Entrepreneur.com/J. Bronner: Elon Musk May Be the Creator of Bitcoin, a Former SpaceX Intern Theorizes

Entrepreneur - US edition
November 27, 2017
Elon Musk May Be the Creator of Bitcoin, a Former SpaceX Intern Theorizes

Elon Musk May Be the Creator of Bitcoin, a Former SpaceX Intern Theorizes
Image credit: Krisztian Bocsi | Getty Images
Stephen J. Bronner
Stephen J. Bronner • Entrepreneur Staff

One of the key mysteries of Bitcoin -- which recently reached a jaw-dropping value of more than $9,000 -- is who exactly created the cryptocurrency. Satoshi Nakamoto is listed as the author of the original paper describing Bitcoin, but no actual person, or group, has come out to say they are Nakamoto.

Well, hold onto your hats, because Sahil Gupta, who says he was a software engineering intern at SpaceX, recently wrote a Medium post making a case that Satoshi Nakamoto is none other than Elon Musk.

Related: 11 Things You Need to Know About Bitcoin

What's Gupta's evidence for this claim? Nothing concrete, but his logic is relatively sound. The original 2008 Bitcoin paper was written by someone "with a deep understanding of economics and cryptography," which Gupta says Musk possesses. Musk is also a master of coding language C++, the language Bitcoin was written in, Gupta says.

"Experience aside, Elon is a self-taught polymath. He's repeatedly innovated across fields by reading books on a subject and applying the knowledge," Gupta writes. "It's how he built rockets, invented the Hyperloop (which he released to the world as a paper), and could have invented Bitcoin.

Gupta then points to this 2014 tweet from Musk as a possible coy confession that he created Bitcoin.

Related: 23 Weird Things We've Learned About Elon Musk

But, my favorite piece of Gupta's argument is this: "Would Elon choose a pseudonym that's an anagram for 'So a man took a shit?' Of course."

It's not much to go on, but it's certainly an interesting hypothesis. What do you think? Did Elon Musk create Bitcoin? Share your thoughts in the comments section.
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