Crypto Academy Season 3 Week 6 | Homework Post for Professor @awesononso | Satoshi Nakamoto, Wei Dai and Cryptocurrency Units of Measurement.

Hello, fellow Steemians. I hope you are all doing well as I am. I am happy to turn in my assignment for the honorable professor @awesononso on his educative lessons on Satoshi Nakamoto, Wei Dai, and Cryptocurrency Units of Measurement. I learned soo much through his lesson post and also during the time I spent researching for information for the assignment.

Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudo name for the anonymous individual or organization that is believed to have created Bitcoin and also published its whitepaper. The true identity of the person or institution behind the masterpiece remains a mystery. The real gender, nationality, level of education, and any information about this person or group are profoundly vague.

Nevertheless, the brain or brains behind this revolutionary project have inarguably blessed the world with a transparent decentralized finance system that combats the limitations and problems emerging from the centralized financial system. Bitcoin is regarded as open-source and is not owned by any government. It belongs to everyone who participates. Satoshi’s Bitcoin has also inspired and led to the development of countless other cryptocurrencies, and as a result, is considered the Mother of all cryptocurrencies. Hence, a significant dip in the price of Bitcoin is respectively experienced among other forms of cryptocurrency. Likewise, a marginal gain in the price of Bitcoin affirmatively affects the price of other Coins and Tokens alike.

Although Nakamoto collaborated with other engineers and developers during the early stages of Bitcoin, this character did not share any personal information and restricted discussions to the technical level. The pseudo “Satoshi Nakamoto’ is of a Japanese origin, however, posts of Nakamoto on internet forums are in British English at the native level. Efforts to unveil the creator of Bitcoin remain unabated and usually futile in the end. To this end, the real identity of the creator or creators of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, is left to the wild human imaginations.

In light of the elusive attempts of landing the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, there has been a handful of proposed identities of the creator of Bitcoin. Such speculations have received mixed forms of reactions, and to date, it is believed that nobody certainly knows the person or organization behind the emergence of Bitcoin. In this section, I will be throwing a spotlight on two individuals who, despite their denial, have been hand-pointed as the real Satoshi Nakamoto.

Nicholas Szabo, also known as Nick Szabo, is an alumnus of the University of Washington and George Washington University Law School and holds a Computer Science degree and a law degree from the respective universities. He spearheaded the notion of “smart contracts” with aim of merging deeply evolved contract law practices and practices in general with the electronic commerce regulation design. Now, Smart Contracts have been a crucial part of cryptocurrency. Nick is considered as Nakamoto for some seemingly credible reasons.

First, “bit gold”, one of the pioneering forms of electronic money was created by Nick Szabo. He conceptualized this digital currency but did not implement it. However, it served as a precursor or a forerunner to the architecture of Bitcoin. During the development of bit gold, Szabo reached out to the same group of individuals as Nakamoto would years later for advice and feedback regarding the project. A report from Gizmodo purports that Szabo went as far as to backdate a post he made on a blog, in which he solicited for advice regarding the launch of bit gold, to make the query seem as if it were made after the whitepaper of Bitcoin was released.

Additionally, Gizmodo has reports that indicated that Szabo and Nakamoto share a closely similar manner of writing by comparing Szabo’s forum posts to the early papers on Bitcoins that were released by Nakamoto. Dominic Frisby, a writer, defends this argument after consultation with a stylometric professional, who confirmed the striking resemblance between Szabo and Satoshi’s style of writing. Again, Szabo is believed to have worked for DigiCash, an organization that focused on merging payments on computers with cryptography.

The issue of Dorian being considered as the real mind behind began in March 2014, when a reporter from Newsweek called Leah McGrath Goodman made a story that centered on unveiling the creator of Bitcoin. Leah’s report pointed to a 64yrs old physicist in retirement, Dorian Nakamoto, as the answer to the puzzle. What further increased the intensity of this hunch was a commentary that Dorian made when he spoke with Leah. Dorian Nakamoto stated “he was no longer involved in that” and that “ he cannot discuss it”. McGrath presumed the pronoun “it” to be an allusion to Bitcoin.

Also, one of the pronouncing arguments that Leah made was the one regarding Dorian’s birth name. Goodman brought to the awareness of people the birth name of Dorian is “Satoshi Nakamoto”. Dorian’s educational background as an engineer and a physicist added more credibility to the minds of believers. Nakamoto’s professional history, as a former U.S military worker and his works on classified projects, also led Leah to jump to such a conclusion.

Despite all the hullabaloos, Dorian Nakamoto has emphatically denied any involvement with the cryptocurrency.

Wei Dai is another household name when the topic of discussion is cryptocurrency. Information on Wei Dai’s identity is redacted and scarce on the internet. There are various images of people claimed as authentic photos of Wei Dai. However, none of such propositions has been verified.

Wei Dai is a graduate of the University of Washington and holds a degree in Computer Engineering. He is fondly associated with cryptocurrency and cryptography. A list of his creations includes VMAC, Crypto++, and b-money, an electronic money system that he initially revealed in the late 90s and was meant to function as an anonymous system. Had it been implemented, b-money would have been functioning generally as cryptocurrency works now. The concept of Dai took into consideration transaction authentication protocols and usage of electronic signatures, which are quite similar to how technology like blockchain and public keys are applied in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. However as foreshadowed in the previous sentences, B-money was never launched.

Regardless of the unrealized potential of B-money, it was potent enough to have influenced Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, that this entity referenced B-money in the white paper of Bitcoin.
Also, back in 2008, there was an exchange of emails between Satoshi and Wei regarding P2P electronic cash ideas. On the other hand, a closer look at the similarity between the exchanged emails led many enthusiasts to believe that Wei Dai could actually be Nakamoto Satoshi. Others, furthermore, speculate that just because two emails are communicating that does not necessarily imply the involvement of two persons. Hence, Wei Dai played the two roles of the email exchanges. In addition, the semblance between B-money and Bitcoin has spurred many additional voices on the theory that Wei could be S. Nakamoto. All attempts by individuals and organizations to paint Wei Dai as S. Nakamoto has been cogently denied by Dai.

Bitcoin as a medium of exchange has smaller and larger units to cater to various forms of transactions. The smallest unit of BTC is the satoshi, which is always spelled with the smaller “s” letter. The table below highlights the various units of Bitcoin and their corresponding values.

Per the current market value of 1 Bitcoin, according to CoinMarketCap, the value of 1 satoshi will be computed as follows:

1 satoshi in this case = 0.00000001 * 39765.08
1 satoshi = 0.0003976508
Hence: the value of 1 satoshi per the current market is $0.000398

Similar to Bitcoin, Ether also has its unit to cater to small and large operations. wei, a derivative of Wei Dai’s name, is regarded as the unit for Ether on the Ethereum blockchain. The breakdown of wei and Ether is as depicted by the table.

Per the current market value of Ether, according to CoinMarketCap, the value of 1 Gwei will be computed as follows:

1 Gwei in this case = 0.00000001 * 2584.43
1 Gwei = 0.0000258443
Hence: the value of 1 Gwei per the current market is $0.0000258