Nick Szabo

Szabo currently resides in Seattle, Washington and is married to Michelle Szabo.

Szabo graduated from the University of Washington in 1989 with a degree in computer science{{cite web |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/17/business/decoding-the-enigma-of-satoshi-nakamoto-and-the-birth-of-bitcoin.html |title=Decoding the Enigma of Satoshi Nakamoto and the Birth of Bitcoin |last=Popper |first=Nathaniel |date=15 May 2015 |website=The New York Times |access-date=8 January 2017}} and received a Juris Doctor degree from George Washington University Law School.{{cite web |url=http://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2009/05/sotomayor-calabresi-and-chief-justice.html |title=Unenumerated, "Sotomayor, Calabresi, and the Chief Justice at our moot court" | last=Szabo |first=Nick |date=26 May 2009 | access-date=20 March 2019}} He holds an honorary professorship at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín.{{Cite web|url=https://noticias.ufm.edu/index.php?title=Graduaci%C3%B3n_UFM_y_doctorado_a_Nick_Szabo|title = Portada 2021}}

The phrase and concept of "smart property" was developed by Szabo with the goal of bringing what he calls the "highly evolved" practices of contract law and practice to the design of electronic commerce protocols between strangers on the Internet.{{cite journal |url=http://firstmonday.org/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/548 |title=Formalizing and Securing Relationships on Public Networks |last=Szabo |first=Nick |date=September 1997 |journal=First Monday |volume=2 |issue=9 |doi=10.5210/fm.v2i9.548 |s2cid=33773111 |access-date=8 January 2017 |doi-access= free}} In 1994, he wrote an introduction to the concept and, in 1996, an exploration of what smart contracts could do. Nick Szabo proposed a digital marketplace built on these automatic, cryptographically secure processes.{{cn|date=April 2024|reason=The significance of this work should be contextualized by a reliable and independent source.}}

Szabo argued that a minimum granularity of micropayments is set by mental transaction costs.{{cite journal |title=Micropayments and Mental Transaction Costs |last=Szabo |first=Nick |citeseerx=10.1.1.23.9779}}{{cite web |url=http://szabo.best.vwh.net/micropayments.html |title=The Mental Accounting Barrier to Micropayments |last=Szabo |first=Nick |access-date=8 January 2017 |archive-url=https://archive.today/20130112013653/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/micropayments.html |archive-date=12 January 2013 |url-status=dead}} At one time{{When|date=October 2023}} Szabo was a proponent of "extropian" life extension techniques.{{Cite web|url=https://thebaffler.com/salvos/everybody-freeze-pein|title=Everybody Freeze! | Corey Pein|date=8 March 2016}}

In 1998, Szabo designed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency he called "bit gold".{{cite web |url=https://spectrum.ieee.org/bitcoin-the-cryptoanarchists-answer-to-cash |title=Bitcoin: The Cryptoanarchists' Answer to Cash |last=Peck |first=Morgan |date=30 May 2012 |website=IEEE Spectrum |access-date=8 January 2017}}{{cite web |url=https://unenumerated.blogspot.com/2005/12/bit-gold.html |title=Bit gold |last=Szabo |first=Nick |date=December 2005 |access-date=8 January 2017}} Bit gold was never implemented, but has been called "a direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture."{{cite web |url=http://www.huffingtonpost.com/martin-oaleary/the-mysterious-disappeara_2_b_7217206.html |title=The Mysterious Disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto, Founder & Creator of Bitcoin |last=O'Leary |first=Martin |date=8 May 2015 |website=The Huffington Post |access-date=8 January 2017}} According to Szabo, he was specifically focused on the double spend problem: "I was trying to mimic as closely as possible in cyberspace the security and trust characteristics of gold, and chief among those is that it doesn't depend on a trusted central authority."

In Szabo's bit gold structure, a participant would dedicate computer power to solving cryptographic problems. In a bit gold network, solved problems would be sent to the Byzantine fault-tolerant public registry and assigned to the public key of the solver. Each solution would become part of the next challenge, creating a growing chain of new property. This aspect of the system provided a way for the network to verify and time-stamp new coins, because unless a majority of the parties agreed to accept new solutions, they couldn't start on the next problem.{{cite web |url=http://eprint.iacr.org/2015/464.pdf |title=Bitcoin and Beyond: A Technical Survey of Decentralized Digital Currencies |last1=Tschorsch |first1=Florian |last2=Scheuermann |first2=Björn |date=15 May 2015 |access-date=8 January 2017}}{{cite web |url=http://nakamotoinstitute.org/secure-property-titles/ |title=Secure Property Titles with Owner Authority |last=Szabo |first=Nick |date=1998 |access-date=8 January 2017}} (see also: proof-of-work system).

Although Szabo has repeatedly denied it, people have speculated that he is Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.{{cite web |url=https://techcrunch.com/2013/12/05/who-is-the-real-satoshi-nakamoto-one-researcher-may-have-found-the-answer/ |title=Who Is The Real Satoshi Nakamoto? One Researcher May Have Found The Answer |date=5 December 2013 |website=TechCrunch |access-date=8 January 2017}} Research by financial author Dominic Frisby provided circumstantial evidence but, as he admits, no proof exists that Satoshi is Szabo.Frisby, Dominic (2014) "Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?" In Bitcoin: The Future of Money?, p. 85-149. Unbound. {{ISBN|1783520779}} In a July 2014 email to Frisby, Szabo said "I'm afraid you got it wrong doxing me as Satoshi, but I'm used to it."Frisby, Dominic (2014), p. 147 Nathaniel Popper wrote in The New York Times that "the most convincing evidence pointed to a reclusive American man of Hungarian descent named Nick Szabo." In 2008, prior to the release of bitcoin, Szabo wrote a comment on his blog about the intent of creating a live version of his hypothetical currency.

{{Reflist|30em}}

• {{webarchive |url=https://archive.today/20150716194113/http://szabo.best.vwh.net/ |date=16 July 2015 |title=Nick Szabo's Essays, Papers, and Concise Tutorials}}
• [https://unblock.net/nick-szabo/ Who is Nick Szabo, The Mysterious Blockchain Titan - unblock.net]
• {{YouTube|7Y3fWXA6d5k|DEVCON1: History of the Blockchain - Nick Szabo}}

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Category:People associated with Bitcoin

Category:Living people

Category:Science bloggers

Category:21st-century science writers

Category:American people of Hungarian descent

Category:1964 births

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