DISCLAIMER: Before any trolling on this article and topic starts, I have to say that all statements made below are MY BOTH OWN PERSONAL OPINION AND RESULT OF MY OWN RESEARCH. Before and after thinking, reading and writing about the life and work of Satoshi Nakamoto, my personal stand stayed the same — it is not important who it is, but what he enabled us to do. As far as I’m concerned we are all Satoshi if we share and live the vision this man/woman or group has left us as its legacy. But still, I have found some coincidental things and events to correlate the two entities mentioned above, so I thought writing an article like this to be interesting and viewed as nothing more than another conspiracy theory. So before you all get judgmental, call me an idiot or whatever, read it first and give me your own perspective that either supports or dismiss my point of view. Even if it sounds stupid, I feel smarter because it made me read 4 more books.
Introduction to suspicion
The most precious thing we hold is our life. And it was given to us by the power of nature and our parents. We celebrate the day we we’re born, in order to express gratitude to those who made it possible for us to actually be able to live up to that moment. Then we do the same for our parents, kids, our friends, to everyone and everything that matters to us. On November 1st, 2017. we have celebrated 9th birthday of one things dear to all of us — Bitcoin. And although there are many people to thank for it being able to live up until now, who is the person to thank the most? Who is the one that gave the birth to it? There are many opinions and theories out there, most say (and I agree) it is not important to know who exactly wrote this magnificent whitepaper that disrupted the world as internet did just two decades before. Nevertheless, I like conspiracy theories, so I have developed my own, backed by some strange coincidences which made me think about a possibility of Elon Musk being the person behind Bitcoin.
To start off, let’s first look at Elon Musk’s bio. He was born in Pretoria, South Africa in 1971. as one of three children his father Errol and more importantly for this topic, his mother Maye had. He got his name from his grand grandfather John Elon Haldeman, whose son Joshua, the father of Maye Musk had the most influence on the way Elon was thinking in his early childhood, and was his role model. A rodeo performer, writer, politician, construction worker, chiropractor and farmer, this eccentric man and adrenaline junkie had lived a nomadic life in the province of Saskatchewan in early 20th century. Although he had many interests, his real passion was flying. So that’s what he did, selling everything but his plane he used to find a family home in South Africa after he decided to leave Canada due to his political and personal beliefs. Notably, he and his wife were the first couple to fly from South Africa to Australia and back — a 30.000 mile journey with a single engine plane, back in the 1950’s! Not to mention their wildlife encounters in their frequent camping expeditions they brought kids too with them. The standard of behavior he has set was passed through all generations of his family, so even Elon himself claims that he thinks his risk tolerance way of thinking probably originates from Joshua. The level of his obsession over his grandfather endeavors is best illustrated by the fact that many years after his death, Elon tried all he could to find and purchase his red Bellanca plane. His father Errol’s mechanical and electrical engineering background was just a surplus to the inheritance his mother Maye carried from her side of the family.
Elon Musk as a young boy, ©Maye Musk (Source: “Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X and the Quest for the Fantastic Future.” — Ashlee Vance)
Because of the level of focus Elon had as a child, which made him drift so far into something he’d found interesting, his parents and doctors thought he might have a hearing problem. Later in life, he would describe this type of his brain wiring as an equivalent to computer graphical chip, allowing him to see things out in the world, replicate them in his mind and imagine how they might change and behave when interacting with other objects. In a book Ashlee Vance wrote about him, Elon told him, quote:
“For images and numbers I can process their interrelationships and algorithmic relationships. Acceleration, momentum, kinetic energy — how those sort of things will be affected by objects comes through very vividly.”
He was a geek, eager to read an learn more, which led to being unpopular and often bullied in his childhood. That would explain the fact most of his time he spent reading, according to his family members, it was a full time job for him, since he done so for 10 hours per day. After he ran out of books to read when he was 9 years old (read again — 9!!!) he goes to library where he reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica — At that time 24 volume, over 30,000 page database of knowledge. A study I read recently says average Americans read no more than 4 books a year, so Elon had read more in one year then most of us will in a lifetime. Besides books, Elon fell in love in computers on first sight and although his father didn’t see them useful for anything but playing games, he bought one for him. Elon used it exactly for that purpose, not just to play, but to create a game himself.
In 1984. PC and office technology, a South African tech magazine published a 167 line source code for a game called Blastar developed by Elon, at that time a 12 year old kid. So in between reading the worlds’ biggest encyclopedia, Elon somehow finished a BASIC programing course that takes 6 months to complete. Ah, that’s right — Musk did it in just 3 days!
Page 69. of PC and office Technology, December 1984.©Maye Musk (Source: “Elon Musk: Tesla, Space X
and the Quest for the Fantastic Future.” — Ashlee Vance)
I highlighted this since many forums where life and work of Elon Musk are discussed people tend to label him as just a good businessman with little or no coding skills or any type of knowledge for that matter. Anyway, back to the subject. This was the first time public ever heard of Elon. For this accomplishment he was awarded 500$ and instead of making an early impact to the world, he survives an existential crisis. That’s when he encounters with his absolute favorite book — “The Hitchhikers guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams, which made saving the world by making it a better place his main life purpose. Something Satoshi also must had in mind?
In social terms, growing up for Musk wasn’t as easy. He barely had friends while in high school, but with the ones he had, Elon discussed about many topics, including one very interesting to my theory. According to his friend Ted Wood, he approached to Elon and his brother Kimball on one class break, and when asked what are they discussing, Musks told him they’re thinking about whether banking needs a new branch and how long is it going to take to develop paperless banking. South Africa, high school, 1980’s! For someone of that age, in that moment of history and in that place to think about this, must be considered astonishingly innovative and maybe coincidental?
He was never considered to be top of the class, merely because he barely passed most of the subjects. But guess which ones he was better than anyone — Math and computer science. After high school and his short adventure at University of Pretoria, Musk moves to Canada where he enrolled into Queen’s University of Ontario. Since at that time his major was economics, one time when he was reading the newspapers in pursuit of interesting people from the field to meet, Elon stumbled upon Peter Nicholson, top executive at Bank of Nova Scotia. After a cold call made by Musk brothers and a 6 month wait period, the three finally met. Peter was fascinated with them, and that led to Elon’s summer internship at the bank. Notable mention from this period of time is also that most of his income came from selling PC hardware and servicing other students PCs, as well as the testimony of his roommate Navaid Farooq about Elon’s obsession over game theory and computer science. He would make a big break from both after moving to Pennsylvania to pursue degrees in economics and physics.
In 1994, Elon and his brother Kimball, obsessed with the power of internet, got determined to make their own dot com startup. Determined to learn as much as he could, Elon spent his evenings working along people like Tony Fadell (the inventor of iPad and iPhone), the brains behind QuickTime media and Star Wars effects developers. That experience helped Musk, along with his previous gaming preceding’s to proficient his coding skills. Soon, he was able to pick up enough knowledge and implement physical product into digital, by making the first very own, internet yellow pages — Zip2.
A screenshot of Zip2 user interface (Source: Way back machine)
Most likely, the back-end of this website was written in C++ (same as Bitcoin protocol). Also, the same language is used as a main language in SpaceX, and was used in X.com (Elon Musk’s second startup which merged with Coinfinity to create PayPal). So coding language he used throughout his professional career to develop internet startups is also a coincidence?
Now the PayPal is the second biggest reason I even considered my theory worth researching. Ever since that internship Elon had in Canada, he was aware of most lacks of banking industry of that time. Although he was chewed up for 14$/h everyday throughout the summer of 1990, his position of Head of banking strategy’s assistant, enabled him to become familiar with third world debt and how it is possible to double your money by buying it off, and then selling it for Brady bonds used to backstop the Latin countries debt. It seemed that he was one of the rare people in the organization who actually understood how money worked at that time, and ever since then he was determined to somehow take advantage over conventional banking systems. So in 1995, during another internship at Pinnacle Research, he governed the idea of starting an Internet bank. Later, in 2003. in speech he gave at Stamford University, Musk claimed that even back then he thought of “money being low bandwidth, nothing more than a database entry”. While at the point when X.com was invented, almost no one thought that online banking was a safe way to deal with your finances. Being future thinking and predictive was one of Elon’s main characteristics, similar to our hero — Satoshi. Nah, just a coincidence I guess. Or maybe more than that?
X.com was created almost simultaneously after the Zip2 deal Elon made with Compaq, which turned Musk into one of the first dot com millionaires. Certainly the youngest one by margin, since he was only 27. But instead of pissing all of the money away, most of it got reinvested into his new startup — an online banking platform. After just 5 months of work, he had to deal with the first major coup, when one of his most important associate and friend from the time of his Nova Scotia internship — Harris Friceker took most of the employees into his own company, leaving Musk forced to find new team members for X.com. Soon, a big competitor arrived in a company called Coinfinity, led by Peter Thiel (also known as an angel investor and a major Facebook stockholder and its current board member) and Max Levchin. At first, it was a fierce battle over market but soon to be overpassed with the idea of a merge. PayPal was the product derived from such action, but once again Musk had to face with a betrayal, only this time much bigger that the first one. Basically, a coup was organized while Musk was on his way to Sidney for his honeymoon, and by the time his plane landed to Australia, he was replaced as the CEO by Peter Theil. The reason behind this was a huge level of doubt developed inside the company as a result of previous security and reliability problems Musk’s X.com had once it became mainstream. The network crashes and hacks we’re frequent, company started losing money and reputation. Eventually, Elon gave in and peacefully waited for eBay’s acquisition of the company. This experience has shown Musk two things: First, he will never again run a company in a way where he could be replaced, and more importantly for us, that online banking is a plausible concept once all reliability and security issues are resolved. The concept of banking security and running a company he learned the toughest way possible, could lead to his final project — making a new way of money (Bitcoin). I hardly believe Elon would just give up on that idea. So is it just a coincidence such system was created in 2009?
Thinking big was always a thing of Musk’s. Since his early days as a boy, he has read literature about space traveling, a lot of comic books with superheroes and dreamed about changing the world. Only Elon did do it in many ways throughout his life. According to his employees, he has been fully involved in making and adopting all parts of early made rockets at Space X. Same thing goes for Tesla, where each prototype of the car in their early stages of development was tested by Elon himself. Their design was an obsession of his too. Many however claim that Tesla stole much of the patents from BMW and Audi. Similar was told about his first rocket design — the Falcon 1. Even in the book about Musk written by Ashlee Vance, there are many of quotations from Musk which could imply to contribute such claims. Nevertheless, Tesla’s model S was shipped in 2012, and has gained all major awards in the automobile industry, not among electric cars but ALL CARS!So it’s maybe another talent of his, taking existing things and change them in order to make them better. Bitcoin hashing algorithm, Proof of work system of Hal Finney, the idea of E-cash, the concepts like Nick Szabo’s Bit Gold, Wei Dai’s crypto ++ and b-money etc. we’re all predecessors to Bitcoin. Maybe Elon just did what he was best at and made it possible to use.
Some might ask, how Elon’s work is related to the main concept of Bitcoin protocol — decentralization. After all, isn’t he the guy that likes to be in control of everything?Well I like to think of Bitcoin being his first attempt to do things in a different way. Being previously pushed out from the CEO position of both of his companies, maybe this was his way of protecting his idea, even if he can’t claim it as such. The fact Elon is a fan of decentralized approach in business is best shown by his efforts in his third company — Solar City. Another disruptive concept he entered into in 2006. And in six years made it the biggest solar panel installer in the US. The main idea Elon had is that the best possible solution for future energy efficiency is decentralization of source of production. Meaning that, each house or building rooftop should have a solar panel for themselves, and if in excess or lack of energy, it would be consumed on an equally shared principles. Similar to Nodes and Miners in Bitcoin’s Proof of Work consensus algorithm. Or probably not?
Ok, after reading this article so far, if your mind was tangled at least a bit, you must be thinking, what could be his motive to do something like inventing the Bitcoin protocol?
Other people thought to be Satoshi
Since I am not the first nor last ask who Satoshi Nakamoto is, we have had many mentionable and mainstream theories about it. Names like Nick Szabo, Dorian Nakamoto, Gavin Andersen, Shinichi Mochizuki, and most recently Craig Steven Wright were at some point considered to possibly be the man behind Bitcoin. However, the only candidate I consider to be a possible figure among the ones frequently mentioned is Hal Finney. He has shared his own story on bitcointalk.org on the topic of Bitcoin and its founder in 2013, quote:
“When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.Today, Satoshi’s true identity has become a mystery. But at the time, I thought I was dealing with a young man of Japanese ancestry who was very smart and sincere. I’ve had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the course of my life, so I recognize the signs.After a few days, bitcoin was running pretty stably, so I left it running. Those were the days when difficulty was 1, and you could find blocks with a CPU, not even a GPU. I mined several blocks over the next days. But I turned it off because it made my computer run hot, and the fan noise bothered me. In retrospect, I wish I had kept it up longer, but on the other hand I was extraordinarily lucky to be there at the beginning. It’s one of those glass half full half empty things.The next I heard of Bitcoin was late 2010, when I was surprised to find that it was not only still going, bitcoins actually had monetary value. I dusted off my old wallet, and was relieved to discover that my bitcoins were still there. As the price climbed up to real money, I transferred the coins into an offline wallet, where hopefully they’ll be worth something to my heirs.”
Elon and Bitcoin
In my own research, there were only two public mentions of Bitcoin by Elon Musk.At Vanity Fair’s New Establishment Summit in 2014 in an interview he had with Walter Isaacson, when asked about his point of view about PayPal and Bitcoin he stated, quote:
“The long term vision I had for PayPal was to convert the financial system from series of heterogeneous insecure databases to one database.”
If you ask me, that could sound like blockchain. He continued stating that he would have made PayPal as a consumer oriented banking system that is easy to use in a reliable and secure way. But just seconds after that, when asked about Bitcoin, Musk froze. He only said it will be mostly used for illegal transactions and then said maybe legal, and then maybe both, finishing pretty confused by saying: “I don’t own any bitcoin.”
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPsHN1KyRQ8&feature=youtu.be&t=31m17s — start watching around 31:17).
So a man who used to envisioned online banking in high school, who made the first platform of such kind with X.com to disrupt financial industry, while also disrupting space, car and energy industries, and a man who’s all companies accept bitcoin as a medium of exchange, struggles to give a more deeper and proper view of it. I for one will not be bought that he is uninformed or even worse, lacks understanding on this topic. I believe there is more into it than that. And all of that after he tweeted this when asked about his standings on cryptocurrencies, from a complete stranger:
(Source: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/444358711796985857?lang=en)
It’s the same man who looked almost uninterested into answering any Bitcoin related questions just months after this reply. Maybe it’s his own way to prevent people to even try to think about linking him to Bitcoin, since he wants it to stay the way it is. Let’s face it, a lot of us found Bitcoin even more interesting once we heard the guy who made it is anonymous. It has by far, been the best marketing strategy for its gain of popularity. It makes it look like a fairy-tale, a science fiction comic book one might say, like the ones Elon Musk used to read as a boy.
The timing
The first time Satoshi Nakamoto appeared was on November 1st, 2008. on a Cryptography mailing list forum, where he published his whitepaper about Bitcoin, as a peer to peer electronic cash system. Many cryptographist from that time, picked up the topic, and continued further discussion. During the time of his presence, Nakamoto did not disclose any personal information when discussing technical matters. He provided some commentary on banking and fractional reserve lending. On his P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old male who lived in Japan, but some speculated he was unlikely to be Japanese due to his use of perfect English and his bitcoin software not being documented or labelled in Japanese.Musk has openly endorsed and adored Japans’ tradition and culture that some of his costume parties were Japanese themed, and of course as a host, Elon would dress as a samurai. He even described himself like one in a conversation he had with Ashlee Vance which he used when writing a book “Elon Musk: Inventing the future”, quote:
“My mentality is that of a samurai. I would rather commit seppuku than fail.”
At the time, Musk was struggling with a bunch of problems in all his companies due to broken deadlines and financial crisis. Funding was a major problem of his, as he was looking for any way possible to continue both production of Tesla Model S and launching of Falcon 1. His personal life was no better as his working habits and temper took a toll, which led to his divorce from his wife Justine. Occasional British English spelling and terminology (such as the phrases he used like “favour”, “maths”, “colour” and “bloody hard”) in both source code comments and forum postings led to speculation that Nakamoto was of Commonwealth origin. For all of those unfamiliar with this term, The Commonwealth of Nations — formerly the British Commonwealth, is a voluntary association or confederation of 52 independent sovereign states, most of which were once part of the British Empire, one of which is South Africa, where Elon was born.
The last time Satoshi was present in a public discussion on bitcointalk.org forum, was on December 12th, 2010. claiming he has more important things to devote his attention. In that specific moment, Elon Musk just finished Tesla’s IPO, got married for the second time and began making plans and statements about sending people to Mars by 2030.
Why Elon could be Satoshi:
1. He had experience with the banking sectors’ flaws ever since his University internship, and has developed one of the first online banking systems ever.
2. In the period of time when Bitcoin was created, Musk had extreme problems with funding his companies and projects, so he certainly had a motive to seek an insurance in case the past repeats itself.
3. He has used and understood parts from the technology behind Bitcoin, specifically its backend programing language C++, he understood game theory and was a great mathematician.
4. Origin and age of Satoshi Nakamoto also make Elon a plausible candidate to be considered as Bitcoin’s father.
5. He has been taken out twice in both of previous startups he was CEO of, so decentralized system of governance might seemed like a much better recipe for success in the eyes of Musk than running Bitcoin as a company of his own.
6. The timing of the Bitcoin inception matches significant life events in both personal and professional life of Elon Musk.
7. If anything above is considered to be coincidental, one thing is certain, Musk always had a huge talent in recognizing talented people, whose work he would observe, modify and upgrade to level never seen before. His entire life he spent disrupting and changing those areas of industry in which there were strong monopoly present at all times, and the only one he felt bitter when he left from was the financial, after the sale of PayPal. And Elon never stopped until succeeded.
Why Elon isn’t Satoshi:
1. Some sources stated that the programmers Zip2 recruited shortly after it gained traction stated that the code Elon wrote was filled with “Hairballs”. It was considered that the fact he was self-educated developer disabled him of a sense for simplicity when writing a code, which made the strings long and confusing. However, according to Musk, he was the one who had to fix their work in the middle of the night once everyone went home. I guess we’ll never know the truth.
2. After the PayPal being sold to eBay, one of its employees, Eric Jackson wrote a book called “The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia and the rest of the planet Earth” in which he claimed that Elon Musk was an arrogant jerk whose decisions made all the issues company had gone through. Must of the other employees supported the other part of the story stating that his CEO position was well deserved. After all, X.com was the first E-banking startup of that kind, it’s expected to go through some type of problems. I guess, truth is again two-faced, we’ll never know who was right.
3. Elon’s biggest talent by far was selling himself and his story. He might not be genius, but he is a genial businessman, a statement no one can argue. Even when he lacked the results, the product, the funding, he was always very loud. When success came, some say you couldn’t get the man of the screen. That’s why most doubt he could be Satoshi, since they hardly believe Elon would miss the opportunity to claim his throne as a “new economy leader”. On the other hand, like Bitcoin, Musk was trashed, sentenced to doom many times, criticized and even hated. In the period when whitepaper for Bitcoin protocol was written, Elon’s reputation and situation couldn’t be worse. Tesla Model S was never going to happen and failed third launch of Falcon 1 were headlines all over the place. Linking himself to a project of this sort would end up only in failure, since it would be taken away like PayPal, or trashed talked like the ones he was involved. And after he survived all attacks and difficulties, he himself claimed he won’t allow himself to financially struggle ever again, maybe Bitcoin was his insurance policy if any new obstacle comes out. I guess we’ll never know the truth on this matter either.
4. In the days prior Bitcoin was created, Elon Musk was surviving a major life crisis on all fields. He got divorced, filed for bankruptcy at Tesla and had only funding for one last launch of Falcon 1. Least to say, the man was overwhelmed with his obligations and circumstances to be able to accomplish to simultaneously develop the Bitcoin network protocol. However, lack of time and productivity were never an obstacle for Musk. Best shown in the example, where he fired Mary Beth Brown, his right hand and executive assistant after she worked for 12 years together at Tesla and Space X. After complaining about her crazy hours, he sent her on vacation, only to realize he can perform her duties along with his own. And she was a person, according to other employees, who worked as many hours as Musk did and was heavily involved with many day to day operations. So time was(n’t) an obstacle?
5. The name of Satoshi Nakamoto is related to a man who lived just 2 blocks apart from the house of a man who is considered to be the Bitcoin father — Hal Finney. This name was, according to some sources chosen as a symbol of resistance in behalf of all victims of financial crisis that forced Hal’s neighbor to foreclose his house. Elon Musk until now was in no way related to Dorian Nakamoto in such a way that he could ever use his name as pseudonym. Hal Finney denied to be the inventor of Bitcoin until his death in 2014. He has been however cryopreserved, and unless there will be a way to revive him someday, we’ll never know if him being the main man behind this project is true.
6. There were many people publicly known to be involved in some way into development of the Bitcoin network protocol, and Elon Musk is certainly not one of them. Although he’s a very hard working and productive man, with huge background in pioneering products in sectors of technology, it should be noted that he was neither a programmer nor cryptographist, and that in the time Bitcoin was developed, Musk was over his head into working on several project simultaneously while struggling to finance each one of them. On the other hand, the funding problems he had for Tesla and Space X, could be considered as more than a valid motive to do something like creating a digital currency without the central authority which could subsequently lead to new ways of crowdfunding (which has shown valid in this ICO super hype era of cryptocurrencies). Again, something we’ll never be sure of.
7. Laszlo Hanyecz, a former bitcoin core developer who had emailed Nakamoto, had the feeling the code was too well designed for one person. But the guy who tried to break it on multiple occasions — Dan Kaminsky, claimed it is plausible that it is done by one person, of course a genius one.
Conclusion
Electric cars, space traveling, solar energy, and finally, digital cash, we’re all things invented, discussed, tested and done, long time before Elon Musk could even wrap his head around those subjects or even before he was born. But somehow, in all the fields mentioned above, he was able to implement all related and unrelated technology to make it work better. The only field a man known never to give up was forced to feel defeated is his online banking experience he had with PayPal. He knew the basics of game theory, algorithms and C++ coding. He was a victim of both global and personal financial crisis in the time when Bitcoin protocol was invented. He always dreamed big. He always delivered on those dreams. I have tried, probably because I personally consider him one of the most brilliant, disruptive and intriguing man in modern human history, to connect him to a product that we could label the same way — our very own Bitcoin. I am probably wrong, but never mind. The reasons for him to stay anonymous are various. One of which I find the most important is to prove to all of us that Bitcoin is not him, me or any other person. We are all Bitcoin, and it belongs to all and none of us! Satoshi Nakamoto, whoever you are or were, thank you, you paved the path for a brighter future of all humanity.
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