There has been significant interest in the recent revelation that billionaire entrepreneur Peter Thiel may have met the person or group behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who created Bitcoin. Thiel has hinted that the encounter occurred 23 years ago at a financial cryptography conference in Anguilla.
Satoshi Nakamoto Learned from E-Cash How to Bypass Formal Organizational Structures
Peter Thiel recounted meeting the founders of PayPal on the beach in Anguilla in February 2000, where they planned to launch an anti-central bank revolution. They intended to make PayPal compatible with e-gold and overthrow all central banks.
However, e-gold was terminated in 2007 when the US Department of Justice shut down the project and arrested its founders for unregistered money transfers. The impact of e-gold and the problems associated with traditional currency continued for over seven years after its closure.
The Financial Cryptography Conference, a meeting place for cypherpunks for a long time, may have inspired Satoshi Nakamoto’s vision of Bitcoin. Researchers presented papers at the conference, such as “Electronic Cash – Technology Will Denationalize Money” and “Efficient Electronic Cash with Restricted Privacy.”
Thiel believes that Satoshi must have learned from E-Cash how to bypass formal organizational structures and adopt MIT’s open-source license for Bitcoin.
Thiel Is an Influential Figure in FinTech and Cryptocurrencies
Thiel was part of the “PayPal Mafia,” a group of entrepreneurs in the FinTech startup industry that emerged in the early 2000s and gained considerable wealth through dot-com startups and IPOs. The group included notable figures like Elon Musk, founder of X.com and an early supporter of Bitcoin and Dogecoin, and Balaji Srinivasan, former CTO of Coinbase and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
Srinivasan and Thiel, who have been friends for a long time, share a mutual dislike for the US banking system and a fascination with seasteading. They both believe that Bitcoin needs a sovereign nation to evade regulation. Thiel’s Founders Fund moved billions of dollars from SVB just before the bank run to avoid the crisis, which some people disregard, while others point to reports that he has sold his Bitcoin holdings. Despite his current involvement in cryptocurrency being unclear, Peter Thiel was undeniably influential in the early financial crypto community and continues to criticize banks.