The mysterious creator of bitcoin could be nominated for a Nobel prize in economics

No one knows exactly who Satoshi Nakamoto is (though many have tried to find out). That hasn’t stopped a UCLA finance professor from promising to get the pseudonymous bitcoin creator nominated for the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences—or, as it’s more commonly called, the Nobel prize in economics.

Bhagwan Chowdhry penned a piece in the Huffington Post announcing he’s been invited by the prize committee to submit a nomination, and that he intends to make Nakamoto his pick.

„I started thinking whose ideas are likely to have a disruptive influence in the twenty first century. The name of the inventor of Bitcoin suddenly jumped up in my consciousness and I have not been able to get it out of my mind since then, Satoshi Nakamoto.” writes Chowdhry. „Am I being somewhat whimsical in nominating a complete outsider, Satoshi Nakamoto, for Economics Prize just as perhaps Romain Rolland was when he nominated, Sigmund Freud for the Nobel Prize in 1936 – not in Medicine but – in Literature.”

So, why Nakamoto?
„The invention of bitcoin – a digital currency – is nothing short of revolutionary.”, believes Chowdhry, who added:
„But beyond demonstrating the possibility of creating a reliable digital currency, Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Protocol has spawned exciting innovations in the FinTech space by showing how many financial contracts – not just currencies – can be digitized, securely verified and stored, and transferred instantaneously from one party to another. The implications of this are immense. This will likely create an open, decentralized, public infrastructure for moving both money as well as other smart contracts as easily as email but with security and nearly zero transactions costs.”

Chowdhry has thought about the logistics, saying he’d be happy to accept the prize on behalf of the mysterious Nakamoto, while noting that Nakamoto can be contacted (and sent any prize money) via his bitcoin wallet address.

The Nobel prize nomination process traditionally is secret—the foundation stipulates that nominees’ names must not be disclosed. The statutes of the Nobel Foundation restrict disclosure of information about the nominations, whether publicly or privately, for 50 years. The restriction concerns the nominees and nominators, as well as investigations and opinions related to the award of a prize.

But since Nakamoto hadn’t been formally nominated yet, Chowdhry probably didn’t broken any rules by announcing his intentions.

According to nobelprize.org, there are 273 candidates for the Nobel Peace Prize for 2015. 68 of these are organizations, and 205 are persons. 273 is the second highest number of candidates ever. The record, 278 candidates, was set in 2014.