Bitcoin Forum

Coinbase posted their S-1 filings (https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1679788/000162828021003168/coinbaseglobalincs-1.htm) with the SEC and they mentioned that Satoshi Nakamoto and his identity is a Risk Factor for their business.

You can see all their Risk Factors starting from page 15 and Satoshi is one of them on mentioned page 19:


Other Risk Factors include breaches of security and privacy, market conditions, changes in liquidity, negative publicity, regulatory or legislative changes, fees and transaction congestion, economic and political conditions, reduction in mining rewards, quantum computing, software bugs and others.

We all know that Satoshi associated addresses have a lot of Bitcoins, but is Satoshi really deserving to be in Risk Factor category?

Yes it has been published also by cointelegraph a couple of days ago and it's has been pointed out several times and probably this is one of the reason why SN is an anonymous person.

This is also something that has strongly differentiated bitcoin from other asset or even other product that we have seen in the past.
Personally I don't think SN will ever spends his bitcoin (at least blocks identified that have been mined in 2009-2010).

Coinbase are here for business only so I do not think anyone else care about what they think about their business.

Overall, bitcoin is not depending on a single hand, not even Satoshi Nakamoto. Say we find Nakamoto, and he decides to sell all of his holdings. The worse we will experience is a little price down. The market will recover eventually.

Haven't we seen it all these years?

The way I see it: let's say that Satoshi was unmasked and is still alive, and everyone learns that Satoshi is a supporter of a certain controversial politician(let's say, someone like Trump). The people who are passionately against Trump might end up dumping their coins or end up boycotting bitcoin because of that affiliation (even though Satoshi is NOT Bitcoin). Hence, probably ending up with Coinbase taking a hit on their trading volume.

Any proof of Satoshi would need to include signing from an early address or staked PGP key, among other things. If this was done, then it makes the chance of the 1 million or so coins linked to Satoshi suddenly re-entering the market rise exponentially. While I don't think such a thing would kill bitcoin, or necessarily even dump the price (as I don't think Satoshi, if still alive and with access to the relevant private keys, would try to dump their entire stash like this), what would happen would be thousands of newbies and weak hands panic selling at the news. This would dump the price, which would affect Coinbase's profits, and therefore their share price. It is only logical for them to disclose such a risk.

Hmm. True. But I think it doesn't require Satoshi to be literally 100% unmasked to inflict such a damaging event to Coinbase(and to bitcoin's price temporarily). If we end up having a suspect with controversial views that the majority of the masses get convinced is Satoshi (regardless if it's true or not), the effect would be just as bad as the real Satoshi being unmasked.

In the sense of a classical SWOT analysis, absolutely.
I've mentioned that before: Satoshi could be "the Chinese", "the Russians", "Dr. Evil".
And he/she/it/they could be waiting for a time when their re-appearance and the movement of their coins wreaks the utmost havoc.

I personally doubt that Satoshi's coins would actually move the market too much, we're basically able to consume that without any lasting damage, but in the short term, it's still a mentionable risk factor for any Bitcoin business.

May be everyone who invested huge amounts and running a business are worried that Satoshi Naakamoto as a risk factor because of the huge amount of coins he is holding and his appearance after a decade might have a major say in the market if he ever returns and so is the reason you see a hostile attack on anyone claiming to be Satoshi so that the real Satoshi will stay away fearing the attack  :D.

I think that Coinbase checks all possible scenarios, and of course one is that SN moves their coins to somewhere else. Probably the price will drop but life will continue and bitcoin will grow again and again.

Possibly, but I don't think anyone would be able to convince the majority of users without being able to sign a message, which leads us back to my point above.

That idea has literally never crossed my mind before. The reason I attack imposters and fraudsters who claim to be Satoshi with zero proof or evidence is because they are criminals, identity thieves, scammers, and are trying to trick people in to thinking they are Satoshi for their own benefit. I'm sure most others think the same.

When talking about the sort of "real bitcoiners", it would definitely take a signed message to at least partly convince them. When talking about the masses though? You're probably giving them too much credit. :D I mean, we still got lots of people that thinks Bitcoin is a scam and that Bitcoin is centralized because "cHiNeSe MiNeRs". A famous "news site" putting out a not-so-convincing article about Satoshi being from China, and you'll get people believing it because it fits their narrative.

I hope you're right though.

The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is a risk factor for the price and status of bitcoin. During the absence of satoshi, we have idolized him/her/it. Satoshi did tried to keep the neutrality and flawlessness till it were active but finding the real identity of Satoshi would make many people sad.
Satoshi could be a good person but every human has its flaws. And as we follow someone too closely, words by words, they ought to make mistakes or hurt feelings of others. I'd love satoshi to be a mystery than a mortal.

You are probably right. I suppose it comes down to who is buying Coinbase stock, and therefore who would be holding stock which they could panic sell at the news of "Satoshi Revealed!!1!1"

People who actually understand bitcoin and the necessity of a signed message are far more likely to buy bitcoin, whereas I suspect there will be a lot of traditional investors who see Coinbase stock as a kind of surrogate for exposure to bitcoin itself. There are obviously bitcoin ETFs that also serve this purpose, but perhaps Coinbase will be seen as a kind of hedged asset, less prone to the big price fluctuations we see with bitcoin and bitcoin ETFs. You are probably right that these people will react to whatever hits mainstream news as opposed to what is actually going on, and we know from the last 10 years that mainstream news gets it wrong on bitcoin with a frequency approaching 100%.

Still, at the end of the day, if some Faketoshi causes Coinbase to lose a bunch of money, you won't see any tears from me. :P

I would say no if Satoshi had spent his coins back in 2009-2010, but it seems really odd for a newbie that more than 50,000 bitcoins have remained untouched with their coinbase input. I imagine that if a million bitcoins suddenly entered the market, it'd be too many to handle. The price would drop, whether temporarily or not, and maybe Nakamoto could be unmasked. That would not have a temporarily effect on Bitcoin, IMO.

I would personally not like to watch the sequel "Satoshi's return" of the movie "Bitcoin: A peer to peer electronic cash system" if you ask me.

I'm confused, why is a bitcoin exchange concerned about a massive spike in trading volume hence their earning potential?

That's essentially what would happen if Satoshi's coins were ever moved. A market wide panic sell which would increase the trading volume on all exchanges specially Coinbase which would give them a huge amount of money in trading fees.
Then again when price reaches a bottom, it will reverse back up and shoot up hence increasing the trading volume once again and giving another massive revenue to that exchange!

Unless Coinbase claims to have invested significantly in bitcoin themselves I don't see such a price swing being a risk for a bitcoin exchange service. And if they have such an investment, then we have to worry about them manipulating the market for their own benefit which is illegal!

They still make most of their profits in bitcoin from trading fees, withdrawal fees, etc., and they charge a flat bitcoin rate for these things. If they take in 0.01 BTC in fees from a trade, then it makes a huge difference to their profits in USD if bitcoin is valued at $50,000 or at $5,000. Sure, there will be increased volume in the short term, but they could still realistically be concerned about a prolonged bear market lasting a few years due to the sudden influx of 1 million coins back in to active circulation and the panic among newbies that would create.

Coinbase don't really care much about the illegality of manipulating the market. They illegally manipulated the market during their launch of support for BCash, insider traded, and caused their customers to lose a lot of money for their own benefit. But they investigated themselves and found they did nothing wrong, so it's all forgotten about now. ::)

I guess they are talking from business perspective and consider that satoshi's identity reveal could somehow shaken the market whether the effect is gonna be good or bad.
They're being cautious and although it seems kind of rude to consider bitcoin founder as a risk factor they are trying to list it as a possible scenario after all they're business that seek profit and heavily dependant on crypto which could go south if something like satoshi nakamoto identification occurs. remember they exist to seek profit and nothing more.

The psychological mayhem that it would provoke far outweighs the clear capacity of the market to eat all those bitcoins.
Don't misunderstand me but if satoshi's coins would appear again that could pose a major risk to the overall game.
I hate to agree with coinbase risk analysis, but that is not a risk for them only, it's a risk for all of us.

It definitely is, remember the saying "Do not meet your heroes"? It is the same as this one, if we know who satoshi is, the mystery of the enigmatic personality that is behind the famous/infamous(depends on who you ask) bitcoin will be lost, many people will see satoshi as just some smart person with no flair behind him/her. It is as @tsaroz says, we will not be able to accept the fact that satoshi is just some person. The other risk is when satoshi wouldn't reveal his/her identity but satoshi will dump the 1 million bitcoin that is in his/her possession which would definitely be the biggest wave that the market and everyone will see.

I don't think it works that way, there are some people in open-source community that said or did very controversial things, and the world didn't stop using their software. And with Bitcoin, Satoshi wasn't a developer for more than 10 years, so it's not like he could force his politics onto Bitcoin protocol in a situation like this.

Satoshi's coins is the biggest concern, dumping 1 million coins and the implications of the creator losing faith in his creation could create a bearish market for many years.

You mean someone like that clown Craig Wright aka Faketoshi or someone like him?
That could be a danger and all he needs is to bribe some people in government to accept him as real Satoshi even without providing real evidence like signing a message.
Then just broadcast that news on media, TV and internet and you have masses convinced he is the one.
We can see that he is suing everyone who posted bitcoin whitepaper and if some judge rules in his favor... money talks.
Then real Risk Factor should be Faketohi and not Satoshi.

Sure, but there's a difference between some software that only a small minority cares about, and Bitcoin, which is pretty much a household name already, and which is already quite a controversial asset to begin with. This is the same reason we see people dislike Bitcoin just because they dislike the Bitcoin community, which is a pretty pretty stupid way to value an asset.

He obviously can't. But the ignorant masses will think otherwise. You'll easily end up seeing "boycott BTC because the creator supports this and that".

I wouldn't even count him as a risk; just a nuisance. Him and his team just did stuff so so badly that everyone(besides a really really small number of people) could easily see through his bullshit.

The real identity of Satoshi Nakamoto is a risk for any bitcoiner because there will be many abuser to abuse his real identity, this can even put his life in danger also this can put bitcoin in danger. Because bitcoin known half anonymous and bitcoin transactions are known half transparent and one reason of these is the identity of founder. Also, revealing his real identity take negative effect on the price of bitcoin, even in long term.

I don't mean Craig himself is a Risk Factor, but Faketoshi as some other person who may have support from governments and important individuals for faking his claims.
All they need is to twist the truth just a little bit and masses who don't know anything about Bitcoin will trust anything they hear on the news.

Completely agree. For us, it is better that Satoshi remains anonymous. Bitcoin will definitely take a hit if his real identity is revealed (unless Satoshi turns out to be someone who is completely indifferent to politics such as Grigori Perelman). And it doesn't matter whether he is left-wing, right-wing or Libertarian. There will always be a section who is not happy with his political orientation.

Another risk factor is related to Satoshi's stash. That is close to 1 million BTC, worth $47.5 billion as per today's exchange rate. If those coins are moved, then we can expect an earthquake in the market. Coins sold by the Mt Gox bankruptcy trustee kept the prices suppressed for many months, and they amounted for just a few tens of thousands. And you can imagine what will be the case if 1 million coins are moved.

Indeed! Coinbase is just a business which we shouldnt really care about unless we are using it.. Bitcoin is a different one

Oh sure; they could have. Faketoshi's media people and Faketoshi himself could've done a far better job of painting his public image of being a cool and composed guy that apparently invented one of the best assets of the past decade; something that I'd think would probably convince the ignorant people slightly a bit more. Instead, we have all of these videos and screenshots of Faketoshi being a total dick lmao; which he really really is. Thankfully they're really really awful.

It is people like us who unintentionally give publicity to scammers such as Craig Wright. He had his two minutes of fame in the cryptocurrency sector, but he is done for now. Look at his BSV shitcoin. There was a time when it ranked as high as #4 or #5 in Coinmarketcap. Now it ranks #23. And by the end of this year, it will be outside the top-100 list as well. Now Craig Wright is just one of the names in the long list of Satoshi pretenders. We need to ignore his theatrics and move on.

Satoshi is a risk factor for every major crypto-related businesses like Binance, Coinbase, bitpay, etc... Imagine satoshi appeared and it's verified that certain person is Satoshi. He can change the whole situation, one bad word from his side towards Coinbase and their business is fucked forever. He can greatly manipulate the price. People follow to Elon Musk's tweets on dogecoin (meme coin) and imagine what will happen in Satoshi's case, he will be a total game changer. That's amazing at some point, this man (or a team) created one of the most exciting thing in 21th century.

Nicola Tesla is the inventor of the 20th century, personally, I would call Satoshi Nakamoto the inventor of the 21st century. This man gave a new currency to our population!

For a company looking at a $100bn valuation, yes - it's a severe risk factor.

Imagine the market reaction if there is a single movement from the addresses associated with Satoshi Nakamoto. Now imagine the market reaction if they sell even a fraction of these coins.

Not only this. Satoshi as a known person is a vulnerability for multiple reasons:
1. He can be targeted as a person
-as a taxpayer
-for political views
-for certain qualities of character (emotionally unstable, nervous, autistic)
-for the place he resides in (e.g. if it happened to be a country like North Korea, Russia, or one of the countries currently at war)
-for sexual preferences
2. He could be attacked physically
-kidnapped
-extorted
-could become a target of intelligence operatives (spied on, converted)
3. He could involuntarily became a market catalyst. Imagine hearing about Satoshi's sickness, hospitalization, car accident, death in his family...

I think so. Satoshi has become a sort of a demigod. The moment the human identity behind Satoshi is revealed, Bitcoin would cease to be what it is today. Once the mystery is unraveled, everything is burned.

Add to it the fact that Satoshi has more than a million of BTC under his/her/their control. That's tens of billions of USD. It will definitely spread high level of fear across the market. It will bring the market down to a very significant extent. Not to mention that tens or even hundreds of thousands of BTC will probably be dumped by institutional investors and ordinary hodlers alike simply because of that fear.

For me, Satoshi's human revelation is a Pandora's box. It is dreaded. It is full of irony that a lot of people want to know the real Satoshi when in fact their success might spell the end of a certain Bitcoin era, if not Bitcoin itself. And it is my sad belief that a lot are all too willing to take the life of the real Satoshi to protect his/her/their very own creation.

While it's slowly but surely getting lower and lower in the list, I'd bet it would actually be in the #50 spot or lower if literally everyone sold off their BSV forked coins. I'm guessing a lot of people simply don't give a crap about selling their BSV hence taking a significant amount of BSV out of circulation.

If someone would know how to break into Satoshi's bitcoin wealth, that would be like a nuclear war declaration!
Believing what you believe doesn't eliminate the fact that if Satoshi decides to move those bitcoins that could create some utter chaos on the overall bitcoin economy.
Another known problem is that with the advance of technology, it might be possible to break those private keys and this is something to have in mind too.
So, SN is definitely some kind of risk factor here.

Even if Satoshi is alive, we all know satoshi is smart enough to protect his anonymity status and ensure nothing related to his early addresses or staked PGP keys ever pop up.

If satoshi's identity were to ever pop up, the chances of bitcoin dying would be significantly less. It would however expose him as a huge target, I would imagine people would want to use satoshi for their own benefits, forcefully.

My opinion: satoshi's identity is definitely known to some people, at the cost of things we don't know yet or ever will. Considering he has had conversations as satoshi with multiple people online at least, there are for sure some people who know his identity.

As for the topic of whether or not satoshi is deserving to be in the Risk Factor category: Definitely yes.

For a big exchange and business such as Coinbase, they really look to that factor as a threat to their business. Just as the news about the whales moving their funds which slept for a long time from wallet a to b, the market reacts and many waves of panic.

And for just a small-time like me, I don't see him as a risk and don't know what to react if it's reported that he has moved his funds, those millions of bitcoins. But for large corporations and businesses that are the same as Coinbase, they really are going to shake if that happens.