Neal Stephenson shuts down Satoshi Nakamoto speculation

Neal Stephenson, the American writer known for his works of speculative and science fiction, is not Satoshi Nakamoto, OK?

Stephenson addressed the subject during an interview on the Conversations with Tyler podcast in response to a Reason magazine article published earlier this year.

“I saw the article and I realised that the guy who’s writing it is largely just goofing, but I hope nobody takes it seriously,” he said.

“It’s flattering that anyone imagines I’ve got the mathematical know-how needed to make something like blockchain. But if you look at how that system works, it requires a very high degree of cryptographic knowledge and coding skill that is beyond my abilities, certainly. And I definitely do not have the lifestyle of a person who has that much money.”

When ask if he was bullish on cryptocurrencies, Stephenson replied: “So far, it seems like they’re a bit of a solution in search of a problem. I think that the nonmonetary applications of distributed ledgers seem to be more interesting than just making money. When people want to talk to me about a new cryptocurrency, I tend not to be super interested in continuing that conversation. But when they want to talk to me about using distributed ledgers to enable some other kind of initiative, then frequently, it can get very interesting indeed.”

He added: “I just had a conversation last night with a friend of mine here who’s looking at a really cool possible new application of distributed ledgers. Whether that distributed ledger is based on blockchain, I think, is a separate question. Blockchain seems to be a pretty complicated and expensive way of doing that.”