Nick Szabo Likely Author of Original Bitcoin Paper

The true author of the Bitcoin paper was almost undoubtedly Nick Szabo. The writings of all the suspected authors of the paper were analyzed to find the likely match. Check it out:

The primary author of the celebrated Bitcoin paper is most likely Nick Szabo, a blogger and former George Washington University law professor, according to students and researchers at Aston University's Centre for Forensic Linguistics.

Their research also challenges the claim that Dorian S. Nakamoto is the main author of the paper, an assertion made in Newsweek last month that has been strongly denied by Mr Nakamoto.

The study, nicknamed 'Project Bitcoin', was undertaken by a team of 40 final-year forensic linguistics students led by Dr Jack Grieve, Lecturer in Forensic Linguistics at Aston University. It looked at linguistic similarities between the Bitcoin cryptocurrency paper and the writing of eleven other individuals that are regularly referred to as possible authors: Dorian S. Nakamoto, Vili Lehdonvirta, Michael Clear, Shinichi Mochizuki, Gavin Andresen, Nick Szabo, Jed McCaleb, Dustin D. Trammel, Hal Finney, Wei Dai, and Neal King, Vladimir Oksman & Charles Bry.

So it seems like the mystery has been solved. Pheww...

Nick Szabo Likely Author of Original Bitcoin Paper

Been looking into this recently and (hardly surprising with Cryptographers!) all is not as it first appears.

Nick Szabo probably is a fake identity according to this update (bottom of page : blogs.wsj.com... tor-satoshi-nakamoto-unmasked-again/)

"According to George Washington University, it has no record of Mr. Szabo ever working at the school as a law professor. An earlier version of this post stated that Mr. Szabo was a former George Washington University law professor. "

Hmmmm So Nick Szabo was never employed by GWU meaning he probably isn't a professor.
Lets search for him on Google....Oh! there's no pictures, ever of this guy.
OK so we find lots of papers in prominent places but not one piece of none online evidence of him ever living?

What about this other guy...the mysterious Wei Dai?
Authors another seminal paper on altcurrency providing sources to Bitcoin but apart from his online postings....simply doesn't exist.
No pictures, no CV no professional links ...NOTHING.


The only person I could ever find to say they have physically met Nick Szabo or Wei Dai is Hal Finney: bitcointalk.org...

Not only has he met Szabo AND Wei Dai but he received the first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi (another ghost) , is rather good at Cryptographic programming AND has lots of experience (possibly amongst the best on the planet except Zimmerman?) in releasing a properly secured piece of free software into the wild.

I dont think Finney is "the guy" as he might well be making up that he met Szabo and Dai but the chances of him being a good programmer as well as some sort of economic visionary are probably quite low.

If Szabo and Dai are just characters conjured from the minds of a group of cypherpunks it would make perfect sense but I can't help but wonder how many layers of fake info there is surrounding the inception of bitcoin?

If it turns out Finney isnt making up his meetings with Szabo and Dai this poses some particularily ominous questions.