Who is Nick Szabo?

Nick Szabo is a famous and well-respected cryptographer and software engineer who is known for the creation of Bit Gold (a predecessor to Bitcoin) and for the creation and development of smart contracts. Szabo's initial goal for smart contracts was to bring what he refers to as the "highly evolved" practices of contract law to the design of ecommerce protocols between strangers on the internet. Nick Szabo is also considered by some to be one of the potential individuals that created Bitcoin, but he has denied on several occasions allegations that he is Satoshi Nakomoto.