Best known for his work in the bitcoin market, Gavin Andresen is a software developer who originally worked on 3D graphics and virtual reality programs. He became involved in bitcoin products in 2010 and was named by Satoshi Nakamoto as the lead developer of the original code for bitcoin software after Satoshi decided to leave the market.
Andresen started the Bitcoin Foundation in 2012 to support and develop the bitcoin currency, and left his role as a software developer in 2014 to focus on his work with the Foundation. Andresen got his start in the 3D graphics software industry at Silicon Graphics Computer Systems after graduating from Princeton in 1988.
In 1996, he co-authored the VRML 2.0 specification, and later published a book referencing the 2.0 version of the standard. Since leaving Silicon Valley in 1996, Andresen has been involved in a variety of software-related projects, including co-founding an online game company for blind people and sighted people to play together, and serving as the CTO of an early Voice over IP company.
Andresen is the lead developer of a portion of the bitcoin project, working to create a stable, secure currency for the Internet. He discovered bitcoin in 2010 and thought the design was brilliant. Andresen then created a website called The Bitcoin Faucet, where people could get free bitcoin. In April 2011, Forbes quoted Andresen as saying that bitcoin is designed to bring us back to a currency of the people, better than gold. Satoshi Nakamoto was joined by other developers to Bitcoin, and later became the lead developer of the bitcoin network client software. He stopped being lead maintainer in 2014.
Leave a Reply