Quote from: Billbags on September 20, 2014, 06:57:03 PM

@UsernameBitcoin
I'm actually looking for that info right now to try and better understand the time of the white paper. Two months before the white paper Szabo reached out for assistance with BitGold. Satoshi may or may not have contacted Szabo then. If not, Satoshi using Wei Dai as a portal to reach out for certain people could have been where they connected. It does seem while John Nash was touring the world and giving lectures on Ideal Money and the fact that Szabo was studying and writing papers on it for 20+ years that they could have crossed paths and communicated. They also both lived and worked in a very small online cypher community. Remember, Szabo said he knows who Satoshi is. But who is Szabo?

Ideal money is not a complete lecture, but rather a cryptic outline. Szabo's blog is the "encyclopedia" that explains the outline. For nearly every line in ideal money, you will find a corresponding Szabo blog post such as:

Ideal Money: "Money has a long an interesting history..."
Szabo blog: Shelling out.

Szabo's blog also extensively defines the ICPI, which is the industrial consumption index which is another "headline" in ideal money.

Quote from: UsernameBitcoin on September 20, 2014, 06:19:42 PM

Do we know for sure if any communication between Nash and Szabo actually happened?

It never did, nor could it. They are not likely different people, Szabo's blog is simply the reasearch required to final realize "bitcoin". What seems likely is the old many knew he was on to something, kept studying frantically, and finally one day just came up with the realization he could "do it". After the realization (even before bitcoin.pdf) he could foresee future technology and change because of the solution he knew existed (hypermoney), AND he was able to peer deeper into the past because he was able to see

Quote from: Aquent on September 20, 2014, 04:11:09 PM

The man is 86!

Ya. And ideal money is an idea that came to him in 1960's when we "went crazy" and fled to the UK from the US government, tried to seek asylum in Europe and exchange his money for one of better quality (swiss). He was brought back in chains, and eventually became a teacher at princeton where he developed the legend/nickname the fine hall phantom for secretly writing cryptic math on the chalk boards at night.

About dai

Quote

http://lesswrong.com/lw/kk5/look_for_the_next_tech_gold_rush/#comments
"Comment author: Wei_Dai 23 July 2014 01:07:17AM 2 points [-]

Random: I would have thought you did, based on your research.

Dai No, my monetary policy views were firmly mainstream, which considers rapid unpredictable changes in prices, in either direction, to be a really bad thing for a currency. So I designed b-money to have a stable value relative to a basket of commodities, and until Bitcoin came along, never thought anyone might deliberately design a currency to have a fixed total supply."

Now looking at Ideal money:

Quote

Ideal Money is a theoretical notion promogulated by John Nash, to stabilize international currencies. It is a solution to the Triffin dilemma.

"He proposed that international exchange rates be fixed by pegging the value of each currency to a standardized basket of commodities, called the industrial consumption price index. Such a policy would curtail the ability of central banks to make monetary policy."

You just have to ask, did wei dai admit he didn't think of "bitcoin" or printing a fixed total supply? Or did he say he never thought of it until "bitcoin?

Also when Gavin says for example he attended a lecture at princeton with Szabo, is seems likely he knows Szabo is Nash and Nash was at the lecture (since after all it was princeton).

While we are linking to my blogs, here is one with the more significant and identifiable quotes involving Nash http://thewealthofchips.wordpress.com/2014/09/01/an-interesting-biography-an-interesting-blog-and-an-interesting-lecture-on-ideal-money/

Here is some comparisons of Nash/Szabo in relation to ideal money https://wordpress.com/read/post/id/68986136/134/

Also be careful with the quotes, for example Szabo didn't say "I am not Satoshi" on twitter. Someone said "thx Satoshi" to szabo, and szabo said "not satoshi, but thank you"
Szabo didn't say him and dai went to uni together but rather "I went to the same uni dai did".