PayPal co-founder and billionaire venture capitalist, Peter Thiel, thinks he may have a clue on how to find Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin (BTC) which disappeared two years after mining the cryptocurrency genesis block in January 2009.
His theory is based on one of the first meetings of the founders of E-Gold in February 2000, in which some 200 people gathered on a beach in Anguilla to design a strategy to promote a new monetary system that could challenge central banks. E-Gold was a gold digital currency that was retired in 2007 after its founders were indicted by the United States Department of Justice.
“I met them on the beach in Anguilla in February 2000”, Thiel said at a cryptocurrency conference in Miami on Wednesday, referring to the founders of E-Gold. “My kind of theory about Satoshi’s identity was that Satoshi was on that Anguilla beach.” He further explained:
“We were starting the revolution against central banks on the beach in Anguilla. We were going to make PayPal interoperable with E-Gold and blow up all the central banks.”
E-Gold’s failure may have given Satoshi the foresight to remain anonymous while building his successor. “Bitcoin was the answer to E-Gold, and Satoshi learned that you had to be anonymous and not have a company “, Thiel said.
Not everyone is convinced that Nakamoto was behind the previous electronic money protocols. Dustin D. Trammell, one of the first cypherpunks to mine Bitcoin, told Cointelegraph Brazil in March that Nakamoto was unbiased in the implementation of the new technology, which implies that they approached the project with a new perspective.
Nakamoto’s 2008 white paper has spawned a multi-billion dollar cryptocurrency industry, with tens of thousands of digital assets vying for a slice of the pie. Bitcoin is in the middle of a historic week, having broken new all-time highs above $ 67,000 on Wednesday.
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