Bitcoin Forum

Quote is from another thread but I'd rather not derail that one so I'm starting a new thread:


Why is it always assumed that Satoshi choosing to dump his coins would be immediately noticeable?

Satoshi was the first to mine and sometimes the only one mining in the very early days but others like Hal Finney were mining too. After 2010, many other people jumped aboard and started mining with their own PCs. Satoshi was still around on the forums until late 2010 and didn't disappear completely until 2011. If he had continued mining until then (and possibly even after 2010-2011) then it would be impossible to know whether it's Satoshi who is dumping his coins or just another early adopter. Someone who constantly mined on a PC with reasonable specs from 2010 onwards would still have made enough BTC to call themselves filthy rich.

I'm not doubting that Satoshi's earliest mined coins that were worth billions at one stage were left untouched but couldn't it be possible that he still sold a couple million dollars worth of BTC and is living the high life today?

People like to think he will dump his stash in one go causing the price to plummet real hard.

They don't realize that you can slowly sell without leaving marks or hurting the market.

I'm pretty sure that there are a lot of people who are closely watching his known addresses for movement. Any movement would indicate that he is most likely back.
This could mean a lot of things. He'd be at risk if he does so.

Most people who say it would be noticeable probably mean ~1 mil coins spread over multiple wallets that allegedly were owned by Satoshi. Those are being watched by many and if any of the coins moves it would get massive attention + likely panic (in terms of price).

Whether he had/has any other coins and actively use(d) them is rather irrelevant, as people already expect such coins to be in circulation (as part of the supply).

I hope he did manage to somehow capitalise on his invention and secured his financial future. It would be pretty sad to think that he's stuck in some shitty 9-5 job to pay his bills.

satoshi deserves to be rich after this invention. they are his coins anyway he has the right to sell them.

Certainly, Satoshi could exchange some of his bitcoins without arousing suspicion just as you say.  However, I expect he would be noticed long before reaching millions of dollars (assume USD) worth of BTC.  It is believed that almost all of the unspent coinbase outputs belong to Satoshi (most everyone else combined their outputs, creating large balances at a single address).  On top of this, there's a strange pattern (https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/09/03/new-mystery-about-satoshi/) in the nonce values of the old blocks with unspent coinbase outputs which allow us to decide coins owned by Satoshi with even greater accuracy.

If he was cashing out in small amount but on frequent basis would we have known it's him that's doing it? There's always different ways and option on how to do it but still keeping his identity concealed. All these claims are just based on assumptions.

Any movement in those coins (small or otherwise) would generate a lot of interest. It will not be easy to conceal his identity though. He can ask funds to be transferred to a numbered account in exchange for his coins.

But as the addresses become more recent, it would become harder and harder to pin them on him right? If you saw a new 50 BTC block being generated in early 2011, how would you know whether it was Satoshi mining it or the other ~500 or so miners mining at the time?

Or was Satoshi the only miner to leave his coins scattered across multiple addresses? If so, then I guess it would be possible to identify which addresses belong to him. That is, unless he changed his practices and began merging his coins into a few large addresses like everyone else.

The idea that Satoshi wouldn't even sell any coins at all seems rather strange. Even if he believed that the BTC value would rise further or he intended those coins that he mined to be a donation to everybody, he still needs money to eat and pay the bills like everyone else. And for most people who are working 9 to 5 in order to survive, it would be very tempting to retire and use the extra money to pay off the usual expenses like rent or a mortgage don't you think?

EDIT: Then again, I guess if he were rich and content with his existing wealth/lifestyle then I can understand why he would leave the coins alone.

You are correct - there is nothing to say that any newer blocks which we haven't attributed to him haven't been cashed out and that he is leaving the ones we do know about alone so as not to draw anymore attention. It could be that he already has a RL job that pays him well enough without having to actually use the BTC he has - or he doesn't wish to have his identity exposed (take the whole Dorian saga for example) so would rather not risk it.

Satoshi can cash out his lesser known addresses without us noticing. As long as he doesn't cash out all his coins in a short period of time, then it's ok by me. They are his money, he has every right to do that.

So you think that he has other addresses that he mined coins to that we/others don't know about? Is that possible, if it is then you might be right.

Either way, it's noticeable.

Every transaction sent to and from his addresses are traceable and wouldn't even be mixable.

The fact that his/their identified stash hasn't been moved makes the above scenario almost a certainty.

2 questions, answer for 1, it depends what wallets he dumps from people have most of them on watch with there eagle eye, of course he must of had other wallets people never knew about so hopefully he spent from them.

2, You would be right assuming he would have touched the early mined coins, unless he was already filthy rich of course is the only reason i see him not touching them but i am talking already multi millionaire.

He sold enough to live a good life this i am sure of that is why we here nothing more of him he is happy what he got from the game.

well he have over one million, unless he cash out few at time or it do it off market, it would be noticeable for sure, address ramification won't help anyway, because his coins are all starting from a single block of 50, it would be fairly easy to track back those

but the market should absorb even this big amount, actually it would help adoption, assuming that his coin are not lost, probably a reason why he didn't dump them yet...

You can trace coins back to there original owner

you mean to the original address, right?
I think satoshi (or anyone) can make himself untraceable with some work.

First of all the following questions needs to be answered:

1. Is Satoshi a single person, or a group of individuals?
2. In case he is a single individual, is he alive now?
3. Has he kept all those coins which he had mined in 2009, or has he thrown them away?
4. In case he is in the possession of the coins which he mined, how many coins he is having right now?
5. Has he lost any of his coins in the millions of Bitcoin-related scams? (such as Mt Gox).

Exactly. You can 'watch' addresses with blockchain.info so you'll immediately be notified if any coins get spent or even received so their movement would be noticed immediately. There would then be numerous people and individuals trying to track and trace the transactions. If he cashes out a possible link could be found there. I'm sure he's smart enough not to sell them on an exchange though.

Certainly, every transaction from his 'known' addresses will be traceable. But in that case we are assuming that we are aware of Satoshi's all addresses.

OP's point is: how do you know each and every of Satoshi's addresses?

If Satoshi continued to mine in 2010 and 2011 when there were several other early adopters mining bitcoin, how would you identify some specific addresses belonging to Satoshi out of those?

You should ask Chuck Norris  ;D

Now THAT is some theory:  Chuck Norris is Satoshi!!   ;D

Do we even know all his bitcoin addresses ? He might have had coins mined to different addresses. And in the start he sent bitcoins to other people just for showing them the concept, and he might have 100's of other wallets he might have used to send bitcoins to himself to.

Well, there's an approximation about Satoshi's bitcoins. Some people says it's aroun 1 mil (~900k)
Let's say satoshi was mining at first 50k blocks. How to detect if they're satoshi's or not?
it's kinda easy. If the generated coins moved or not? If they're not moved (except Hal - Satoshi transactions) then we can assume those coins are satoshi's. Of course there're some non-moved bitcoins because some people mined and then screw it and never looked back.
If we search all of the first 100k blocks and generated coins we can find all of satoshi's bitcoins (I guess).

I've manually checked some of the first blocks and each block was mined by different address not the same one. So satoshi has a least 20k different address. It's hard to track but it'll take attention when they're moved.

And these are sadly all questions that will very likely never be answered. I'm on the fence as to whether I would want to know the answers to them as well. I kinda like the mystery of nobody knowing who satoshi is and it may be better that he stays unknown so bitcoin doesn't have a central figure to attack or degrade. Also satoshi dumping his coins would very likely crash the price but at the same time if he spent or exchanged them wisely he could avoid doing this whilst also doing some real good in the world with his coins. Only time will tell what happens I guess.

I'm pretty sure that if Satoshi needed to spend his Bitcoin he would. The fact that he leaves some of his addresses untouched adds value to that address and adds mystery to his existence. But he probably has many coin in circulation and is probably still mining. He's probably still active on the blogs!
I doubt very seriously that he isn't making ends meet after he invented Bitcoin.

Here, this is the fist block "Genesis of Bitcoin" https://blockchain.info/block-index/14849
You can research the address.... (https://blockchain.info/address/1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa)

This is the second block https://blockchain.info/block-height/1
here you see a other address that recieved the coins https://blockchain.info/address/12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX

Here the next block https://blockchain.info/block/000000006a625f06636b8bb6ac7b960a8d03705d1ace08b1a19da3fdcc99ddbd
address: https://blockchain.info/address/1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1

and so on: https://blockchain.info/block/0000000082b5015589a3fdf2d4baff403e6f0be035a5d9742c1cae6295464449
address: https://blockchain.info/address/1FvzCLoTPGANNjWoUo6jUGuAG3wg1w4YjR

somehow you will see that each new mined block goes to a new/different address.
and none of this the address balance is changed since the block is mined. Who mined this blocks owns still the coins, i think.

Central banks never cash out majority of their gold holdings. It will be so stupid to exchange hard assets for some fiat paper that they can print any time

Correction: it should be why do some people assume...

I don't assume anything about Satoshi, nor do I ever think about him (or her).

*or them

or IT. Satoshi might be an AI for all we know.  :P

edits my other post

Satoshi isn't a central bank though and cannot print his money, though at one point he may wish to actually use his coins and pay or buy something substantial. Maybe a mansion? And I think most mansion-owners don't accept bitcoins as far as I'm aware (though hopefully they will in the future).

Satoshi's achievement is much larger than any central bank, those banks can only control their own currency through a debt scam

This kind of post shows the author lacks financial experience. Rich people don't need cash, but rather accumulating assets (In fact that's what banks are doing every day). But physical assets always have a risk of being heavily taxed or confiscated. Since bitcoin is the most liquid form of digital assets, satoshi need very small amount of other assets, if any.

http://www.arcticstartup.com/2014/09/01/estonian-bitcoin-castle
But what can you do with such a mansion?   ;)

And, I guess he already spent large amount of coins, just not those 1 million coins, which might be lost (Otherwise they will be consolidated into one or several wallets, not spreading among thousands of wallets)

Has anyone ever thought of the fact that since Satoshi couldn't really avoid pre-mining (although it isn't really pre-mining but there were very few people mining the first blocks) he has voluntarily "frozen" the coins to make it fair to others? This does fit into his principles and philosophy..

If that was his intention, he could've done it the better way, as we don't know whether those coins are really 'frozen'. Sending them to the address, such as this one, would leave no doubts:

1BitcoinEaterAddressDontSendf59kuE

He could've also do a massive giveaway on early stage, before Bitcoin was tradeable for USD.