Forget Satoshi Nakamoto — These Are The Names In Bitcoin That Actually Matter
The Bitcoin community was nearly unanimous in expressing its displeasure at the controversial Newsweek story purporting to out 'Satoshi Nakamoto,' the anonymous person who coded and created the famous digital currency.
The common critique is that it doesn't matter who's behind Bitcoin, that the technology is so transformative for how money moves around the world that the genie's already out of the proverbial bottle.
The identity of the creator has nothing to do with a Bitcoiner's current task at hand - to educate people on Bitcoin and figure out new ways to apply it.
Whoever dreamed up Bitcoin certainly seems to want nothing to do with mainstream attention, and that's okay. There are plenty of public-facing people in the Bitcoin world more than happy to play cryptocurrency advocate. Let's skip the speculation over who Satoshi is and instead look to people who are happy to talk about Bitcoin and its implications.
Andreas Antonopoulos, Blockchain.info
Antonopoulos is the Chief Security Officer of Blockchain.info, a popular Bitcoin wallet service that also records every single Bitcoin transaction as it happens. He's also likely the closest thing there is to a Bitcoin missionary, traveling from conference to conference to educate people on what Bitcoin is and how it works.
Many of his presentations are on YouTube. This one in particular is especially accessible.
When there began to be doubts that Newsweek had properly identified 'Satoshi Nakamoto' (it suggested that he was actually Dorian Nakamoto of Temple City, Calif.), Antonopoulos started a Bitcoin fundraiser to send money to Nakamoto for his troubles in being hounded by the media. Antonopoulos raised 44.64 Bitcoins worth over $28,000.
Gavin Andresen, Bitcoin Foundation
Andresen is Chief Scientist of the Bitcoin Foundation, a non-profit organization that exists to 'standardize, protect and promote the use of Bitcoin cryptographic money for the benefit of users worldwide.'
He became project lead for Bitcoin in May 2010 and has communicated directly with 'Satoshi Nakamoto' in the past, but only ever via email and Web forums. Andresen has rather high-level access to the Bitcoin network as well, holding an 'alert key' that lets him send messages about the status of the Bitcoin network that enables those messages to appear in every single Bitcoin client as users run them.
Barry Silbert, Bitcoin Investment Trust
Consider the following two sentences from Crain's:
At 13, Barry Silbert was making a business out of trading baseball cards. He spent his bar mitzvah money on stocks, and at 17 was the youngest person to pass the Series 7 stockbrokers' exam.
Barry Silbert knows a thing or two about money, so it's only natural that the CEO and founder of SecondMarket, a place for buying and selling illiquid assets, would also be interested in Bitcoin. Silbert founded the Bitcoin Investment Trust, a 'private, open-ended trust that is invested exclusively in Bitcoin & derives its value solely from the price of Bitcoin.' His business exists to help Bitcoin speculators buy, store, and protect large numbers of Bitcoins.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider See Also:
Post a Comment for "Forget Satoshi Nakamoto — These Are The Names In Bitcoin That Actually Matter"