In an interview recently, Laszlo Hanyecz revealed the character of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Hanyecz was the first person in the world to use Bitcoin for physical trading. He was the programmer who spent 10,000 BTCs buying two pizzas.

Until today, the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is still a mystery. People can only prove that this person is real through the mail he left, the online commentary, and the Bitcoin white paper.

In the early days of Bitcoin’s birth, Hanyecz was a freelance developer. He said that Satoshi Nakamoto is a weird guy who often gives him a “strange feeling.”

His first contact with Bitcoin began with mining. He also expressed on the Internet that he is willing to contribute to the development of Bitcoin. Nakamoto responded, when their mail exchanges exceeded one hundred.

“I thought Bitcoin was awesome, and I wanted to be involved, but I had a regular developing job,” Hanyecz said. “Nakamoto would send me emails like ‘Hey, can you fix this bug?’ ‘Hey, can you do this?’”

Hanyecz said that even though his work on bitcoin was a side project he worked on for free, Nakamoto treated him as if he were a full-time employee.

“He’d say, ‘Hey, the west side’s down,’ or ‘We have these bugs — we need to fix this.’ I’d be like, we? We’re not a team,” Hanyecz said. “I thought that it was approval from him, that maybe he accepted me as a member. But I didn’t want the responsibility. I didn’t really understand all of the forces that were going on at the time.”

Hanyecz admits that at the time he felt that some of the requirements of Satoshi Nakamoto were annoying, so he often ignored the news sent by TA. Hanyecz said that Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity is still a mystery because ta always wants to remain anonymous and private. However, it seems strange to him that Satoshi Nakamoto intentionally concealed his identity. He or they have never had any personal conversation with me. I asked him a few questions, but he always avoided answering.

Nakamoto didn’t seem too thrilled about Hanyecz’s burgeoning mining pursuits either, Hanyecz said.

“He said, “Well, I’d rather not have you do the mining too much,’” Hanyecz said. “He was trying to grow the community and get more commerce use cases. He fully recognized that mining would become a thing where a few people would get wealthy.”

And there were several emails in which Nakamoto struck Hanyecz as paranoid, he said.

“There were a few times when I got messages that seemed off-base,” Hanyecz said. “I brushed them off because I was like, who cares if this guy tells me to go pound sand and go away? This wasn’t my job or anything — it was a hobby. I was trying to be friends with him. He seemed very paranoid about people breaking the software. He kept calling it ‘prerelease,’ and I was helping him get it to release.”

In retrospect, Hanyecz said, Nakamoto’s paranoia was understandable.

“If anything had happened to the code early on, we wouldn’t be having this conversation today,” he said.

Ultimately, Hanyecz said he had deep respect for both Nakamoto’s project and the person or team behind the name. Hanyecz believes Bitcoin might not exist today if it weren’t for its creator’s decision to evade the public eye.

“It’s exciting because people love a man of mystery, but I try to steer people towards the fact that it doesn’t matter who made it; he could be a psycho killer,” Hanyecz said. “People like to identify with heroes or villains, but in the cryptosphere, your code has to speak for itself. Charisma and being an interesting person only gets you so far when you’re a developer. Ultimately, you’ll be judged on the quality of your code and your idea.”

THE SEARCH FOR SATOSHI NAKAMOTO

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains one of the biggest mysteries in the entire digital currency industry. Several leading figures in the world of cryptography, programming, and computer science are among possible candidates for the person behind Bitcoin.

In 2015 and 2016, an Australian computer scientist and businessman named Dr. Craig Wright claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto. In fact, severalleading media outlets, including the BBC and The Economist, published articles claiming that Wright had provided proof to back up his claims. In spite of this, however, the general consensus among the crypto community is that Wright’s claims are false and the mystery behind the pseudonymous Nakamoto remains unsolved.

Marko Vidrih @cryptomarks

Sources: businessinsider.com, bitcoinist.com