Bitcoin Forum

Why are people saying that Satoshi has 20,000 BTC held up that he could dump at any time?

According to this video there are no huge spikes early on in the blockchain:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9q3UtmhR9G8

Satoshi probably has ten times that amount, or more.

As for people being afraid about it, it's the same reason children fear the bogeyman under the bed; utterly irrational.

Of course. Just like the boogeyman, Satoshi doesn't actually exist. There's a small group of early adoptors though, who all have 300k+ bitcoins, who could all singlehandedly wreck bitcoin at any moment they choose. If you have to be affraid of it or not is another question though.

It's not the early adopters holding large amounts of BTC that it's rational to worry about. After all, these people generally have a very strong incentive to continue holding it. The people that it's rational to worry about are those who have large amounts of USD and could singlehandedly wreck Bitcoin whenever they want.

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

Maria.

but they could only do it once.

after that, the 300,000 coins would have been distributed more evenly thereby giving up the power to do it again.

That is like saying that you can only kill a person once. After killing me, you'd never have the power to do it again. Does that make me the winner or the loser?

i already decided a while ago which one you were actually.

but silly me took you off 'ignore' for this thread.

Selling off 300K BTC would drive the price down sharply - I wonder how low? maybe to $1, maybe lower.

I don't think it would wreck Bitcoin though. Bitcoin remains an excellent method of payment irrespective of the value of a Bitcoin, so long as it has some value and there are exchanges. Given the size of the the existing network, it will always have a non-zero value and therefore remain useful as a method of payment.

it would crash for that week...  maybe 2 weeks...  but it would recover to an extent...   it's not something that one should worry about long term for bitcoins...  as I repeatedly have stated 10,000 times before...   we print more every month than the early adopters most likely have total.

Fiat money is regularly used by the mass of the population every day. BTC is, for the moment, regularly used only by a small cabal of nerds and drug dealers. There is quite a difference in what each can support.

I agree with error that this is a market anyone with a lot of USD could crash overnight; however, that doesn't negate the risk posed by early hoarders either as we know nothing concrete concerning their long term intentions or ethics. Investing in BTC is, at the end of the day, incredibly risky, but so is investing in any fiat currency long term.

It does not appear from the video that there is any early adopter holding a huge amount of Bitcoins.

Afaik, satoshi has 1.6 million bitcoins.

I doubt it,   if he horded that many bitcoins it would be worth 50 dollars each,  not 5.

That's highly implausible - there were a couple of peers in the network right from the start, so even if there were only 3 people on average mining for the first year, each would not have made much more than 800k.

Also, this is more or less a one-time card "he" could play and Bitcoin is so thinly traded anyway that everybody using it as a currency must be prepared for huge short-term price changes.

Although this topic pops up every once in a while, it is really a non-issue.

I still say its an issue because there is no work being done by those problem hoarders. The bitcoin equation right now is that the poor do the work for the rich...and that just holds bitcoin down. If Satoshi exists and has that many coins, or anyone with that many, should be spending those coins on infrastructure that gives bitcoins an economy. They would have less coins, but likely be worth more....but they dont care. Thats quite apparent from their lack of action over bitcoin's decline.

If you don't like it, don't use Bitcoin.

Yep the government need not spend millions on ATI cards. All they have to do is this :

1. Drive down the price
2. Miners quit
3. Network is weak
4. Government can attack it and mess it up without spending a lot of money
5. ???
6. Profit for the government !

yet another reason why we need a new system that punishes people that hoard.

i firmly believe that you should not be able to make money simply by having money, it just does not make sense to me. and others think the same, the Christians thought it was usury and the Islam people do too. i think it is a broken system, and needs to be stopped inside the currency its self. although i don't know how loaning would work. but i always go by the principal of save instead of get credit for it. for a rough example

take a 165k house for 360 months loan or 30 years at 7% interest. you would pay about 1100 a month. however if you took that 1100 a month and stashed it away every month for 150 months, you could buy that house right up front, and not give any money to the banks.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_banking
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usury

Bitcoin declining? Au contraire - it's still growing nicely at a pretty steady 50 BTC every 10 minutes ;)

Seriously though, there's absolutely no way you can back up this statement - you don't know what Satoshi or any other "hoarder" does for Bitcoin.

The more BTC one has, the higher his/her incentive to help Bitcoin succeed. Apart from this natural tendency there's nothing you can do really to force people to contribute or determine what they have to do with their money.

Umm...yeah...that shoud be easy considering the ways I would like to use bitcoin dont exist.
No need to mention that if I dont like "X", I should just get rich or control the world. BTW, thanks for letting me know all about bitcoin2cash and I have a feeling you will be seeing your quote again.

I look forward to the free advertising.

If they were spending coins, I would speculate the USD price per bitcoin would be much lower and not have risen as high. Whats not a speculation I believe is that they would be out of hoarding coins by now if they were in fact spending, therefore I win the argument either way :P

The other part bitcoin2cash summed up...if you dont like it, leave bitcoin....hey thankfully, he didnt mention if you dont like it, kill someone and their whole family and anyone they know :o

Calls out people for hoarding bitcoins, then suggests people hoard fiat currency....

Also, have a look at the Time Value of Money as to why interest rates are charged (What else could a bank/individual be doing with that money if they didn't loan it to you and what kind of return could they be getting investing in a business, making widgets, etc.) As a person or bank, why would I loan you money on the hope that I someday get back only the amount I loaned you? One of the complaints of our economy currently is small businesses can't get loans to raise inventory, invest in PP+E, etc, why would you take away the ability for all of these people to get loans? Loans, interest and debt are not bad things if used correctly and are a necessary tool of business.
Interest has been around since the earliest ideas of money and even in most usury systems it was only frowned upon to charge interest to members of the same ethnic group you belonged to, and in Islamic laws instead of charging interest they engage in profit sharing, joint ventures and cost plus...a rose by any other name.....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_value_of_money/

Also, in your example that's 12.5 years of savings to get a house assuming that in your system there is no interest to be had by saving that amount of money. So now they've had to wait for 12.5 years before buying the house (where did they live for those 12.5 years and did it cost them anything?) and even though interest might not exist in your system, would the home value have appreciated even slightly?

Speculations and beliefs are not sufficient to win an argument but that's not the point. Fact is, that you don't know who owns how many Bitcoins and what he/she has or has not contributed to Bitcoin.

I'm honestly not even sure what you want - if somebody has mined a couple thousand BTC, stashed them away for long-term savings and now regularly buys some BTC to spend them within the Bitcoin-economy he is an evil hoarder? Does it matter if he saved the BTC in order to send his kids to college in a few years or to be able to afford treatment should he ever get sick? Is such saving only allowed in USD or real-estate by your thinking?

Anybody holding BTC long-term and not selling them for something less volatile is a believer in Bitcoin, as it might very well be that they lose all their value. If you don't believe in Bitcoin that's fine, but please don't complain about those who do.

you make some very valid points. but if the small businesses cant get loans now, why would it matter anyway?

and in my example, the numbers were high for a first time home buyer. first time home buyers would not need a 165k house. you could live at home with your parents, or a cheap apartment. if you cant afford to save for the house, you cant afford it anyway.

and i do agree that some loans are beneficial. but if it will take you more than 2x the money and time to pay it back, i see it difficult to justify.

another example

you net 50000 a year yourself
the max you really should spend on housing is 30% i do believe.
30% of 50000 is 15000 or 1250 a month.
in my area you can easily get an apartment in a good area for 1000 a month, or even 700 and be "living fat".
if you don't squander the rest of your income you should have 750-1000 a month to save for a house, spending no more than around 1700-2000 a month on any housing

once you figure in housing you pay for while saving, sure its a worse situation, but its definitely doable.

I dont think savings is hoarding. I think savings is really lending or investment.

Do you realize that when people hoard BTC, eventually the market figures it out and everyone else's BTC becomes a little more valuable? That's kind of like a massive decentralized loan.

Bitcoin is like Gold - someone has to own it. That someone is called a 'hoarder'.

We have moderately high inflation built into the system to prevent hoarding.

You missed the point.

The point is, you're saying that people who save money should be punished, and then describing scenarios where someone might save money as a good thing. You seem to be terribly confused.

its bad when you hold like 10% of an entire currency when you obtained it for literally pennies on the dollar, probably way less

and that fact alone, among many others is why i would never invest any real sums money into bitcoin.

+1 if you think about it making money with money is insane and frankly an insult to everyone who has to work for money.... working for money should be the only way to "make" money.