Who Is Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto? Elon Musk Has A Guess

While the identity of bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto remains a mystery, Elon Musk seemed to have a guess as to who he thinks might be behind the invention of the cryptocurrency and using the pseudonym.

Musk, like many, said he believes that Nakamoto might be Nick Szabo – a digital currency expert who founded the coin Bit Gold in 1998.

The Tesla CEO made the revelation during the Lex Fridman podcast, which was posted on YouTube Tuesday, when he was asked about Nakamoto’s real identity.

“You can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas,” Musk told Fridman. “And then, I don’t know who created bitcoin for practical purposes, but the evolution of ideas is pretty clear before that.

“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.”

This is not the first time that Szabo, who has over 325,000 Twitter followers, has been linked to the invention of bitcoin and the identity of Nakamoto, which was first created in 2008 when the cryptocurrency was first proposed.

Szabo’s writing in 2014 was compared to Nakamoto’s bitcoin whitepaper by a team of linguistic researchers from Aston University Centre for Forensic Linguistics, where it was found to have a “number of linguistic similarities” that were “uncanny.”

The New York Times published a report in 2015 that suggested Szabo invented bitcoin.

Musk was asked by Fridman if he was Nakamoto, to which he said he was not. He also said if he was Nakamoto, he would reveal himself.