughts and opinions. All of Satoshi Nakamoto's posts are to answer questions about Bitcoin. Satoshi Nakamoto likes to communicate privately through emails, and their emails are all encrypted. Disclosing one's email address also discloses one's PGP encrypted public key. The advantage of this is that spam will be blocked out. The writing style is easy to hide. They are a generation that grew up playing role-playing games. Judging Satoshi Nakamoto by the writing style will fall into his maze. The behavior is a habit that is difficult to hide. The two people's styles of behavior are very different.
Another difference is that Satoshi Nakamoto is a freelancer. He advocates winning by doing nothing, and he asked everyone to keep some bitcoins from the beginning, and he practiced it himself. Nick also teaches at the university and studies, exporting ideas, and did not win by doing nothing.
There is no evidence that Nick is involved in mining. If he has more than 1 million bitcoins, does he still need to go to work?
Nick denied that he was Satoshi Nakamoto, and like Hal, he did so sincerely. I have always guessed that they knew who Satoshi Nakamoto was, and they wanted to protect him, or to respect other people's privacy. This is the idea of ââcypherpunks, and they have noble moral sentiments. Adrian Chen asked Nick on Twitter who Satoshi Nakamoto was. He said: "I don't intend to comment further on this matter. I think he has made such a great contribution, and I want to respect his desire to retain his privacy." (6) The word "respect" implies that he knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. If it was just to satisfy people's curiosity, I wouldn't have spent so much effort. I said earlier that this is the call of the times, and someone needs to wake up this chosen one.
Nick's 2011 article "Bitcoin, why did it take so long?" (7) is very well written and profound, answering questions from the outside world. It shows what a master's mind and bottom line are. Nick Szabo's knowledge and character are role models. Reference (8) is the original text of BitGold, which allows you to appreciate the style of master Nick.
His behavior and thoughts are consistent, so his speech evidence was accepted as auxiliary evidence. He is relatively old, which does not meet the characteristics of being well-off, a freelancer, good at hiding, sending encrypted emails, and not good at writing articles.
in conclusion:
Satoshi Nakamoto: Male, 33-34 years old, child prodigy, American, lives on the West Coast, is a cypherpunk. Not short of money. Freelancer. Satoshi Nakamoto is not among the suspects of the deceased. He has excellent programming and product design skills and understanding of the community. He is lucky to have a good sponsor and adviser. Satoshi Nakamoto has a deep understanding of finance. Influenced by the Austrian School of Economics. Likes a free and easy life. The founder of cryptoeconomics. The chosen one with a mission. Satoshi Nakamoto's role-playing does not have such a large span of personality and behavior. Good at hiding, sending emails must be encrypted, not good at writing articles.
We are getting closer and closer to our goal. Confirmation is much harder than denial, and deciphering the story is an interesting journey.