Back then he wanted to help drive more people to do what he's doing - write code to make Bitcoin better. To do so he gave away "bounties", or rewards to those who did. By the end of 2014 he had given away 15,678 BTC, worth over $300 million at it's peak - and still over $100 million today.
When asked by Bloomberg, Garzik says he has no regrets - he's just happy to see Bitcoin still going strong, saying:
“It was a question whether this thing would survive at all, and there’s no question of that today.”
He has a theory who Satoshi Nakamoto is too - another early Bitcoin developer he knew well, named Dave Kleiman, he explained his reasoning with:
"It matches his coding style, this gentleman was self taught. And the Bitcoin coder was someone who was very, very smart, but not a classically trained software engineer.”
Kleiman died in 2013 - which could also explain why Satoshi's personal stash of 1,148,800, Bitcoin hasn't been touched.
Garzik is currently working at Bloq, a company he co-founded in 2015 that provides enterprise-level blockchain solutions.
Author: Mark Pippen
London News Desk
