Nick Szabo
Smart contracts
Law as code, beyond the courthouse.
Heterodox Crypto-AnarchistOne of 729 ideologies · enter the Crypto-Anarchist hall →- Role
- Computer scientist
- Era
- b. 1964
- Region
- United States
- Social band
- Heterodox
- Placement
- +74 · −88 · +30
§ Where Nick Szabo stands
3 axesSzabo's economics are strongly market-oriented and historically minded. His bit gold design of 1998 sought a money whose scarcity, like gold's, comes from the cost of producing it rather than from a central bank's decisions, and Shelling Out (2002) traced money's origins to collectibles that let early humans trade and cooperate. Markets, in his account, evolve institutions that well-designed code can reproduce.
Szabo seeks to replace trust in authorities with trust in mathematics. His 1994 concept of smart contracts envisaged agreements that execute themselves, reducing the need for courts and enforcement, and his essay Trusted Third Parties Are Security Holes argued that every intermediary is a point of vulnerability. His approach is to route around the state with protocols rather than to confront it politically.
Socially Szabo is a rationalist individualist whose public writing concerns institutions rather than culture-war questions. His blog Unenumerated, active since the mid-2000s, ranges over legal history, from Roman law to the English common law, and treats rules and money as evolving human inventions. The mild progressive lean reflects openness to technological change rather than any programme of social reform.
How close are you to Nick Szabo?
Three statements, one per axis. Answer them and we’ll drop you on the compass next to them.
§ The story
HistoricalNick Szabo is an American computer scientist and legal scholar whose ideas laid much of the groundwork for cryptocurrencies. A computer science graduate of the University of Washington who later studied law, he was active among the cypherpunks of the 1990s. In 1994 he coined the term smart contract for agreements whose terms are enforced by software, and in 1998 he designed bit gold, a proposal for scarce digital money created through computational work and recorded in a distributed registry.
Szabo's significance is that he translated cypherpunk politics into economic and legal design. His essays, including Shelling Out: The Origins of Money (2002) and Trusted Third Parties Are Security Holes, argued that functions performed by banks, courts and other intermediaries could be partly replaced by cryptographic protocols. Bit gold is widely regarded as a direct precursor of Bitcoin, and smart contracts became central to Ethereum and later blockchains. Because of these parallels some writers have suggested that Szabo is Satoshi Nakamoto, which he has denied.
Notable for
- 01Coined 'smart contracts'
- 02Designed 'bit gold'
- 03Crypto-economics theory
Key works & moments
- 1990sTakes part in cypherpunk debates on digital cash and cryptographic protocols.
- 1994Coins the term smart contract for agreements enforced by computer code.
- 1998Designs bit gold, a proof-of-work digital currency widely seen as Bitcoin's forerunner.
- 2002Publishes Shelling Out: The Origins of Money, tracing money to prehistoric collectibles.
- 2005Publishes his bit gold proposal on his blog, Unenumerated.
§ Minds closest to Nick Szabo
All minds →
§ Also in the Crypto-Anarchist hall
Enter the hall →§ Common questions
4 answersWhat is Nick Szabo's political ideology?
Nick Szabo is a cypherpunk and crypto-economist who seeks to replace trusted authorities with cryptographic protocols: on the 99ideologies three-axis compass, a Heterodox Crypto-Anarchist. Economically he is strongly pro-market (+74), designing money whose scarcity does not depend on central banks. On governance he is strongly libertarian (−88), envisaging smart contracts that reduce reliance on courts and intermediaries, and socially he leans mildly progressive (+30) as a rationalist open to technological change.
Is Nick Szabo left-wing or right-wing?
He is best described as libertarian, closer to the free-market right than to the left. Szabo's work aims at sound money outside central-bank control and at agreements enforced by code rather than by state courts, goals shared with Austrian-school economists and anarcho-capitalists. His published writing, however, concentrates on institutional design, monetary history and legal history rather than on social or cultural questions.
Is Nick Szabo Satoshi Nakamoto?
There is no proof that he is, and he has denied it. Speculation rests on circumstantial parallels: his bit gold design anticipated Bitcoin's use of proof of work and a distributed record, and some analysts have noted similarities between his prose and the Bitcoin white paper. Against that, the white paper does not cite bit gold, and Szabo has said plainly that he is not Satoshi. Without cryptographic proof, such as messages signed with Satoshi's early keys, the question cannot be settled.
Which minds are closest to Nick Szabo?
On the 99ideologies three-axis compass, the minds closest to Nick Szabo are The Cryptonomicon Coder (archetype) (98% alike), Timothy C. May (97% alike) and Hal Finney (97% alike). The furthest is Pol Pot (0% alike).