Tesla Boss Touted As Creator Of Bitcoin, Elon Musk Asks To Focus On Ideas, Not On Who Invented It
JAKARTA – Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has been accused of being the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. The rumor arose because Elon Musk's tweet was able to cause changes in the price of BTC and other cryptocurrencies. This is considered unprecedented.
In a podcast with Lex Fridman on Wednesday December 29, 2021, Musk refuted claims of calling himself Nakamoto. It must be admitted that Musk does have an unusual influence on crypto price movements, this also triggers speculation from a number of circles.
In addition, Sahil Gupta, who works for SpaceX and Tesla, thinks that Musk is Satoshi Nakamoto. Gupta revealed this in an article on Medium on November 17, 2017, as reported by Coinspeaker.
In a podcast interview, Lex Fridman questioned the rumours. Musk has vehemently denied the allegations. Next he said if he was the creator of Bitcoin then he would announce it to the world.
Further, Musk said that the figure behind Bitcoin's creator was not as important as the evolution of the idea that led to cryptocurrency. Therefore, he considers that Nick Szabo is the only person who is most responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin.
"He admits he's not Nakamoto, but I'm not sure he's here or there. But he seems to be more responsible for the idea behind Bitcoin than anyone else," Musk said.
Musk's opinion is in line with a number of British linguistic researchers in 2014. The researchers studied the Bitcoin whitepaper along with other posts from more than 11 initiators including Nick Szabo. From the results of the study, they judged that Szabo's writing matched the Bitcoin whitepaper.
“The number of linguistic similarities between Szabo's writing and the bitcoin whitepaper is remarkable,” the researchers wrote. Responding to the researchers' findings, Szabo also denied claims that he was Satoshi Nakamoto.
On the other hand, Elon Musk reiterated his position while mentioning that Bitcoin is a store of value. Some time ago, after Musk was named Person of the Year 2021 from Time magazine, he stated that Bitcoin is not suitable as a transactional currency but is suitable as a store of value. That's why investors prefer to keep it.
In the podcast Lex Fridman explained that Bitcoin is too deflationary to be used as a transactional currency. The reason is, when the value of bitcoin skyrockets, people will choose to stay HODL.
“When a currency is too deflationary and is expected to increase in value over time, people prefer to HODL rather than spend it,” Musk added to Fridman.