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Tatsiana Yablonskaya
Taking strong interest in blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and IoT, Tatsiana Yablonskaya got deep understanding of the emerging techs believing in their potential to drive the future.
The nomination of Satoshi Nakamoto has become possible thanks to Professor Chowdhry from UCLA who proposed bitcoin inventor for the Laureates of 2016.
Having read the name of the article you can be confused asking yourself quite a reasonable question: how can anyone, whose identity has not even been confirmed, be nominated for the Nobel Memorial Prize? The doubts are absolutely fair so let’s sort things out!
The candidate of Satoshi Nakamoto has been offered by Bhagwan Chowdhry, UCLA Professor of Finance. The Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences that Nakamoto can get is not officially a Nobel Prize. It was established by Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, in memory of Nobel Prize founder Alfred Nobel. It is awarded annually in December at Nobel Prize Award Ceremony.
Why I am nominating Satoshi Nakamoto for the #NobelPrize in Economics https://t.co/iEYdyRslJp #bitcoin @StellarOrg @ethereumproject
— Bhagwan Chowdhry (@bhagwanUCLA) November 6, 2015
The process of selection the Laureates for the 2016 started in September when Professor Chowdhry got the first in his life invitation to participate in nomination. Typically confidential nomination forms are sent out to approximately 3,000 selected individuals, including professors from universities all over the world.
Although the choice of Professor Chowdhry to nominate Satoshi can seem weird at first sight, he says seriously: “The invention of bitcoin – a digital currency –is nothing short of revolutionary. Not only will Satoshi Nakamoto’s contribution change the way we think about money, it’s likely to upend the role central banks play in conducting monetary policy, destroy high-cost money transfer services such as Western Union, eliminate the 2-4% transactions tax imposed by intermediaries such as Visa, MasterCard and Paypal, eliminate the time-consuming and expensive notary and escrow services and indeed transform the landscape of legal contracts completely.”
Digital currency indeed offers a wide range of advantages comparing to paper money. Its transactions are instantaneous, the security is provided by a cryptographic code, individuals can transfer funds to each other without fees and time delays. All this has become possible thanks to Satoshi Nakamoto and made him deserve such an honorable prize (this idea proposed by Professor Chowdhry is likely to find more supporters in the nearest future).
There is one difficulty in awarding Nakamoto a prize if he wins. He is not available in person but he still exists online and anonymously communicates with the computer science and cryptographic community. Professor Chowdhry assured that he will accept the prize on Satoshi’s behalf if the latter is not able to attend the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in December 2016.
To dispel all the doubts Chowdhry said he will not get the prize money by accepting Nakamoto’s award. He offered the Nobel committee a possible way out – it can buy bitcoins from an exchange and transfer it to Satoshi. He noted there is a known bitcoin address for Nakamoto from an early transaction.
