Bitcoin Forum

How can Bitcoin ever become a successful global currency when a single entity is in possession of 5-10% of what will ever be in circulation?! If he decides to sell at any point, huge inflation is guaranteed.
I know it's likely that he'll never sell the coins for the sake of anonymity and personal safety, or for the sake of the system. Possible he has even destroyed the private keys. But it doesn't seem certain enough that we can make that assumption.

I'm a little surprised that this hasn't been more widely discussed - so am I missing something?

Let's assume he has 5% and sells over a span of one year. One-off 5% annual inflation is huge, are you sure??

The way bitcoin is designed, we can see where his coins came from. If/when he spends them, we can see the amount he spent and the amount he has left.

On the other hand...

With the government, we cannot see how many coins they have or where they came from, but they sure keep on spending!

Which would you trust?

When BTC implement anonymity function, he can spend it.

I don't think it will happen. The holder dumps large number of bitcoin, which will cause the price fall dramatically and won't get benefit at all. There are one type of trading called over the counter through which the holder can dump large number of bitcoin without causing any trouble.

I don't think bitcoin should ever implement anonymity if it has plans of going mainstream.

This.  If you want to hide from the public then use an alt-coin that allows you to, don't try to 'fix' Bitcoin if it's not broken.

Yes , your thinking is right  ;) . Bitcoin is anonymous if you keep it anonymous , but if you post your address all the users know that address is your address so you will "lose" your anonimity .

Satoshi's coins have been discussed ad nauseum. So has anonymity. My take is that Satoshi deserves to be a bazillionaire as much as anyone when you consider the drug lords, arms dealers, and Apple executives.

And the kylie jenners of the world.

This.

Damn those Apple executives!

Yes,of course, they are. 8)

He deserves to be a billionaire, but his coins are also a massive liability for Bitcoin in general. A publicly annouced liquidation plan over x amount of time would go a long way towards helping the future of Bitcoin I think.

I think he is worth 10 Nobel Economic Prize.

This. Plus he will NOT sell.

Probably not, but how do you convince your mom, or your friend at the bar that the anonymous creator who holds potentially billions or trillions simply won't sell and crash the market? Even if one single satoshi was moved from any of those known addresses today the market would shit itself. People would be in hysterics.

Welcome to Bitcoin!

Do we even know for sure how many coins are the "Satoshi's coins"?

From what I know, it has been estimated that he mined about 1 million coins himself, distributed some and the rest is spread over the multiple different wallets.

Do we even know which wallets are assumed to belong to Satoshi?

Cannot find any info.

I found this old article from WIRED:

http://www.wired.com/2013/12/fbi_wallet/ (http://www.wired.com/2013/12/fbi_wallet/)

He has over 500 million in BTC. If he was going to sell, why wouldn't he have already started?

I don't think Satoshi will ever trade his BTC for fiat scrip. I think he - like many of us - believes in Bitcoin's power to make a better, more peaceful, more just world.

How do you convince mainstream adopters of that when they don't know anything about Satoshi? Only that he's anonymous.

I don't convince anyone of anything. I don't care what others do with their money, I know everyone will come to Bitcoin in their own time and on their own terms. They have no choice in the matter, it will only be a question of how much wealth they're willing to sacrifice before they ditch their rapidly depreciating fiat.

Anyway, how exactly are you defining "mainstream adopter"? Bitcoin will be mainstream when it is mainstream, and it will be marginal until that time. Or were you just using "mainstream" as code for "wealthy white people"?   ::)

https://i.imgur.com/vw3202K.png

The US dollar (and all national fiat scrip) is backed by two things: deception and violence.

Neither is going to perform as well in the information age as it did in the industrial age, when it was much easier to control the flow of information.
Remove the foundation of violence & deception, and what do you think will happen to the currency?

http://i.perezhilton.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/jenga-amazon.gif

satoshi does not have 1million coins.... ill make it bigger so people can read

satoshi does not have 1million coins

now then think logically..
in the first 4 years 10.5million coins were mined, we all know that.. so in the first 2 years (when satoshi was involved) 5.25 bitcoins were being mined.

are you highly opinionated people thinking that only 5 people were playing around with bitcoin between january 2009 and december 2010. to have an equal share of 1mill each.

you do realise that there were thousands of people by the time it got to december 2010 right..
by the way, there was a guy named 'sirius_m' that was coding and mining with satoshi right from the start, and a few idea's were passed around on the forums/irc/email with many others. such as
cdcker
madhatter
smoketoomuch
theymos
rix
suggester
rogerrabbit
newlibertystandard
gavin andresen
laszloh
witchspace


the list goes on, as i said there were many many people involved

so dont think for one second that satoshi had 1million coins all to himself. not unless you can prove it.

It's been analysed man. Satoshi was by far the biggest miner on the network until mid 2010.

You're way off on this. Even if it's not a million or more it's going to be within a couple of hundred thousand.

agreed, couple hundred thousand at most but, you might want to look into sirius back in 2009.. when considering the "biggest miner"

It's still almost certainly over 1,000,000 according to data researched by respected researcher and cryptographer Sergio Demian Lerner:

"Note that from the 1814400 BTC awarded, 1148800 BTC has never been spent (63%). I suppose (but have not checked it yet) that these are exactly the segments that belong to the mystery entity,"

http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

Now, sirius being the second person in to Bitcoin behind Hal and after Satoshi could have been the one to mine these 1148800  BTC. But based on the evidence of Satoshi bootstrapping the network himself, the chances of the miner being sirius seem be slim. And even if it was sirius, the original point still stands, albeit with the exchange of 'Martti Malmi' where 'Satoshi Nakamoto' was written.

The million BTC problem is real, and unless they get sent to 1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE, they will always be a guillotine hanging over the Bitcoin market. Future investors, banks, regular people who find out about the original mined coins will have a hard time coming to grips with the risk that such a large amount could potentially be liquidated at anytime, wiping out a massive amount of the Bitcoin market cap and potentially creating a mass panic resulting in a cascade of holders liquidating their own holdings.

what if the premining is actually a manipulation security feature and not a liability?

Also, I didn't mean a couple hundred thousand coins at most. I meant 1,000,000 +- 200,000. But the evidence strongly suggests that my my initial conservative estimate is clearly wrong since a single actor clearly mined 1148800 BTC and it's sitting untouched.

To be fair, this wasn't premining. This was all done fairly after the genesis block.

It could very well be coins that will never move again in the history of Bitcoin, but with out any knowledge either way, how can one discount the risk? Or explain the risk to people who might not believe you that Satoshi Nakamoto was unique in the sense that he truly was a benevolent creator? Even if we all believe so, and I do believe that to be extremely likely personally, if Bitcoin is to become what some envision it to be, how does the world come to grips with the risk of the million?

Every whale that drives the price down in the short term means that there are not large holders in the future.

Satoshi starts selling and it will be like the price going down over the past few weeks.

Then...it's all up from there.

Jed McCaleb and his attack on the Ripple network invalidate this viewpoint. As a founder he (initially) had 9% of the 100,000,000,000 issued XRP, and publicly announced his intention to sell, while also (allegedly) having made private fire sale threats---all while planning for the launch of his rival network. XRP value was temporarily slaughtered, even before any major sell activity occurred. In the end, a deal was worked out and no full attack occurred, but it has led me to dismiss the notion outlined above.

Financial self-interest may be greatest off-network, the greatest motivations of any actor may not be financial, and we cannot assume rational actors.

Even if Satoshi has the best intentions, his wallets may at some point may be compromised (if that has not already occurred).

What liability? its just a shit ton of coins.

The earlier he starts selling the better. Much rather him start selling now than five years from now. I hope he sells some off, even if he doesn't believe in fiat, there's always precious metals, commodities, and stock that will likely maintain their value over the long run.

I have always viewed Satoshi holding such a large batch of funds, so that one day, if Bitcoin encounters a catastrophic event, those coins could be used to kickstart the economy again.  And I have a gut feeling that this is what Satoshi was thinking when he retained a chunk of the economy for safekeeping.   .... "If its needed one day".

-B-

That would clear overhang of the coin.

I am not sure how his bitcoin could "kickstart" the bitcoin economy. If something were to hypothetically happen that would cause bitcoin to have little/no value then additional coins in circulation would only make things worse.

I think it would be very possible for satashi to sell his bitcoin in a controlled fashion so that him selling would result in massive price declines. If he were to announce that he will sell no more then 1,800 BTC per day (after the block subsidies half again) then the net effect would be that the same number of coins would be coming onto the market as before the subsidies halved

Do you know how much money FED has printed and handed over to commercial banks to buy their MBS after financial crisis? 75% of total USD money supply.

And why didn't you see any significant inflation until now? Because those banks are very aware of the potential inflation those money might cause if they were put into circulation, so they saved all of those money back into FED and receive an interest and spend only those interest

Similarly, satoshi will also be aware of the consequence of his spending, and even if he dump all of his coins, the effect is limited

Another example is gold, world central banks hold more than 17% of the gold on the earth, but they will never dump those gold, that will push the gold price down dramatically

The funny thing about your example is that in this case(and it's a rare case that this will ever be true again), those world central banks are more 'decentralised'(and I use this term loosely and in the context of comparison only) than one anonymous individual. It's a good example that you posted though. But we also know that at least the intentions of a central bank are to provide stability.

Even though we may know that he'll act rationally. In a vacuum there's more risk of a single individual action irrationally than a group of individuals. Even if that group is a central bank. What we think we know, the world can not possibly know. Thus we'll eventually face some tough questions that will need to be answered.

I think they're a liability, but a tolerable one, all things considered.

I find it unlikely that they'll ever be spent. It's clear from Satoshi's writings that his motivation was primarily intellectual/political/principled, and further, his decision, from the start, to remain anonymous indicates an understanding that bitcoin shouldn't be about its origin or any individual. Coming back to bitcoin, either by letting his identity be known, or by moving coins, would be damaging to the entire effort (not fatal, but damaging) since it would re-associate bitcoin with him in the present.

I would love to have that liability.   ;D

I agree with what you said, but I fear the world might disagree at some point and limit the potential of Bitcoin. Cryptocurrency in general though is likely here to stay(Bitcoin included of course!). :)

Knew I should have put some disclaimers so someone wouldn't nitpick lol :)  I don't know which one, of ten million possible scenarios may play out, but it seems that holding a large batch of a limited economy, would address numerous possible future problems that could come up.  A guy who invents Bitcoin isn't going to do something stupid to damage the economy like selling his coins to crash the price.  

Its far more likely there is an altruistic reason he's holding these coins.   And I am sticking with my theory that its to one day help maintain the system in case of emergency.

-B-

Wouldn't it be incredible if one day we saw a transaction moving all those coins to an unspendable output?

I don't understand all the angst. So if Satoshi liquidates 7% of all bitcoin in a market order. So what? We get a one-day drop in price, and a huge buying opportunity. Within days, Bitcoin is at 90% or better of its t=0- price, and Bitcoin resumes its incessant climb.

Besides, the dollar seems to absorb almost unlimited dumping:

http://media.theweek.com/img/generic/Fed_1_StLouisMonetaryBase.jpg

Why would we expect it to be fatal for Bitcoin?

Notch sold Mojang to Microsoft. Everyone has a price.

Satoshi is really intelligent
he does not want bitcoin to die
he won't do anything nonsense

Satoshi != a videogame developer.

a single actor did not single handedly mine bitcoins. as that means that for 319 days(1148800/3600) only satoshi was mining bitcoins. meaning others only joined in november 2009.

for instance
dont you even know that hal finney was mining from block 70 onwards (in january 2009!!!!), dont you know that sirius was mining before november 2009, do i need to relist the other people that were into bitcoin during 2009-2010.

it does make me chuckle how soo many people read someones opinion of a graph they made, and not actually get a second opinion, deeper analysis of the results, or check other information to see if the information corresponds to the analysis.

 

I think it is very likely Satoshi will use the coins at some point.  I don't think he knew it would become this valuable so he is probably deciding what to do.  The system is too fragile to move the coins now so I expect he will wait at least until the next halving if not two. 

I would agree that he will likely wait until far in the future to start spending his bitcoin and I think he will likely start to spend some of it until the block reward has just halved. I also think he will give a lot of warning before actually selling the coins on an exchange/at merchants (I think he will likely attempt to move the coins without warning via a mixer in order to keep his anonymity). 

guys.. you do realise why satoshi made bitcoin right?? to get away from FIAT.

if satoshi was to use his stash of a few hundred thousand coins. it would NOT be to convert to FIAT. it would be to buy real world things like cars, houses, islands, everything he desires in life USING BITCOIN. not cashing out to fiat first, as that just goes against the whole point of what bitcoin is truly about.

that's like inventing a car, then trading it in for a horse.

this means that satoshi wont be throwing coins onto the exchanges.

i believe he learnt this early on that cashing out goes against his ethos. he also realized that by trading coins for real life tangible products/property (food, houses, etc) people he is trading with would follow the taint and his anonymity would be ruined.

so those couple hundred thousand coins in his 2009 wallet. will remain locked. and since he disappeared in late 2010, he THEN began mining fresh coins pretending to be a normal average joe person under a different username

I do consider the coins a liability, just because of the fact they might not always remain in the hands of Satoshi. 

Other than that, I think that Franky1 has thought out the most likely and most reasonable path.  I would like to add though, I doubt he really ever left the scene.  I think he just stopped mining under the Satoshi name and was mining under a new name back in 2010, one that we might very well recognize.  And he can now spend coins as that persona and has more than enough that the Satoshi coins need not be touched. 

No, I don't realize why he invented Bitcoin and neither do you.  I suspect he had no idea it would become this valuable and to talk like he had everything planned out from the start seems pretty unlikely to me.  Bitcoin is not a religion that was planned out by the messiah, it was some computer science people who put together a concept.  I know, I know, he put some message in the Genesis Block and that proves it was some kind of long complicated theory to replace the entire world financial system.

There are several people on this forum (franky being one of them) that seem to treat bitcoin as a religion and satashi as a messiah (many of them crazy). I would speculate that this was at least part of the reason why satashi "left".

I also agree that satashi likely did not know that bitcoin would become as successful as it has become to date. I know that he had said that bitcoin will either have a lot of transactions in 20 year or very few, but he likely did not imaging it having this large of a market cap

What if satoshi is the antichrist......!!!

Is this the message?



https://blockchain.info/tx/4a5e1e4baab89f3a32518a88c31bc87f618f76673e2cc77ab2127b7afdeda33b?show_adv=true

Or he will wait until the price does not matter and spend it.

5% of total supply will definitely affect the price.

Satoshi didn't move any BTC when it worthed 1000$.
How many people would be able to do nothing with a billion dollar, even not convert 1 million dollar or less?

I think there is nothing to worry about his bitcoins : he would have sold a part of his fortune if he was interested in anything but money.

Yes, I noticed this after just a few weeks of being involved in Bitcoin.  Especially some of the people associated with the Foundation.  In March of 2013 I complained to them that they chased Satoshi away and I predicted that within 18 months all the current businesses associated with the Foundation (Mt. Gox, Bitinstant, Coinlab etc.) would all be gone.  I wish the current Foundation would just dissolve so some new organization can form which is not saddled with the history of the current Foundation.  Just this week the crazy Roger Ver Bounty hunters vid.  I mean, c'mon.  This is lunatic fringe kind of stuff and it drives people away from Bitcoin.  And Ver says if I don't think his project is good then I don't understand what Bitcoin is.  Sure.  What you have is a bunch of nut cases who attach themselves to Bitcoin and try to say anyone who uses Bitcoin agrees with them.  I am all for limited government and freedom and I work with the NJ Libertarian party on their Open Government project and I have even funded some law suits against local governments.  But some of these Bitcoiners are just from outer space when they start discussing this issue. 

To get an idea of what I am talking about listen to the Let's Talk Bitcoin interview with Preston Byrne who is a very reasonable person compared to Stephanie Murphy who is completely unreasonable and interjects herself into the interview several times spouting complete nonsense and disrupting the interview to the point of making the host angry.
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-137-eye-of-the-beholder

Also, yes, that message in the Genesis Block merely proves the date the software was released and makes kind of joke.  I have seen people claim that this "proves" all kinds of intent by Satoshi and it obviously does no such thing.  If someone points to that message and claims it proves some kind of intent by Satoshi don't bother to listen to anything else that person has to say because it will be all nonsense.

those thinking that i treat satoshi like a messiah are wrong. the reason i say what i say is that i have read satoshi's posts, IRC logs emails etc. so i understand what he wanted. yet all you can quote is the genesis block, as if thats the only thing he wrote.

it might be worth you researching more to realise that satoshi didnt just think of it as a meaningless experiment, or something he didnt want to succeed. my mindset is in the "satoshi=smart developer" not "satoshi=god". and although i call him a smart developer i know his unix skills lacked a bit. but that didnt stop him having a smart idea.

might be worth some of you reading the research and double checking it. rather than believing the summarized plot lines.

I don't think anyone said that or thinks that. ::)

I am talking about the arguments presented here when people start saying "Satoshi meant ..."  The fact is it does not matter what Satoshi wanted, said, or did at this point.  It is an open source software program for which he has no control.  The only thing that matters is what he will do with his coins and there is no basis for the conjecture that he will never spend the coins.  In fact I believe he said you should never destroy a private key.  Everyone should plan for Satoshi using his coins at some point.  As pointed out, if his intention was to destroy the coins he probably would have done so by now to remove this risk.

Someone who spends their time endlessly analyzing Satoshi chats and IRC logs, etc. is like sitting around analyzing the Dead Sea Scrolls.  Unless it is some technical issue that you are trying to explain it serves no purpose except to turn Bitcoin into some kind of religion.

This is why satachi's bitcoin is a liability to Bitcoin. When Satachi eventually does sell/spend his bitcoin it will be seen by many as something is "wrong" with bitcoin in some way. This will cause at the very least some kind of temporary panic. I think it is also why satachi stopped participation in the development and discussion of bitcon as he likely did not want to be seen as this kind of person

i wouldnt really worry about this.
satoshi kept coins even at 1k price i doubt he/they will spend them now

I think he almost certainly will spend them eventually. He may well be waiting for more ways that he can move/spend them without his identity being revealed.