Bitcoin Forum

What is the probability that the reason for the non movement of Satoshi coins is that the private key has been lost ( and what implications does this have?)?

As wallets have become more secure would these coins not be moved to something considered "safer" ?

When was a large chunk last moved? If it was years ago does this not support the likelihood of a lost key and the inability to access these coins?

If there is proof/indication that these are still active/ accessible it would be nice to see that to put my mind at rest :) .

If there is no convincing proof of continued access then this article can be ignored.

http://www.coindesk.com/dangerous-satoshi-nakamoto/



Satoshi certainly has a lot of funds. Bitcoin security consultant Sergio Lerner's oft-cited analysis puts the figure at around 1m BTC, based on the early mining that he or she did.

Most of those coins were unspent, the exceptions being some test transactions during the first ten days after Satoshi mined the genesis block (the first block on the blockchain).

It's certainly a possibility but there are many other scenarios. The simple answer is nobody other than satoshi will ever know unless they suddenly move sometime.

He probably just saved his private keys in an encrypted container. They were never really in a wallet other than bitcoind.

These coins weren't really moved at all. They're just sitting in the addresses to which they were mined.

- He is afraid of beeing found when he spends one satoshi
- He forgot his wallet passwords
- The harddisk with the wallets crashed
- He is dead

(Most likely in that order)

Collectively "Satoshi Nakamoto" is waiting for mass acceptance before revealing himself and starts dumping coin in market.

Satoshi likely has his private keys
If he is dead he likely implemented a deadman switch
Since Satoshi is just so unknown it really is hard to tell but I doubt he lost his own keys considering how skilled he is.

My personal stance on this is that satoshi intentionally deleted the private keys used to receive the early mining subsidies, despite his advice not to delete privkeys ever. His motivation to mine was to bootstrap the network and have transactions confirmed, not hoarding coins. He may be keeping some hundreds/thousands of BTC mined in 2010/2011 but probably those coins have already been moved. So we have both a) he has a lot of coins, b) early subsidies will never move.

Another plausible option is that he keeps them, but plans to cash them out gradually and going backwards in time, starting with the most recently mined blocks, so the market gets no sudden surprise over old coins moving. As older subsidies are spent our suspicion it's him will gradually grow and at some point we'll be totally sure but a lot of time will have passed and the market will have discounted it.

They have not been touched even when the price was $1200 it would have made sense if he at least cashed out some coins.

These coins are most likely not accessible for whatever reason, or perhaps Satoshi simply doesn't care about money, also possible.

He may have cashed out from addresses nobody knows about. It is nice to think that he doesn't care about money, but those coins could be used for good in the future. He could slowly dish them out to charities or invest in infrastructure for bitcoin in the developing world.

-He has more than enough for his living and doesn't need to spend his coins.
-He could have burnt his coins to avoid spending them or have lost them but do you think this would be the case or happen to a really wise man like him?
-He has always been really wise about his coins. He only gave a few to Hal Finney. It seems he is/was very fond of him.
-He is very sexy about his mysteries.
-He is very alive, watching us and working on hard problems and doing research.

I don't think he would've abandoned them completely nor do I think it would've been wise to do so, though you could make an argument against it if they ever fell into the wrong hands or were dumped at one point, but I think if he was safe and smart with them they would be fine and could still be used wisely in the future.


Haha. I'm going to use that when anyone ever creates a thread asking where satoshi is  :D.

I like that, it makes a lot of sense to me. We do not really know, which blocks were mined by Satoshi, but with the oldest ones it is more likely that he mined them.
I still don't think, he will cash out ever.

Maybe he's just hoddling? I think he more than anyone could see the massive potential for bitcoin so he may be keeping them as a long term investment. It's certainly interesting and exciting to find out what happens to them in the future if anything.

I'am pretty sure he didn't lose them,just holding them ;D or maybe he is already rich so he don't really need them

Is it very much naive for hero member?

to put short.. anyone who uses testnet (the mindset of playing around with worthless coins) how often do you bother to keep the privkeys..

i certainly think satoshi didn't bother backing up his wallets each time he implemented a new version. and especially with the fact that each reward went to a unique address, i do not think he cared about gathering up coins.. it wasnt until alot of people began jumping onboard in early 2010 that he started to realise that his invention had real world usefulness. especially after the bitcoin pizza and first exchanges opened, this is when i think his mindset changed and he started telling others to backup. (wouldnt you remind others the seriousness of backing up if you realise you unassumingly let hundreds of thousands of coins to just go to waste)

Bitcoin is a little different though. It was his baby so I'm sure he didn't just not bother keeping them. I like to think he would've been very careful with his coins, though I suppose it's possible he lost or misplaced some but not the amount that is still stationary.

If there is mass acceptance, dumps won't be necessary. He won't need fiat.

The time to dump is now, while he is a multi-millionaire and bitcoin's future remains uncertain.

The only thing anyone can be certain about is that his coins never moved thus far. Outside of that, everything else is speculation.

And we all know how much people like to speculate on here  :D. For some people that is all they're interested in sadly.

Why would he dump now at this price? Though the future is uncertain I think there's a greater chance of it rising considerably than crashing, though ups and downs will likely occur. If, like you said, there is mass acceptance and he or any of us wont need fiat anymore then it makes sense to keep hold of them right now.

Plausible, however so are all the other 100s of theories.

The sad truth is that we'll simply never know.

If you must know what I'd do with the coins. I'd be long like I seemingly already am right now. But like I said someone else in the group holds them. I would not divest and put them into regular assets. I would liquidate some of the holdings and move them into real business ideas I have and property. I wouldn't have much to do with the bitcoin architecture other than what I have said in wanting to see a true legal platform developed for the coin. Other than that I'd say what I said back then to the group satoshi. "you guys seem like you are doing a good job what do you need me for?" The legal platform is to get people to start legislating from the bench kind of like the supreme court already does. I don't know if you follow the news much but the court of common pleas in all the states issued a major warning to the federal government. I forget what the legal latin phrase is but it's somewhat of a big deal. My idea is to use the court of common pleas to do law and get away from this tyrannical prison system and handle things more in terms of fines and fees when the law is broken.

My thoughts are the legal system today is broken and destroys peoples lives. All for what? So, someone can have a criminal record and never get a decent job while they pound salt in some cell for some rich dude that owns the prison. I hate that.

A lot of people don't seem to understand that if Bitcoin is successful it will be the money - currency trading as an industry and occupation won't exist any more because there won't be other currencies to exchange.

That is just idealistic bullshit.
Bitcoin can take a major part in the world without destroying fiat completely. There can also be other cryptocurrencies besides bitcoin.
Bitcoin will definitely never be the only money on earth.

ONE COIN TO RULE THEM ALL

I don't remember Satoshi saying that ;)

I don't see any reason for fiat to stick around, unless it's by force.  Let's imagine bitcoin is accepted everywhere, what possible reason would you have to accept anything else?  Perhaps a different coin is more anonymous or has some technical feature.  But bitcoin could probably copy those features.  And there's always off-chain transactions (which still use bitcoin as the unit of account).

I don't necessarily think everyone's coffee purchases will be on the blockchain, but could see all the prices being in bitcoin.

not lost, destroyd by satoshi because he knew that the idea of bitcoin is bigger than he  :)
that would be a cool move.

^I dunno, I can't see satoshi just destroying coins like that. It seems like a waste.


No, but we know it's true  :D

People may be 'forced' to use bitcoin eventually. Fiat has its uses and likely will for a very long time, but it could lose a lot of it's value if mass inflation happens and people could abandon it for other currencies and that's where bitcoin could flourish, though paper money or some other physical currency could still be used for those in the sticks or backwards or something.

Well what will they use for coffee? Coffee seems like a good thing to purchase with btc, though if it isn't obviously some fiat coin will still need to be used.

Why lost , he probably have them but Just don't want to spend them , how you can tell that Satoshi isnt a millionaire (before creating bitcoin) ;D or with his knowledge he probably have a job on a very decent company and getting paid as should be.

he just want to stay annonymus.

They'll still use btc, sort of.  They just will use an off-chain processor.  Coinbase does that today (you can send bitcoin from your coinbase account, to someone else's coinbase account, and the transaction never appears on the blockchain and it's much cheaper and faster that way - just involves more trust).

I hereby renounce any association with said satoshi group if this is true. Never heard of him never liked him nada!

What's the big deal with liquidating say 5-10%. The gubmint did it with Silk Road coins and the sky never fell chicken little.

And why destroy coins I already don't like the idea of lost coins. I know i said it make it more valuable but I changed my mind.

Or say spent a portion for designing a legal platform for people to do contracts. Would not this add value to the coin as more business and higher velocity of transactions would be moving through the currency?. Second it would make it more usable to business instead of the immediate conversion back to fiat. I don't like right now that it gets immediately converted. Though the western union thing was good news. Hate those guys.

He may not want to affect to the bitcoin

But with this legal platform I want it to be really simple and based on common law moreso than this complex maritime admiralty legal system that is kind of being forced down our throats where it's impossible for the small guy to have a fair voice.

I mean I'm talking simple things like for instance, a promissory note.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Promissory_note

Definition and usage of promissory notes are internationally established by the Convention providing a uniform law for bills of exchange and promissory notes, signed in Geneva in 1930.[6] Article 75 of the treaty stated that a promissory note shall contain:
the term "promissory note" inserted in the body of the instrument and expressed in the language employed in drawing up the instrument
an unconditional promise to pay a determinate sum of money;
a statement of the time of payment;
a statement of the place where payment is to be made;
the name of the person to whom or to whose order payment is to be made;
a statement of the date and of the place where the promissory note is issued;
the signature of the person who issues the instrument (maker).

Historically, promissory notes have acted as a form of privately issued currency. Flying cash or feiqian was a promissory note used during the Tang dynasty (618 – 907). Flying cash was regularly used by Chinese tea merchants, and could be exchanged for hard currency at provincial capitals.[9] According to tradition, in 1325 a promissory note was signed in Milan. There is evidence of promissory notes being issued in 1384 between Genova and Barcelona, although the letters themselves are lost. The same happens for the ones issued in Valencia in 1371 by Bernat de Codinachs for Manuel d'Entença, a merchant from Huesca (then part of the Crown of Aragon), amounting a total of 100 florins.[10] In all these cases, the promissory notes were used as a rudimentary system of paper money, for the amounts issued could not be easily transported in metal coins between the cities involved. Ginaldo Giovanni Battista Strozzi issued an early form of promissory note in Medina del Campo (Spain), against the city of Besançon in 1553.[11] However, there exists notice of promissory notes being in used in Mediterranean commerce well before that date.

But something simple that the common person could set one up in for instance by software or application. And you could have possibly a digital signature.

I'm not really good with legal matters though, that's why I would need some consultants that are liberty minded but also adept in legal matters. I'm sure they're out there.

Extremely slim would be my guess. Satoshi isn't moving coins because he doesn't need to. He's leading by example.

I personally think satoshi has passed on.

Famous last words. You don't know what is going to happen to his coins in the future.

Central banks hold more than 17% of world's gold reserve, do they have any motivation to dump them?

Satoshi might have another huge load of coins and circulating them actively, he just don't need those extra reserves

Passed on to better things?  :D It's possible that he has in fact died, but he did announce he'd moved on to other things before he disappeared completely so it's likely he just wanted to leave bitcoin to sustain itself, though of course it's still a possibility he has died since.

Not everyone is as wise as Satoshi and want to get himself involved with authority.

He's too smart to sell them at this cheap "price" but also too smart to be in it for the money.

I think it is all but certain that he will eventually sell and/or spend his coins. If he did not intend to ever sell them then he probably would have destroyed them a long time ago.

I find it somewhat far fetched that someone who created something like bitcoin would not have the ability to keep his private keys safe for several years. Also it is likely that he used more then one machine to mine in Bitcoin's early days which would mean that he would have his keys at least initially spread out between a number of computers

I think he could be Stephen Spielberg waiting in the silence, collecting scripts for the biggest story of all time.

Just a theory!

No I think he probably died, maybe some panicky government had him offed when they thought Bitcoin was a part of Wikileaks.

Some months ago, I met a friend of mine, since he was in my city. He was there, because he had to deliver some blue prints and a 3D-model to a architecture-competition.
I asked him, why he couldn't just send them over the internet and he gave me a lot of stupid reasons like the line width of the blue prints depend on the printer or that it has to be a closed letter so nobody else can see it, yada, yada, yada.
I wasn't able to convince him, that all this things could be guaranteed by sending it over the internet if just somebody took the time to implement something like that.
So, that is the reason, why fiat will not disappear. It is never just about, what the best solution is. It is also about what ignorant people understand and what they are willing to change.

Whether he is in control of the private keys or he lost access to them does not matter. As far as I believe, he will never touch those coins again in his life. He does not need/want to spend them for money and he also wants to remain as anonymous as possible.

I for one believe the total Bitcoin supply as 20mil, not 21mil. 1mil coins in Satoshi's stash are never going to see the light of the day.

This analogy doesn't hold with currency.  A 3d model still works equally well even if no one else in the world still uses them. Fiat currency that no one else uses anymore, is literally worthless, no matter how tenaciously the last holdouts cling to it.

Yes, if no one uses a currency it disappears. That is called circular logic and is worthless.

is the exact amount of the old satoshi addresses available? is it really 1 million coins as someone pointed out?
 

Exactly - don't use that blueprint analogy because it doesn't fit.

Or he could be waiting to spend those bitcoins tax free.


Common Uses
Promissory notes have had an interesting history. At times, they have circulated as a form of alternate currency, free of government control. In some places, the currency is a form of promissory note called a demand promissory note (a note with no stated maturity date, allowing the lender to decide when to demand payment). In the United States, however, promissory notes have been issued only to corporate and sophisticated investors. Recently, however, promissory notes are also seeing increasing use when it comes to selling homes and securing mortgages. (For related reading, see From Barter To Banknotes.)

I'm telling you guys promissory notes. Get a platform to construct them in an easy set up of all the criterion necessary with an e sig and it could work I think. I reckon I'm going to have to do all the reading and research on this one. The government challenges you have access to common law court if they say not legal tender or whatever they would try to pull.

https://www.legalzoom.com/sites/legalzoom.com/themes/legalzoom/assets/includes/Promissory-Note-Comparison-Guide.pdf

Look at page 6 of the link I posted. You would need the requirements listed in the table I believe and I "think" an electronic signature would suffice for such purposes. Why can't there be a simple software solution linked to a coin or payment time period. You could enter your criteria. (amount, number of payments, distribution of payments, due date, penalty for late payment, and electronic signature).

My line of thinking is with the promissory note access to the bitcoin architecture it would allow for people to say buy a house or a car or property. The note could actually be constructed in bitcoin payments as opposed to dollar values. So, you could start ignoring the fiat price. The note would promote a legal background for larger higher ticket items to be used. What the holder of the property wants to do with the bitcoins or whether the property holder would want to use the bitcoins or accept the note would be completely up to the property holder. On their end the deed or title would be attached somehow to the software.\

It could be a cross group project like legal zoom, multibit, and coindesk.

Although there are these early addresses with a lot of bitcoin, we should remember that there is no evidence that Satoshi owns any bitcoin at all. It seems logical that he does, but no one knows.

You would need price stability for such high ticket items over time. Of course you could build in some clauses about price swings as well I would imagine. The idea could be a great one and a truly good way to get the banks out of our houses as well.

I read that coindesk article and also know the coin have not moved but i would rather see proof of the coins being burned than just beliving satoshi has lost the keys, it would stop a lot of speculation of what may happen in the future if he did sell.
I still belive those coins will never move.

Not movng does not make them unavailable.

So why wouldn't he just make a huge giveaway and give like 1 BTC to random people? it's way better than just having a shitton of coins that will be lost forever..

I've thought about that as well. But this would be in longer term instruments.

My line of thinking is initially you could set up notes dealing in lump sums which, would be an option on multibit or whatever someone conceives as a program that would work. Let's say you started with just a bitcoin supporter within the community for a car. You would draw up your note and come to some form of agreement between both parties. You could set the terms, payment period, amount etc. The deed would be at one end and the note and esig on the other side of the deal. You could then make the first property acquisition  via the new program.

Then my ultimate end goal here is that if the government may step in and try to challenge the move and try to charge capital gains on the buyer. You would then have access via the court system to challenge their ruling that it's an asset. A legal battle would ensue in the court of common plees. But it's looking given the current environment it would seemingly go unchallenged because when users are buying thing at say newegg I don't believe they are getting charged capital gains.

But in the end I think it would give bitcoin a chance to move from asset to an actual alternative currency.

It could also give miners the opportunity to make large property acquisitions to house their mining hardware. In the long run miners could draw up their own (seemingly) loans for new property for mining hardware based on their bitcoins made per month or whatever if someone was willing to sell the property on the other end. Intially, like i said I see it as lump sum payments. But to me the legal instrument is important to more widespread adoption other than just consumer goods.

At this point it may be worthwhile to put in context the 'value " of 1 million mined coins in 2010

Jan 2009 – Jan 2010    basically none    No exchanges or market, users were mainly cryptography fans who were sending bitcoins for low or no value.
Feb 2010 – May 2010    less than $0.01    User "laszlo" made the first real-world transaction – he bought 2 pizzas for 10,000 BTC.[73][74] User "SmokeTooMuch" auctioned 10,000 BTC for $50 (cumulatively), but no buyer was found.
June 2010    $0.08    In five days, the price grew 1000%, rising from $0.008 to $0.08 for 1 bitcoin.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Bitcoin

or 8000 dollars at a 0.008 price, prior to that is was ZERO and coins were being given away.   If people were concentrating on the concept and development they may well have overlooked the importance of keeping the keys safe with back ups etc for something with ( at the time) such a low ( and often zero) fiat value. Once the value was established and rising they could have said Ooooops I cant access my coins.  An indication of this is.. when did the coins minied stop being sent to those dormant addresses? ( can anyone chk the data?)  If mining chunks  to these dormant addresses stop near or prior to this date then it increases the probability of the inability to access  those coins and due to that mining is subsequently routed to new addresses that they could access ( with a warning to the community to ensure that the private keys are not lost and should be backed up :)  there is a post re this from Satoshi)  which  have not remained dormant for so many years....... food for more conjecture LOL

Edit

In May 26 2010 Satoshi states that a new address for each payment (coins from mining) is on his list ( of things to do)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=154.msg1254#msg1254

Can't we force a user to use a new address for receiving payments?
Every time a payment is received display another Bitcoin address in the address bar. (only transactions via Bitcoin addresses, NOT IPs of course, since that'd be useless, right?)
The actual key would still be kept to ensure that the user would still receive payments of people sending to the same address.
This is on my list.  I will soon make the "Your Bitcoin Address:" window automatically change whenever you receive anything to the address displayed.

June 21 2010 post ( philisophical :) )

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=198.msg1647#msg1647

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

He might be dead as well.

I don't know why people keep saying this. It's possible but there's no reason to think that.

Not communicating is completely consistent with Satoshi's behavior - he was very protective of his identity, so he would have to stop communicating eventually if he wanted it to remain secret.

I strongly believe we'll never see another message signed by him (either a transaction with his early mined coins, or a pgp signed message).  But that's most likely because he doesn't want to, not because he's dead.  I'd say odds that he's stayed alive since 2011 are the same as anyone else his age.  Let's say he's 50.  Based on life expectancy stats, his odds of dying in the last 3 years is about 2%.

I think Satoshi is too smart to have lost the private keys. He invented Bitcoin, remember?

The only reason these coins have not moved is because he does not want/need to move them.

He said this, because Satoshi might be dead and there are a lot of reasons to think that.

This is also what I believe, people should just get used to the fact that over 10% of all existing bitcoins are already lost.

Those blocks will be tracked. Once a few moved blocks are noted, it will spook anyway.

I think he is never going to use them.

Name one reason to think Satoshi is dead.

I have one reason to think he isn't http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/xn/detail/2003008:Comment:52186

His accounts have been hacked, haven't they?

That seemed to happen in September, that post was in March, who knows.

Easily could have been a hack since someone got access to his email which was the same as the one he used to sign up there.

This was clearly the result of someone hacking his email account at gmx. He probably stopped logging into the account around the time that he left the forum which would generally make it easier for a potential attacker to reset his password.

Also Hacker claimed that SN was still alive and he had found proof for his identity in his email history. Seems like this has never been proven to be true, though.

I think and am almost positive, since for sure Satoshi looks on Bitcoin as his baby.

So i think if he would lost access to his big wallet, he would let that everyone know. This way everyone would know there are less bitcoins in the game and for miners would be more worth to mine them and bitcoin would be more secure.

The only reason i se he might wait is if there is better timing for this news.

u guys are funny


his words

I think if he's still alive he's just waiting... and waiting patiently.
In the next years he will assess the situation and if there will be the right assumptions maybe he will reveal his identity too.

But, sadly, I think he might have been the late Hal Finney, so in this case he took his private keys in the tomb.  :(

satoshi doesn't care about losing his private keys maybe because he is one of the few people who know how to hack the wallet? why it would be incredible if he built in a back door ! :) muuuahahaha

Dear Troll,

Where did you come from and what is your purpose here?

Sincerely

Let me answer that for you:

He is trying and failing at spreading FUD.

Go away you troll ^^

i'm from the welfare line ... i'm hoping bitcoin will change the world for the better. So far what has bitcoin done to help the people? Wikileaks? lol what change happened because of that noise? :( just sayin!

This is not true. The Bitcoin protocol is open source so if there was a "back door" then anyone would be able to see it and point it out.

Also the protocol has been chanced several times since satoshi has stopped work on Bitcoin so any "back door" would have likely been closed during any hard fork

satoshi seems like a genius and i would not put surprised..also Gavin could be in on it ? ;) lol

How about all the people that now have jobs in asic technology, mining companies, new start ups etc.

the chinese the chinese the chinese?  ...gotcha ya honestly mostly bitcoin is driven by wall street speculators, drug dealers and other darkweb shadeballs ... i've come across very few people who have really come out ahead from the whole thing...just sayin'  been at this for over 2 years ! :[

So many conspiracy theories about that. At least there is some funny part of it ... :)

In my opinion. Let say that "you" are Satoshi.

1. You must be a genius minded man/men. Perhaps not poor and you know how to earn money. You are economy and coding expert.
2. When Satoshi was mining his thousands of Bitcoins price per 1BTC was very low. For him it was non-sense to spend his mined coins. He don't need few dollars..
3. When Satoshi was "gone" it was the middle of December 2011 price per 1BTC was @~$3.9, Well, he already had nice amount of money :)
4. Satoshi used all securities to stay anonymous. So he decided to leave those coins like they are :) And well ... when he will (maybe) spend them after 10-20 years ... imagine how rich he will be? :) Then it make all sense :D

5. We don't know who is Satoshi. Most likely he is mining bitcoins :P and he is perhaps coding many different things as he created bitcoin - he must be big inventor! :) So ... he have money to live (I believe). He don't want to finish like Tesla. That's all. That's why coins are waiting for the times, when he will be able to show his face or just will make sure that he is untraceable after spending any of those coins.

6. Maybe one day we will know :) ... now nothing is for sure :D we can only speculate.

7. I think he have also some other economic reasons to keep those coins where they are.

Kind regards.

This is definitely the main reason why coins haven't moved. He loves his security and he is a super mind, he already has a ton of money without a Bitcoin!!

if satoshi still holds the keys i'm %99 sure he is still an active member of this forum!!!  ;)  

...why would he bounce?... just use a different name(s)!!!

He might never know when that stage is achieved. It might already have or might happen soon. Even if it is mass accepted, the price won't necessarily sky rocket.

Although if it is mass adopted, at suborbital price, then he can probably dump whenever and it won't twitch a penny.

Well, "the Sword of Damocles" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damocles naturaly. Who would not consider?

Occam's razor (or Ockham's razor) is a principle from philosophy. Suppose there exist two (or more)explanations for an occurrence. In this case the simpler one is usually better. Another way of saying it is that the more assumptions you have to make, the more unlikely an explanation is. Occam's razor applies especially in the philosophy of science, but also more generally.

Which is the simplest explanation with the least amount of assumptions?

Regardless of the price, in order for satoshi (or anyone for that matter) to be able to sell large amounts of bitcoin without affecting the price significantly, the market will need to be very liquid, and have a very high amount of trade volume. I agree that both a higher price and higher adoption rates will help improve liquidity, these two alone will not necessarily make it easier to "dump" large amounts of bitcoin on the market.

Regardless when satoshi decides to sell he will probably not do so all at once, rather would sell only a little at a time

a million coins would crash the price to zero ... no? \_(x*O)_/

I personally believe that for what satoshi believed in and his circumstances of being found out, making transactions with that specific address/wallet would be a very bold move and would attract a lot of attention.
In my opinion:
-- He's thrown the key away for what ever reason he may have to do that
-- He will wait until his last breath to send it to whom he chooses, wherever bitcoin may be at that time.

i'm leaning towards the keys are lost or gone...now who will figure out how to hack them is the question? :)

it would have made sense to give Gavin a backup? lol .. who knows  ;)

That would have been a horrible idea. At the time that Satoshi left he really did not know Gavin that well and he had really not yet shown himself to be as trustworthy as he has shown himself to be today.

Also it is never a good idea to give someone your private keys unless you intend for them to take/spend the bitcoin that the private key controls

Satoshi must have planned for a scenario where his account access would transfer to someone trusted after his death. Like transferring a Gmail account where private keys are stored in 'Draft' folder.

You can setup your Google account to be accessible to someone else in case you don't login for a specified period.

I wouldn't trust Google security.

I don't think satoshi would have trusted the security of google. I also believe that the threshold to allow someone to use an alternate method of accessing an account is small so satoshi would only need to not access his gmail account for a short period which would potentially give gavin access to the private keys before satoshi intended.

Also google (and probably the NSA/US government) would be able to access anything in the drafts folder)

I sighted Google account as an example of digital afterlife. Doesn't necessarily mean Satoshi used Google for this.

The point is, there are methods to allow someone else to get hold of your data after your death - IF YOU WANT TO.
So even if we assume Satoshi is dead, it doesn't necessarily mean that all his private keys are lost.

I still believe he or she is waiting for the right time. 1000 usd probably is too low and undervalued and at that time when btc reached the peak at 1000, 10% of the stash sold would be enough for him or her to cover all his spending and enough to live comfortably. The balance, I don't know what the plan....

The simplest explanation is that he is dead, killed by a jealous government when Bitcoin was just starting because it was suddenly new and associated with Wikileaks.

That requires a rather not-simple explanation for how someone posted as Satoshi during the Dorian thing.

Satoshis gmx email account was hacked. With this email adress the hacker was able to change the account passwords of sites like the p2pfoundation, where he posted that message on. Months later he wrote an email to a trusted member of bitcointalk, saying that he has proof of Satoshis identity and that SN is still alive.

Hacker was "doxxed" by a bitcointalk user called "greaterninja", but since there is still a bounty on hackers "head" I don't believe the doxxing hit the right person. "Greaterninja" enjoyed the fame for beeing "the one who doxxed the hacker of the satoshin@gmx.com account within 30 minutes", but he never explained why the big bounty is still up there. If he doxxed the real hacker, he truly deserves the bounty. He doesn't seem to have ever claimed it.

This is how you can read it in this forum, but it does not necessarily mean, that all of it is true.

I would say that he is probably waiting for trading volume and consumer/merchant adoption to more mainstream levels. This will consequentially probably will mean a much higher price.

He is probably also waiting for much of the bitcoin community to "follow" him much less, and look to what he has said less.

What I think funny, is that a lot of people think, he would sell his Bitcoin, if he ever uses them.
That wouldn't make much sense, since it would pretty much hurt Bitcoin and he couldn't just sell them in one junk. They would decrease in value, before he had sold them all.
It is more likely, that he would just use them as Bitcoin.

Why would selling his Bitcoins hurt Bitcoin???

Is that a serious question?
Dumping a lot of Bitcoin any asset on the market decreases the value. You know: supply and demand
Furthermore, it would be a bad signal, when the Founder of Bitcoin would want to get rid of his Bitcoin. That's like Bill Gates selling all his Microsoft stock.

I have not seen convincing proof that the hack occurred before the months earlier p2pfoundation post.

Well, you didn't say "dump" in your previous post. Selling all of his BTC at or above market price would possibly even raise the price or have no effect at all, like the last SR auction of 50000 BTC or the other one before of 144000 BTC.

I am not convinced about the hacker story as a whole.

Who knows. Are they going to release physical coins? Maybe he can see how many he can stuff up his own ass?

Kids a sham anyway. Probably stole the idea from some schizo on some message board somewhere anyway. Go fuck yourselves.

My dream of spending the latter days of my life like Tesla have already been realized. YAY!

I've had lots of time to think about this, as have all of you and a couple of things stick out to me:

1. He wouldn't sell his coins - even if he has the private keys, he didn't create Bitcoin to become rich. Bitcoin is his baby and he knows what would happen if he ever put any of those coins on the market.

2. He obviously has a background in Hacking and Cryptography. He probably made a decent living before he created Bitcoin and probably continues to do the same.

3. I used to think maybe he ended up in jail but the day he came out of the shadows to renounce newsweeks claim proves that he either is not OR if he is, Satoshi Nakamoto is part of a team and therefor could act as satoshi even if the real one was in jail. I doubt jail is likely.

4. I would guess that he is living a normal life, he bought some asics when they came out and probably has a hefty sum of personal bitcoins that are not the ones everyone is watching..

5. Possible scenario: He was already working as a securities expert or systems administrator. Gavin tells him he is going to the C.I.A. and Satoshi has a realization; he has to disappear. He counts his Bitcoins to date as a necessary evil and locks them away, possibly throwing away the private keys.

(If he was in anyway doubtful about the C.I.A.'s involvement or intend -this is how I would've handled the situation)

He throws away anything linking him to Bitcoin, moves, starts a new job as a securities expert or consultant. And gets back into Bitcoin, this time appearing as a novice. He starts mining again breaking up his transactions and wallets to smaller numbers so he doesn't have all of his eggs in one basket. And he moved on.

Now he is one of us, or at least appears to be. He lives a different life now, knowing that he can never touch those coins but in the past years has built back a large amount from "hobby mining". He attends the conventions. I'd like to believe that whatever company he works for was probably one of the first security companies to enter the arena - that is where I would expect to find him.. The thing is now, even if he was to reveal his identity no one would believe him. He has shed A LOT of the evidence of his "Satoshi Nakamoto" pseudonym.

Exactly. To my original quote about where this requires a not-so-simple explanation, I mean less simple than just, “Satoshi posted it.”

In general I agree. He's got plenty of bitcoins that aren't ID'd as Satoshi coins. Gavin going to the CIA is likely what caused him to withdraw. And he's probably still around here somewhere.

However, there is something to the Nick Szabo connection. Yet, Szabo himself appears to be possibly a pseudonym, so it's really hard to say. He may well have been a close follower of Szabo's work, and hid his tracks a bit that way. One standout word to me, which Satoshi used and is characteristic of a Japanese writing in English, is “ellided”. This isn't a commonly-known thing, but is apparent on use of Google n-grams, so it seems unlikely this would be a false clue. They did, however, both use the less-common term for hourglass ("sandglass"). So I am 50/50 on whether it's Szabo or an actual Japanese.

I would believe that he was living in Japan at the time of Bitcoins creation and possibly is still, because at that point in the game why would you have to lie about what country you live in?  (Why not put your location as Berma?)

I am extremely skeptical that he is in fact Japanese. Japan is home to many contractors, especially in tech industry, who come from abroad. Japan is always looking for Americans who speak Japanese. (Still possible he could be ethnically Japanese but definitely raised in the west)

Combine that with the type of prerson who would create such a technology: Hacker, Anarchist, Free Thinker - and you have the profile of bright young man - possibly American, British, or Canadian (the English is too good) - who had the opportunity to Study abroad, possibly had family there.

So he was living in Japan, working at a tech firm or software developer and tinkering with this "Bitcoin" idea. You can't deny the connection between the August 15th patent filed by Neal Kin, Vladimir Oksman, and Charles Bry and then bitcoin.org registered three days later.

I feel pretty confident that they were part of a collective, working on Cryptographic transactions. This is not to imply that bitcoin was created by a group effort but rather developed independently by one of the members.

At some point the creator showed his collaborators his proposal. When they realized what they had - they stopped everything. They realized that if they continued that one change needed to happen:

It has to be created by a ghost: A pseudonym was created by the collective to mask the original creator. Satoshi as you think you know him doesn't exist. He was a guy, he made a code that the collective helped tweak, innovate, and implement. His involvement after that was just as much, maybe a little more than his collective - who were still free to work in the shadows as long as he assumed fully responsibility of the system.. This way instead of a hacker group getting busted you only have one guy who can easily erase his existence with the click of a button (should the option be needed). Everyone involved had to not be involved: A plan was set forth within the group to distance themselves from Satoshi and make it appear to be a mysterious hacker who acted alone. This would free up the members of the collective to work on Bitcoin while denying a link to Satoshi.

Where is he now? I don't know but if my theory is correct - you can find the collective by looking at people really early in the game that deny having a link to him AND can prove they don't have a link to him because that's how they set it up.

So basically everyone.

There really is not proof (although gmx may potentially have proof one way or another). I think it is more a plausible explanation to the post.

I have seen video of the guy who was "tagged" as being satoshi and he appeared to not understand bitcoin very well and did not seem to have a very good grasp of how it worked on a technical level. If this person is satoshi then he is also a good actor