Defining Satoshi Nakamoto’s twelve apostles isn’t as easy as it seems. For one thing, some of the contenders are among his predecessors. On the other hand, there are hundreds of cryptocurrency pioneers who are doing amazing things in the blockchain and crypto space. So how do you define what an apostle is?
The word comes from Classical Greek and literally means “one who is sent” or “one who is commissioned with a message.” In a word, an apostle is an emissary, or envoy. A representative.
More than one major religion uses the word to signify important people in the history of that religion. In Christianity, the 12 apostles were commissioned by Christ himself to carry out his message after he was crucified and buried. In Islam, various prophets throughout history are referred to as messengers, or “apostles.” In one sense of the word, it also signifies “laying the groundwork.” That is, an apostle could also be a foundation layer.
If we get too literal with the use of the word, it might not mean much at all in the case of cryptocurrency. As far I know, there is only one possible individual in the following list who might have been appointed or specially commissioned to carry on Satoshi’s work. There is one other individual who was the first recipient of a bitcoin transaction. Others on the list simply took it upon themselves to spread the message about the new technology channeled through Satoshi’s brain. In any case, each of the following individuals are significant in one way or another to the development and growth of the early days of cryptocurrency.
What I tried to do is narrow the list down to significant individuals who had a direct relationship with Satoshi Nakamoto in one way or another and made at least one significant contribution to the growth and development of bitcoin before Nakamoto’s disappearance in 2011 or made big multiple significant contributions, or people who made one huge contribution to the development of the cryptocurrency ecosystem between 2011 and 2014.
Hal Finney
Hal Finney made two significant contributions to the early development of bitcoin. The first is that he was the first recipient of bitcoin, which Satoshi Nakamoto sent to Finney to test the new technology. Finney received 10 bitcoins.
The second contribution Finney made is he helped Satoshi Nakamoto work out some bugs in bitcoin’s programming. This happened just a few days after receiving the 10 bitcoin from the technology’s inventor.
Not long after that final event, Finney announced that he’d been diagnosed with Lou Gehrig’s disease. He died from complications five years later. Who knows what greatness he might have achieved if he'd have lived longer?
Adam Back
Adam Back is significant to bitcoin’s development in a couple of ways. First, as inventor of the proof-of-work system on which bitcoin is based, Back is one of the few pioneers in cryptocurrency to be cited in Nakamoto’s bitcoin whitepaper. Here’s what Satoshi had to say about Back on page 3 of the 9-page paper:
To implement a distributed timestamp server on a peer-to-peer basis, we will need to use a proof-of-work system similar to Adam Back's Hashcash [6], rather than newspaper or Usenet posts. The proof-of-work involves scanning for a value that when hashed, such as with SHA-256, the hash begins with a number of zero bits. The average work required is exponential in the number of zero bits required and can be verified by executing a single hash.
When prognosticators try to solve the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity, Back is one of the people mentioned as most likely to be the inventor of bitcoin, though he has denied that he is the one. Nevertheless, Nakamoto contacted Back before publishing the whitepaper to let him know that he was going to be mentioned. In fact, Back is only one of two people to receive an email from bitcoin’s inventor early on.
Back has supported bitcoin development from the beginning. In 2014, believing that development wasn’t happening fast enough, he created Blockstream, a company focused on "building the blockchain technology of the future."
Gavin Andresen
If anyone stands out as an appointed heir to Satoshi Nakamoto, it’s Gavin Andresen. In 2010, he became one of the principle developers of bitcoin. He also is known for starting the first bitcoin faucet, which is a reward system designed to distribute free bitcoin to its users. In the same year, he created an escrow service named ClearCoin, which shut down in 2011.
Another event that happened in 2011 is the disappearance of Nakamoto. His final email was sent to Andresen. It read:
I wish you wouldn’t keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure, the press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open source project and give more credit to your dev contributors; it helps motivate them.
When Andresen replied that he’d been invited to speak at a conference, Nakamoto never responded.
In 2012, Andresen started the Bitcoin Foundation, a nonprofit whose mission was to promote bitcoin development. After a series of controversies, Andresen stepped down from his position as lead developer of Bitcoin Core. That was 2014. Three years later, he expressed support for competing cryptocurrency Bitcoin Cash.
Laszlo Hanvecz
Two years after Nakamoto published his famed whitepaper, Laszlo Hanvecz made the first commercial transaction with bitcoin. He bought two pizzas for 10,000 BTC.
Jed McCaleb
Another event that took place in 2010 is the founding of the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. It was not the first bitcoin exchange. That distinction goes to Bitcoin Market. Founded in January 2010, it went live in March. Mt. Gox launched three months later.
Jed McCaleb launched the exchange that controlled 70 percent of the worldwide bitcoin trading volume by 2013.
McCaleb was not responsible for all of that growth. He had sold Mt. Gox in 2011. Two months after its purchase, the site was hacked resulting in thousands of dollars in losses to traders. That was the beginning of the exchange’s troubles. The site went on to face legal issues, lawsuits, a fraud investigation, and ultimately, bankruptcy. The site was shut down in 2014.
Meanwhile, McCaleb went on to co-found competing blockchain company Ripple, whose cryptocurrency XRP has enjoyed the third highest market capitalization for most of its life. In 2013, he left that project and co-founded another cryptocurrency called Stellar.
McCaleb’s technical programming skills are what made him one of the most successful and richest cryptocurrency entrepreneurs on the planet. And his connection to Satoshi Nakamoto is almost direct. In 2018, the New York Times named him one of the top ten people leading the blockchain revolution.
Charlie Lee
Charlie Lee’s connection to cryptocurrency is so formidable his Twitter handle is @Satoshilite. In 2011, he was a computer scientist employed by Google and began to take an interest in bitcoin. He immediately began work on a new cryptocurrency called Litecoin and released it just a few months later. By 2017, it was the fourth largest cryptocurrency by market cap. That year, Lee also sold all of his Litecoin citing a perceived conflict of interest.
Lee left Google in 2013 and went to work for Coinbase, the largest American cryptocurrency exchange at the time. Since 2018, he’s been working on Litecoin full time.
Look for Part 2 of “The 12 Apostles of Satoshi Nakamoto” on Thursday.
Allen Taylor is a veteran award-winning journalist and former newspaper editor. He is a freelance writer focused on fintech, including blockchain and crypto projects, and manages crypto blogs through CryptoBloggers. Let’s connect on Twitter.