Team
Unlike many crypto asset projects today, Bitcoin does not have a traditional team like the products and companies people are used to envisioning. However, having bootstrapped itself over the last 11 years, many prominent figures have come and gone in bitcoin’s history. The list is filled with some of the very best in their respective industries and the talent that currently contributes to bitcoin remains some of the best the world has to offer.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the anonymous creator of bitcoin and author of the bitcoin whitepaper. Whoever is responsible clearly does not want to be identified and holds little relevance (from an investment standpoint) to bitcoin as it stands today. The one thing to note as an investor is that whoever Satoshi is, they still hold roughly one million bitcoin. Taking into account that there are approximately 18 million BTC currently and roughly 3 million are lost and out of circulation, Satoshi holds nearly 7% of all BTC. It is unlikely that this amounts to anything, though, as those BTC have never been moved nor transacted in the 11 year lifetime of BTC.
Gavin Andressen became involved in bitcoin in 2010 and succeeded Satoshi Nakamoto as the lead developer after Satoshi announced their departure. Gavin founded the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012 to enhance the development of bitcoin but left in 2014. He remains active in the cryptocurrency community although not as staunchly loyal to bitcoin as he once was.
Nick Szabo is one of the original cypherpunks, inventor of “smart contracts”, creator of Bitcoin predecessor “BitGold”, and one of the leading candidates as being the real identity behind Satoshi Nakamoto. Nick is a computer scientist, cryptographer, law scholar, and all around polymath. He keeps a low profile but can be found on Twitter and his blog discussing monetary history (amongst many other things) which is considered a must-read for most in the Bitcoin community.
Andreas Antonopoulos is known as the “Bitcoin Evangelist” and is one of bitcoin’s oldest and most respected advocates. He discovered bitcoin in 2012 and has since dedicated his life to spreading the good that bitcoin and cryptocurrencies can bring to the world, especially the poor, unbanked, and those under the rule of oppressive governments. He is a host on the Let’s Talk Bitcoin podcast, has his own Youtube channel where he educates his followers in bitcoin related topics, wrote “Mastering Bitcoin”, and is constantly touring the world where he is a distinguished guest at any blockchain conference.
Gregory Maxwell is a Bitcoin Core developer and Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Blockstream. He was integral in creating the two-way peg which makes sidechains possible as well as the much anticipated privacy-preserving upgrade Taproot. He has been a Bitcoin core developer since 2011 and remains an expert on cryptographic protocols.
Dr. Adam Back is an applied cryptography and blockchain expert as well as an original cypherpunk with close ties to bitcoin. His applied cryptography work and original PoW concept, Hashcash, are cited in the Bitcoin whitepaper. He currently serves as the Founder and President of Blockstream while continuing to work on improving Bitcoin.
Pieter Wuille is a Bitcoin Core developer who ranks #2 in terms of commits and co-founder of Blockstream, a company that builds open source software and infrastructure for bitcoin. Pieter discovered bitcoin in 2010 and is responsible for the Segregated Witness upgrade.
Wladimir J. van der Laan is a Bitcoin developer and lead maintainer of Bitcoin Core for over 5 years. He is the lead commit contributor to the bitcoin repository on Github and also maintains a blog.
