The “father of smart contracts” and one of the would-be Satoshis is reportedly looking for funds to finance his new blockchain project. So far, $1 mln is said to have been collected, the rest still to be found.

The name of the new company conceived by Szabo is yet unknown, says Quartz. However, the news outlet, citing unnamed sources, states that the project will be carried out in cooperation with Donald McIntyre, a businessman and former Vice President at UBS Securities and Morgan Stanley. Since October 2015, McIntyre is listed on his LinkedIn page as Co-founder and COO of the Global Financial Access, Inc. which, according to Quartz, is probably connected to Szabo’s project.

On LinkedIn, the company is described with the phrase: “Our purpose is to help people everywhere access assets issued anywhere in the world.” Further analysis of the company’s information suggests that it will be focused on emerging markets, making it possible for people from Latin America and other countries to buy financial products using bitcoin.

The company will use smart contracts on the blockchain to create financial products similar to traditional assets like equity index funds, bonds and commodities. It aims to generate values mimicking the price of such assets as gold, Treasury bonds and S&P 500 ETFs. The blockchain products will be bought with bitcoin. By 2020, the company expects to have $20 billion under management.

As of now, however, $3 million must be raised to start the project. “According to a person familiar with the effort, $1 million of the seed round has already been committed by Fenbushi Capital, a China-based venture capital firm,” says Quartz.

Nick Szabo is known as “the father of smart contracts”, creator of bitgold, one of the bitcoin’s early prototypes and a bitcoin early adopter. He had also been proclaimed as the man behind the alias of the bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto but denies any connection.

Alexey Tereshchenko