“Satoshi Nakamoto is not me,” Tesla CEO Elon Musk responded to a direct question from Lex Friedman in his AI research podcast. Moreover, he believes that if not the creator, then the ideological inspirer of the first cryptocurrency is probably Nick Szabo, an American of Hungarian descent.

As Musk said, “This can be traced back to the evolution of ideas prior to the launch of Bitcoin and who wrote about them.” But he also clarified that this does not mean that Szabo specifically launched Bitcoin as an alternative currency.