Personally, I want to know who this guy is because he did something really rare: putting together some bits of common, old math—just bits that nobody thought to put together before—into a system with entirely novel (some would say "emergent") high-level semantics. He's an "inventor" in the most crucial sense.
And really, he's created one of the few things in Computer Science that I wouldn't argue with being patented. A blockchain is a configuration of algorithms into a novel abstract "machine", with many possible implementations, which isn't domain-specific, and that nobody had thought of—or, really, was likely to ever think of—without him.
Really, I'm just hoping that he's still actively working on other ideas; I would love to follow his research.
And really, he's created one of the few things in Computer Science that I wouldn't argue with being patented. A blockchain is a configuration of algorithms into a novel abstract "machine", with many possible implementations, which isn't domain-specific, and that nobody had thought of—or, really, was likely to ever think of—without him.
Really, I'm just hoping that he's still actively working on other ideas; I would love to follow his research.