Yesterday, the following question was posed in a chat:
Link to the conversation: https://stacker.news/items/710028/r/crrdlx?commentId=710037
Do most lay people know who Satoshi is lol
That's a fair question. Since my curiosity was piqued, and since I knew I'd be able to interact with several people today, I figured I'd just go ahead and do an informal poll.
Methodology
There were a few groups of people I surveyed. Each group received only one of the two questions. (Asking one question would contaminate the results of the other, Hawthorne Effect style, so, only one question was asked per group.)
The questions were:
What is Satoshi Nakamoto famous for? (open ended question)
Who started bitcoin? (multiple choice question, options below)
Wei Dai
Nick Szabo
Hal Finney
Satoshi Nakamoto
Vitalik Buterin
For the second question, I originally wanted to include made up names rather than real ones. But, I was running late, in a hurry and just did what I could do. Originally I had Adam Back in there, but I wanted a varied "look" to the names so I put Vitalik in at the end. Maybe I shouldn't have used bitcoin (or ETH) related names...someone might truly think one of them actually is Satoshi and therefore indeed started bitcoin. But, my thinking was that if they're that much in the ballgame, they'll get it and say something.
As far as methods, I just gave a piece of paper, showed the question, let them write an answer, picked up the replies. For question 1, I did say, "If you don't know, just write that you don't know."
Stats and responses
Below is my notepad scratched out stat sheet.
The top half was in response to question 1., "What is Satoshi Nakamoto famous for?"
The bottom half are the tallies in response to question 2., "Who started bitcoin?"
And below are the responses to the question, "What is Satoshi Nakamoto famous for?"
Analysis
Question 1: What is Satoshi Nakamoto famous for?
The takeaway here is that only 3.5% of the people could look at the name Satoshi Nakamoto and place it with bitcoin. In the chat linked above, another person thought the number would be over 50%. I had guessed 20%. My data today was 3.5%.
We're still early.
Almost all of the answers were "I don't know." There were nine other answers, or guesses, though. The thing I found most intriguing was that three of the nine had to do with automobiles. The responses were "make vehicles," "car brand," and "a car guy." I want one! Other fun answers were "karate," "samurai," and "creator of Dragonball Z R.I.P."
Question 2: Who started bitcoin?
Given a list of names to choose from, Satoshi Nakamoto was identified as the bitcoin creator 41% of the time. Okay, the masses got the plurality correct, although still not at a 50% majority. What I found interesting was the spread of the other answers. If they didn't know about Satoshi, why did they choose the names they chose? "Szabo" must just have that bitcoin-coder name thing going on to garner 28%. And Hal Finney? That name just sounds friendly to me.
And that response in the bottom right in the image...that person has a future.
Satoshi car
Somebody help me out. I now need an A.I. mashup image of what a Satoshi Motors Company automobile would look like. Please post. Wen Satoshi car?
I go by @crrdlx or "CR" for short. See all my links or contact info at https://linktr.ee/crrdlx.