I do not think that Elon would not claim he is the inventor by now.
The team theory makes this entirely unbelievable. Something like this can only be pulled of by 1-2 person's whith exceptional self-restraint.
Peter Thiel said in one of his podcast he believes it was the E-Gold team who created Bitcoin under the alias of Nakamoto. He also confirmed he knew the team. But no one knows the names of the engineers or who financed them.
All we know is that Elon and Peter revolutionised the finance industry with PayPal.
Video where he said he knew the team? In the main video, he just speculates that some people at the conference made bitcoin. Never provided even a claim to having evidence.
"Peter Thiel met with the e-gold team in February 2000 on the Caribbean island of Anguilla to discuss making PayPal interoperable with e-gold. The goal was to challenge central banks by creating a system where PayPal and e-gold could work together. Thiel believed this collaboration could spark a revolution against traditional financial institutions."
Actions speak louder than words.
- Thiel met with digital currency pioneers in 2000.
- Thiel chose not to partner with E-Gold because he needed to stay compliant and bank-friendly.
- A few years later, Bitcoin quietly appears, solving the exact problems E-Gold ran into.
- No names. No funding trail. No way for banks to know who the enemy is. Just Bitcoin wallets full of money.
It doesn't sound like a bunch of idealistic cypherpunks building tech to save the world. It sounds like a few smart, well-connected people who understood how money moves, got frustrated with the banking system and their fees, and built a way to create wealth and move value without paying commissions.
The cypherpunks laid the groundwork for the encryption banks, governments, and corporations now depend on. They were never interested in dodging taxes or avoiding bank fees.
