Bitcoin Forum

As subject...
What if ...
S. Nakamoto lost all priv. key and can't use "his" btc?
(can't sign a message etc etc?!?)
I know it's likewise "impossible" but did you think there is a possibilities about this?
Or even, if this happened, what are the consequences for btc environment?
Thank you to all responders/readers

He made Bitcoin decentralized for a good reason , It won't change anything If he can't sign a message if you ask me . If he comes back and it's actually him .; I'm pretty sure he will find more then one way to proof his identity .
Now if we speak about the bitcoin environment then I guess it's like Satoshi Nakamoto said : "Lost coins only make everyone else’s coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone" .

If satoshi lost his private key that will lead to decrease the nomber of the 21 million bitcoins which are available.
I do not think that something like that will affect the price because these coins are not used

what if he locked them on purpose early, and then he bought another great amount for cheap at the beginning, just to make so that bitcoin can have a great vlaue in the future

everything could be at this point, but i also remember that he said "never delete a wallet" so i suppose it's very hard for him to lose all his coins, he made for sure several backup

the only thing remaining is that he is dead

It is possible that Satoshi Nakamoto lost his private key, however I do not think it will be majorly detrimental to the Bitcoin economy, in fact it would increase overall value of Bitcoin, since there would be increased scarcity for a constant demand.

If I remember he has something like 1-2m BTC from the early mining days, but there isn't much information I've read expanding on what happened to the coins after that. For all we know they still exist, or they may have been lost.

Overall, I highly doubt that Nakamoto has lost any of his keys or accounts, but it is possible.

Losing access to the coins is definitive possible. Obvious ways are no backup of the wallet or death of the person with no others knowing strong passphrase. Even if you make backup, shit can happen and you can lose this backup as well...

Well if Nakamoto lost his keys, a lot of BTC would vanish from the actual total number of coins. That would mean that BTC would become even more valueble.

iam trapped in a time loop

This would be good because a single person wouldn't be anymore in possession of an huge amount of BTCs, which as far as im concerned he had around 1 million coins which is huge. Of course, this could also backfire and what you thought t was good it was bad, because an huge fiat wallet could become the biggest whale, and if I want to have a whale in Bitcoin then it's satoshi, which im sure he would be on our favor.

I dont think it can be proved Satoshi coins are really lost, so as long as noone spending a lot of early coins (first month or so), we can assume Satoshi either lost the coins or he does not want to spend these coins.

There is a way to prove the coins are lost by sending them to obvious unspendable address, but there is no reason to do it.

If he does not have access to his private keys, bitcoin is more scarce and would be more valuable. Bitcoins do not depend on one user (Satoshi), the system is decentralized. All transactions occur without a third party middleman (except those who use a company to host their wallet). Satoshi still had his key last year (he kept them since 2011 or earlier), so I think it is very unlikely that he lost them.  

He probably wont sign a message anyway.

So, business as usual.

Dumb thread.

What happens if he has already lost them and is crying somewhere? Stupid satoshi threads make me wonder why there isn't a "Satopeculation" board already.

This has been discussed before.. many times.. Most believe Satoshi destroyed the coins.  He seems to be a support of Humanity thus we will never hear from satoshi again.  His word is to powerful, it is best to let satoshi be a legend and accept who ever tries to claim they are him are lying even if they are not.

Satoshi has done all he can for bitcoin the best thing he could do is never pop up again as it seems is his plan.

In every case, also if it real or not this "what if",

how we could know?

Actually seems that this btc are "freeze".
Probably due the big echo of btc he know that every movement of every wallet can create more interest to identify who is "s.nakamoto"-
Therefore there is the possibility that these "first coins" will remain there, to avoid the interest to identify who is.

" Satoshi still had his key last year (he kept them since 2011 or earlier), so I think it is very unlikely that he lost them.  "

Some one has never seen a backup? :)

I think the community has accepted that Satoshi will never use his coins. He literally has millions of them. If any of those were moved, it would send shockwaves to the markets. It would be better if he indeed has lost his keys.

It's not about a simply signature. But generally why these coin are there?
Some one told that "he" have "millions" of dollars in btc equiv.
I try to understand with other members why this btc are there and some info about the private key.

I think discussion about these coin are important and not dumb.

I am sorry but, meanwhile I have a senior membership in this forum I don't have read ALL discussion about s. nakamoto.

He will try to destroy the network and then bring it back at the beginning and generate the new private key, this is just imagination i don't know what will happen.

I dont think he would ever lose those private keys :D
But in case he did.. well.. he kinda deleted "some" coins and made all other coins be worth more.

you do know that in the first year 2009-2010. bitcoinqt was very buggy and the coins were worthless so most days he would compile new versions to test out and require deleting wallets to test out new ways of storing keys. so its obvious that he doesnt have access to all the keys..

If keys are lost, coins are lost. Personally, i think he just buried that coins there but everything is possible. We dont even know for sure if he is still live.

I hightly doubt it.  Odds are very high he destroyed them as 1 Mill BTC could decimate any value it has. 


IMO he has a stash of several thousand BTC,  no one he knows, knows he has it.  It would seem his ability to hide himself was unmatched, may he forever remain unknown.

Do we know that he did have the keys for the genesis block in the first place? Did he ever sign from that addy or anything?

Is it possible the genesis block was mined to an address that he never had the private key to in the first place?

He knows how it works, and that is impossible to recover the bitcoins if the keys are lost. I suppose that with all that he knows about security and bitcoin network he would have copies of his wallets. But if he lost it and can't recover from any copy, that isn't a problem for us, with less bitcoins in circulation, our bitcoins would have more value.

If he didn't lose it, it is a great sign for all investors. It means he values Bitcoin a lot more than than the current ATH. There is also no reason for him to sell his stash(unless he has some kind of personal problems) at the current price. Also after mass adoption of Bitcoin there would be no reason for him to hide, so the price will be very high + he will be safe. Perfect moment to sell.

I wonder if he would be able to transfer and sell his coins before the market reacts and what that reaction would be.

His btc not him bitcoin  ;D, however who cares?

Have you thought about that he has actually done this on purpose, so that he wouldn't fall in a temptation one day to use, sell his bitcoins or to intervene when we asked him to, about the block size increase for example.

I think about this every now and then and this is not impossible.

About your questions: Really nothing, our coins are just worth a bit more!

however... me  ;D


but this a really interesting "news" :D (for me).

about old forum, there is a backup to read "from" post 0 ? :D I remember that this is only a "new" version of an old forum...

it (they) don't have do this error.
proof : http://btc.blockr.io/address/info/12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX

no way he lost it.
How you can imagine to make that kind of mistake in project that you invent? He is waiting for 5k or 10k and will start to selloff

At this point it's clear that if satoshi is still holding coins, he is the ultimate holder, he is the most legendary holder of coins ever. I mean he is super rich and not a single BTC was ever expended. The other possibilities is he died or he lost them.

Possible but unlikely.

As to economic effects - this has none until it is confirmed, and given that he hasn't spoken out to date since he left - it's quite likely you'll never find him and there will never be a confirmation. Not to mention, even if you did - do you think he would just casually state he lost all of his private keys? If anything that would reduce confidence in Bitcoin - if it's creator couldn't even store his own keys safely how is a layperson meant to?

So let me get this straight guys.

People have speculated he has 1.5 million coins worth right now $566,490,000.00 USD

How smart are all of you ?

1 single guy holds half a BILLION dollars in Bitcoin possibly and that means ? Nothing ? really ?

No offense but i am not usually surprised by all the dumb posts in this forum section.
To say his coins don't matter etc would be retarded.

He could trigger an avalanche that would crush the price into nothing.
If he wanted to destroy Bitcoin he could dump half and then threaten to dump the rest when he feels like it.

And yeah it -IS- very possible he had a drive failure or something and lost his wallet.
Or maybe he just didn't care way back and thought screw it, i am deleting all this bs..
Maybe he died ?
Who knows..

Proof either way though would be monumental !

I actually believe that Satoshi Nakamoto lost his private key and PGP key. As someone who is very formal and good , if he really want to leave the community he would delete everything that would lead him back. Cannot use his BTC means that there will be lesser supply of Bitcoin. Thus, the Bitcoin price will increase. This will also lead to competition to crack Satoshi Nakamoto private keys to release those "locked" coins. Which will be good in the long term as big companies will want those billions of dollars.

Edit: Let's assume Satoshi Nakamoto is a person and is a man for my post. Too tired of writing he/she/they or his/she/their.

Where did all this talk of him 'dying' come from?

Well, nobody has any conclusive evidence that he as a person even exists. It is equally likely that 'he' is actually a group of people.

I think those coins being spendable is so monumental to Bitcoin that satoshi is either dead or incapable of doing anything with them. He knows the impact, he full well understands what a million unspent coins means. He also would never have destroyed the keys as he knows that would mean nothing to the general population of bitcoiners. He would have sent them to a known unspendable address or he would have dispersed them evenly to every address with a balance.

He would have done something by now if he could have, but he can't. He is either Dead, in prison, or has had his computers taken by the government.

My guess is that someone down the road will get access to these coins or already has access to them. It may be that this was all an invention of the good old USA and they have 1 million bitcoins and are planning on a new currency to replace the dollar.

The public bitcoin transaction log shows that Nakamoto's known wallets contain roughly one million bitcoins. As of June 2015, this was the equivalent of US$250 million. Nakamoto's true identity remains unknown, and has been the subject of much speculation. It is not known whether the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" is real or a pseudonym, or whether the name represents one person or a group of people.

That 1 million bitcoin sounds really nice... :D

Thanks to this thread I finally googled about S. Nakamoto and all the while I thought he was a real person. Now I wonder what kind of people are behind the creation of this bitcoin or what are their agenda if there is.

On his P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old male who lived in Japan, but some speculated he was unlikely to be Japanese due to his use of perfect English and his bitcoin software not being documented or labelled in Japanese.

Some considered Nakamoto might be a team of people; Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who read the bitcoin code, said that Nakamoto could either be a "team of people" or a "genius"; Laszlo Hanyecz, a former bitcoin core developer who had emailed Nakamoto, had the feeling the code was too well designed for one person

The total supply will decrease and the price would be higher. There isn't any significant differences right now. None of the Bitcoins were moved, excluding the 50BTC from genesis block which is unspendable. People are also burning Bitcoin (https://blockchain.info/address/1CounterpartyXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXUWLpVr). At most, we can divide Bitcoin in denominations smaller than satoshi if the supply is too limited. I don't find that a huge problem however. Those coins can be retrived by a fork but I don't think it is reasonable.

I highly doubt that's true. If he was interested in money, he wouldn't be creating something with zero point of centralization, since it doesn't bring up profits to that central authority.
Satoshi is, i believe, interested in monetary revolution. Don't believe he lost his private keys either, and if he even uses some of his balance, it will be for the benefit of the bitcoin
network, and not for some private reasons.

Eh, none of our business actually. Yes, many will get shocked by the news, but we can't do much about it. There is a possibility that the hacker might sell some, but not all, and that may cause a big disturbance price wise.

If he lost the private key, it would be better for us all... The reason why I am saying this is A. Satoshi will have to reveal himself/herself to spend those coins, and that will not be good for us. The people hunting

Satoshi, needs to put a face to the person, and this might trigger that. B. If those coins are spend, the price will drop significantly.... to the levels where it was in the early days. A lot of people will lose a lot of

money. Just imagine if you bought bitcoins at $400 and the price drops to $0.20 cents.  ::)

I had a thought, there has never been a person called Satoshi Nakamoto from the beginning, it is just a name made by a group of people, and maybe some of them is already died, but just like the God in various religions are also made by a group of people, he become an immortal figure that represent the spirit of decentralization and an incorruptible monetary system

It is very unlikely that the price will drop that far if he starts moving any coins. I guess it is even more unlikely though, that he will start moving any coins as it will indeed put his project at a serious risk.

Maybe the coins should just be send to a burn address to get rid of them forever.

That number seems to grow over as time goes on. A year ago it was estimated that he had half that number of coins.

Selfishly it's probably a good thing for us because it limits supply & makes our coins worth more.

Think of it like oil, if a large % of the worlds oil dries up what do you think happens to the price of the available oil?

That's a potential of 7% of all BTC that could be pushed at once.. it would spook people.  The price would react 100%.

The only person that can send them is one that knows the private key.

It's 100% known he has 1 mill coins min, they have never moved, mined to known addresses.  People are estimating coins mined to unknown addresses.

I doubt we'll come to the need for denominations smaller than a satoshi in this lifetime (i.e. 80 years) and that's being hopeful given the uncertain nature of Bitcoin in the short term. As to 'retrieving' coins via a fork - that would be a definite no-go simply because if you could effectively steal someone's coin by getting a network consensus very few people would trust Bitcoin (and a great number of people would never support such a fork in the first place).

Well...
As johnyj says this "protocol" was created by a group of people.
I think this as to be a "sure" fact, because, every one work in academia or study at university and can understand
"the quality" of a paper... well... one person could not do a paper like this.
Nor a genius, because there are some "points" that need the help of "other" people and not one only!
[I do know if there is a thread about the "paternity" of paper and some one has already talk about it...]
And this an important point, because:
- probably more than one person could be "satoshi" or use an address linked to "satoshi".
- this people need to have a strong agreement, because "what do you think happens to the price" ? One of this people could selfishly :) pump/dump the price.

There is a "time capsule"?
They decide to "destroy" all proof :) ?  
Hundreds of developer work on this project and they get a reward?