If there is any "best founder ever" then it's undoubtedly the bitcoin founder. All the kids that popped up after him are just substanceless derivatives.
I've always thought there is a strong possibility the anonymous cryptonote author "Nicholas van Saberhagen" actually IS "Satoshi Nakamoto"
N.S. / S.N. for one thing, as an obvious intentional clue.
Second, Satoshi disappeared right around the time CN started. And when he left, he said he was leaving to "pursue other things". It's not a huge stretch to consider that a redesign/reboot of his best idea would be what that was.
Very doubtful someone like him would just totally turn his back on what he'd already accomplished. It'd be very natural to want to start with a clean slate and design a "bitcoin 2.0" from the ground-up with no baggage of the 1.0 concept design.
Finally, the #1 and maybe ONLY, biggest obvious FLAW, in bitcoin's design intending to be "money" is that it isn't fully fungible. Cryptonote (and thus, Monero) builds on the basic bitcoin design ideas to SOLVE that, and make the world's first crypto-currency that IS really "MONEY".
Satoshi never took any credit for cryptonote, of course, so this is all just wild speculation, and for more IF Hal Finney was Satoshi (or part of the team) and was diagnosed with his terminal illness at that time, he certainly would've been "thankful for today" when he started up Bytecoin (XMR precursor) even if maybe he erred a little bit on trying to structure it with the premine (to provide funds for his family after he was gone, maybe... something that Satoshi or the Satoshi Team did not do when they started up the BTC genesis block, of course. Hal could be forgiven for that lapse in judgement at the time, and under the circumstances... I'd think. Doesn't detract from his legacy or reputation IMHO at all...)
I have considered this as well.
Where it looks like it breaks down to me is the code. Does not look like the same person.
