Elon Musk Thinks He Knows Who Satoshi Nakamoto Is

Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has spoken out on the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic person or group credited with inventing bitcoin.

During a podcast published Tuesday, Musk addressed the mystery surrounding the bitcoin creator’s identity. During the interview, the host, Lex Fridman, questioned Musk if the fact that bitcoin’s originator has never been identified is a “feature or a flaw,” prompting Musk to provide his take on the matter.

Elon Musk appears to concur with many others that the ultra-secretive cryptocurrency specialist Nick Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic creator of bitcoin.

“You can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas. It seems as though Nick Szabo is probably, more than anyone else, responsible for the evolution of those ideas. He claims not to be Nakamoto, but I’m not sure that’s neither here nor there. But he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind bitcoin than anyone else.”

Over the last decade, Bitcoin has evolved to become a $2 trillion asset class, yet no one knows who invented it. Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous BTC founder, invented Bitcoin in 2008 and went completely anonymous following its introduction in 2019, wiping all potential digital signatures and leaving no trace. There have been several theories concerning the original creator’s identity, and many people have claimed to know who the genuine person behind it is, but no one has provided any definitive evidence.

A group of linguistics academics from the United Kingdom compared the renowned bitcoin whitepaper ascribed to Nakamoto to the work of 11 people suspected of being the creator in 2014. The researchers came to the conclusion that Szabo was the most likely suspect.

“The number of linguistic similarities between Szabo’s writing and the bitcoin whitepaper is uncanny,” the researchers said, adding that “none of the other possible authors were anywhere near as good of a match.”

Szabo, for one, has always denied being bitcoin’s founder, even writing in a 2014 tweet that he was “Not Satoshi, but thank you.”

While several people have been suggested as plausible possibilities, including Musk, the exact identity of bitcoin’s inventor — or creators — has yet to be established. Musk refuted again during the podcast interview that he is the genuine Satoshi Nakamoto.

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