Bitcoin founder nominated for Nobel Prize in Economics

Bhagwan Chowdhry, a Professor of Finance at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) has nominated Satoshi Nakamoto for the 2016 Nobel Prize in Economics. NY Times reporter Nathaniel Popper has reportedly suggested that Szabo was a member of an online community called Cypherpunks that was involved in “early experiments in digital money that predated bitcoin”.

In an op-ed for The Huffington Post, Chowdhry explained that he was nominating Nakamoto because “I can barely think of another innovation in economics and finance in the last several decades whose influence surpasses the welfare increases that will be engendered by Satoshi Nakamoto’s brilliant, path-breaking invention”.

All that is known about Satoshi Nakamoto is that he published his White Paper back in 2009 and vanished from the internet in 2011.

You can only nominate people to be awarded the Nobel Prize – widely viewed the highest accolade in economics – if you have been invited by the Economic Sciences Prize Committee. Physical currencies have been used historically for currency.

“The invention of bitcoin – a digital currency – is nothing short of revolutionary”, Chowdhry wrote.

He goes on to say that it has “spawned exciting innovations in the fintech space by showing how many financial contracts – not just currencies – can be digitised, securely verified and stored, and transferred instantaneously from one party to another”. Chowdhry said this will result in an open, decentralized public infrastructure for transacting money.

Bitcoin will change how people think about money and will likely disrupt central banks’ role in conducting monetary policy, Chowdhry said. In addition, it will remove lengthy and costly notary and escrow services. Many industries such as Banking, Finance, Law will see a big upheaval.

The poor will benefit from greater financial and social inclusion in the future. A manhunt ensued to track down Satoshi Nakamoto. He exists online. Nakamoto has anonymously communicated with the computer science and cryptographic community.

To dispel all the doubts Chowdhry said he will not get the prize money by accepting Nakamoto’s award. Chowdhry has also offered himself to stand in at the ceremony if required but this discussion is somewhat premature, as the award ceremony for the prize would not be until December 2016. “What about the acceptance speech?” Chowdhry gracefully offered to accept the Nobel Prize on behalf of the anonymous inventor if the committee accepts awards the mysterious creator with the million dollar cash prize. And typically, every part of the nomination process is totally secret: “The names of the nominees and other information about the nominations can not be revealed until 50 years later”, the Nobel Prize’s official website says.