Best-selling speculative-fiction author Neal Stephenson hopes no one really thinks that he could be pseudonymous bitcoin inventor Satoshi Nakamoto.
The question came up in an episode posted Wednesday of the Conversations with Tyler podcast hosted by economist Tyler Cowen. It stems from a semi-serious article in Reason magazine last month that argued it wouldn’t be terribly outlandish to learn the author of erudite works of best-selling science fiction, including Snow Crash, Cryptonomicon, Seveneves and his most recent work, Fall, had also played a role in the invention of bitcoin BTCUSD, +6.93%
Over the past three decades, his novels have displayed an “obsessive, technically astute fascination with cryptography, digital currency, the social and technological infrastructure of a post-government world, and Asian culture,” observed Reason’s Peter Suderman.
It isn’t just Stephenson’s prescient fiction that would justify such speculation. After all, Stephenson has been “both disciple and muse to the most powerful men in tech,” the article noted, including having served as an early employee of Amazon.com Inc. AMZN, -1.41% founder Jeff Bezos’s private space firm Blue Origin.
Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym used by the unknown person or people who developed bitcoin. Guessing the identity of Nakamoto is a long-running sport. A number of high-profile tech figures have denied being Nakamoto.
Read: Elon Musk says he’s not bitcoin mystery man Satoshi Nakamoto
In the podcast, Stephenson said he had recently read the Reason article and “realized that the guy who’s writing it is largely just goofing, but I hope nobody takes it seriously.”
Stephenson, however, did have some interesting things to say about cryptocurrencies, blockchain and digital ledger technology in general. Asked by Cowen whether cryptocurrencies had a “killer application” or were merely a novelty, Stephenson said that so far they seem largely like “a bit of a solution in search of a problem.”
Stephenson said he was more interested in the “nonmonetary applications” of distributed ledgers than in the cryptocurrencies themselves.
“When people want to talk to me about a new cryptocurrency, I tend not to be super-interested in continuing that conversation,” he said. “But when they want to talk to me about using distributed ledgers to enable some other kind of initiative, then frequently, it can get very interesting indeed.”