Bitcoin’s founder to receive a statue in Budapest

It will be the first-ever statue of the cryptocurrency’s creator.

The Hungarian capital is full of beautiful and robust works of art. Just think about the Heroes’ Square or the Buda Castle. Or the rainbow-coloured replica of New York’s Statue of Liberty that was erected in Budapest at the beginning of this year. This particular statue had a very short life.

BLM statue: fenced, covered in paint, demolished, smashed

Let’s hope that this new initiative, even if not commemorating a famous Hungarian, will have a happier future.

The idea is especially interesting since the founder of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, more precisely, his persona is unknown to the world.

The statue made of bronze will be erected in the Graphisoft Park, in a green environment where anyone can go and see it for free. The abstract work of art will be community-funded by the most important members of the Hungarian crypto community, such as the Kripto Akadémia, two members of the MrCoin crypto money changer and the organiser of the Budapest Blockchain conference, among others. Moreover, a community financed campaign resulted in the cooperation of 27 organisations and private figures, giving over 3 million forints for carrying out the plan. News around its creation already hit international media platforms, entrepreneurs.com and Fox News, for instance, both reported on it.

The idea for such a statue came from András Györfi, who told Szeretlek Magyarország, that

it is not bitcoin that stands in the centre of his initiative, but the technology itself around which the whole system is built.

As he says, “The blockchain technology is a perfect solution in so many fields: health care, logistics or delivering aid or assistance for those in need. It is a database that gives a level of safety and protection incomparable to previous databases. It is tough to manipulate, almost impossible. When it comes to finances, it brings decentralisation, meaning that there is no need for a central bank, a state or a company … All this is the merit of its founder. He brought and will bring a huge value to the world. That is why I thought he deserved a statue.”

Satoshi Nakamoto is actually not the creator’s real name, about whom we do not know anything. We have never seen the face that belongs to this name, and we do not even know whether there is a man or a woman behind the name. For this reason, the statue will be made in a peculiar way.

It will depict a person wearing a hoodie, having a very general body form.

As András thinks, we are all Satoshis, so the statue’s face will be made from a bronze-aluminium substance polished to perfection to mirror everything around it. This way, when you stand in front of it, you will see yourself.

The statue has been in the making since April by the hands of Réka Gergely and Tamás Gilly, so it will be ready in a matter of weeks.

Even though we do not know who Satoshi is, we know that his colleagues knew him. Moreover, one of them is Hungarian; he is called László Hanyecz. And another man, Nick Szabo, whose parent left Hungary in 1956 and with whom he did not directly work together, but used his work as a basis. 

Source: szeretlekmagyarorszag.hu, telex.hu