GAVIN Andresen was one of the first Bitcoin developers and is often referred to as ‘the man who built Bitcoin’.
But what is the story behind Andresen and what is his net worth?
Who is Gavin Andresen?
Gavin Andresen was born in 1966 in Melbourne, Australia but moved to Seattle, Washington at the age of 5 with his parents.
The family went on to move around the US to Anchorage, Alaska and Santa Ynez Valley, California.
Andresen graduated from Princeton in 1988 with a degree in Computer Science before starting a career working on 3D graphic software at Silicon Graphics Computer Systems.
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After eight years at SGI, in 1996 Andresen resigned from the company as the dot com boom was just in its infancy.
In 1996 Andresen founded Wasabi Software and created the software SkyPaint which was a tool for painting and editing 3D surround panoramas.
Andresen then developed Voice over Internet Protocol for Hear Me in 2001 as well as online games for blind people for All in Play.
He also helped develop Prosper, a loan management tool as well as develop a content management system for Gravity Switch.
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In May 2010, Andresen read an article published by InfoWorld about Bitcoin and quickly became intrigued by the concept, so he purchased 10,000 Bitcoins for $50.
On June 12, 2010, he launched a Bitcoin faucet website – a website which gives away free Bitcoins or another cryptocurrency to any IP address that connects to them.
That year, Andresen gave away 19,700 Bitcoins to users who solved a captcha.
These would be worth around $500 million today.
Andresen spoke directly with Satoshi Nakamoto through forum posts and private messages and was one of the earliest Bitcoin developers.
In December 2010, Nakamoto published what would be his final message in the forum BitcoinTalk.
Then just one week later, Andresen opened a thread in BitcoinTalk and wrote: “With Satoshi’s blessing, and with great reluctance, I will begin to do more active project management for Bitcoin.
“Everyone please be patient with me; I’ve had a lot of project management experience at startups, but this is the first open source project of any size I’ve been involved in.”
Andresen got to work on rewriting and improving parts of the original Bitcoin software along with four other developers.
The work was successful and redundant sections, bugs and security issues were eliminated.
After a number of months of redesign, less than a third of the original Nakamoto code remained.
Andresen then proposed the formation of a non-profit called the Bitcoin Foundation.
His idea was the foundation would serve as a centralized entity that would interact with the legal system about issues such as trademark and domain control.
The Bitcoin Foundation would also act as a library to obtain accurate information about Bitcoin since it was created.
The foundation launched in September 2012 and Gavin Andresen was appointed as chief scientist. Roger Ver, Charlie Shrem, Peter Vessenes, Mark Karpeles and Patrick Murck were also original members.
But some of Andresen’s ideas were met with opposition by the other members such as increasing Bitcoin’s block size.
This would improve the scalability of Bitcoin, which was beginning to be limited by the growth of the network.
These conflicts made Andresen leave the project with Van der Laan taking over.
In 2016, Andresen was then contacted by Stefan Matthews, who claimed Satoshi Nakamoto would like to meet him in person.
After allegedly interacting with Satoshi Nakamoto via email, Andresen flew to London and witnessed Craig Wright sign early blocks of his choosing with Satoshi’s private keys.
Andresen left the meeting convinced that Wright was Nakamoto.
Andresen revealed to the world what he witnessed in a blog post but was immediately kicked off the Bitcoin project.
He said: “Part of that time was spent on a careful cryptographic verification of messages signed with keys that only Satoshi should possess.
“But even before I witnessed the keys signed and then verified on a clean computer that could not have been tampered with, I was reasonably certain I was sitting next to the Father of Bitcoin.”
Andresen has since all but denounced Wright, saying he had “bamboozled” him with “funky proof” in 2016.
What is Gavin Andresen’s net worth?
Gavin Andresen is estimated to have a net worth of $100 million, with a large proportion of that being held in Bitcoin.
If Andresen had kept hold of the 19,700 Bitcoins he gave away through his Bitcoin faucet website, he could have been worth more than $500 million.
