Nick Szabo

Nick Szabo is a computer scientist, writer, and former law school professor at George Washington University. He is known for his research in digital contracts and digital currency.

Between about 1998 and 2005 Szabo developed a mechanism for a decentralized digital currency that he called "bit gold", which some have called a 'direct precursor to the Bitcoin architecture'. It has been suggested that he is the pseudonymous inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto.

The phrase "smart contracts" was coined by Szabo, probably around 1993, to emphasize the goal of bringing what he calls the "highly evolved" practices of contract law and related business practices to the design of electronic commerce protocols between strangers on the Internet.

Szabo influentially  argued that a minimum granularity of micropayments is set by mental transaction costs.

In 1995, he proposed a challenge to build a macroscale replicator from Lego robot kits and similar basic parts.