LOL

why the price rise

i sense an oncoming crash

remember: sell when others are buying , buy when others are selling

Sorry to be cycnical but there are other assets a saver can buy other than bitcoin you know.

Like gold, silver...

Im sure Satoshi does not care much about bitcoin. He just wants to cash out his holdings. I'm guessing for him it's a full time occupation, working out how he's going to do it. I cant imagine anyone with so much money would be bothered to work. Plus he would need to keep a close eye on the exchanges and news to watch for anything that could affect his net worth.

IMO, (many ppl may not agree - fair enough) Satoshi is not one person. It is 3 people as identified by a magazine article recently published , with undeniable evidence that has been presented about Satoshi. If one goes through this article and does some research on the people mentioned, looks at their previous postings (one in particular has a style very similar to satoshi), you will also be able to see that they have posted on these forums under different usernames since Satoshi disappeared. Whilst using the search function I noticed 1 suspicious example. http://bit.ly/WkjEHg

RE: uncirculating bitcoins

http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584.pdf

It is interested that apparently an 'unknown entity' has commanded 3 million BTCs distributed across 78,000 addresses. Im not sure if the entity still owns this many BTCs however. It would be interested to identity this person.  

Similar anonymous entities (ex Mt Gox & identified mining pools) have processed:  (just copying from the paper here)

940,000 BTC
870,000 BTC
690,000 BTC
...

with a further 11 entities processed amounts of over 400,000 BTC.

Now ok I understand that this list is probably mainly mining pools & miners but also could more than 1 of them be Satoshi. The number of ppl who could accumulate so many BTCs in such a short time is very small (this was in May 2012).


The design of bitcoin, the complexity around it, required more than 1 very smart person. In addition, the way in which someone has distributed their holdings amoungst so many addresses - it's very smart. I dont think any of these coins are 'lost'. IMO these coins will emerge at some point, maybe alongside 'Satoshi' himself.

Thanks also to Citigroup for this research as it seems they funded the paper.

Pls can u expand on the "white spots"

I was bored earlier and spend more time researching the article. AFAIK everything seems to fit.

RE: BTC Books, Psy

Im only speculating . Obviously Satoshi chose to remain anonymous so for this reason he is unlikely to come forward and admit who 'he' is. I dont know who Satoshi is , the information I have seen is just whats publicly on the web. However having analysed the information , my conclusion is that the highest probability is that Satoshi is more than 1 person, he is the 3 people/

My contribution to this post was just the analysis that i have personally done. As I said if u wanted to get a real confirmation, probably u should ask someone from the early community - Theymos, Gavin or even knightmb. HOwever i think its important to consider who Satoshi actually is hence support for the OPs concern.

Hmm. Could be interesting way to hedge the risk of a crash.

Me wonders if the owner will pay out though.

Just wait for a tiny bit of bad news to come in about bitcoin

- Exchange hack

- Government outlaws bitcoin

- Something related to regulation

- Flaw in the protocol

- Exchange closes down ala bitcoinica

Then we're gonna see something interesting

1. Yes I'd think it is possible to know. We know when Satoshi released the bitcoin software, we can put a high probability that Satoshi made the first couple of transactions (the largest ones) for his own benefit, as hardly anyone would've known about the technology at that point. Sorry, I cant be bothered to do the research right now, but Im sure its not difficult to figure out. We also have an archive of all the forum and newsgroup posts. It cannot be difficult to work out how many coins Satoshi owns. Heres a subject for the next sensational news article about bitcoin.

2. Im sure Satoshi is not at all astounded about Bitcoin. I'm no expert in C++, but from what I've read the original bitcoin code was of exceptional quality. Many potential hacks had been anticipated. Its clear that alot of work went into developing the concept, and that it was developed over a number of years. Its also clear that the authors were incredibly smart and had anticipated many future problems, which is why the technology has survived so long exposed to the world's hackers and computer experts. It's clear that the reason Satoshi decided to become anonymous from the beginning was because he anticipated the explosiveness of his invention. Its clear that's why Satoshi published his paper in 2009 as Satoshi, and not as his own name.


Satoshi has always been Satoshi for a reason. Satoshi never wanted to be un-anonymous. Therefore Im not surprised that the authors will not reveal themselves as being Satoshi. However you will find a very similar patent to Satoshi's paper published in the month's preceding Satoshi's paper authored by 3 people. It's clear that the authors of this patent, having stumbled upon the bitcoin idea, made a decision to publish it fully in a pseudonymn because they foresaw the potential for the technology. They also foresaw it would be better for their networth & stress levels to just sit on a huge amount of coins and remain anonymous than to continue development in the mainstream. There's a good article that sums all of this up by providing clear evidence of who these authors are.

PS. Im not going to link to the article because this post may be removed if I link to it... thats why I said u have to use Google.

So much misinformation on here. I'm not sure whether it's deliberate or not.

Ultimately 'Satoshi' doesn't care at all about bitcoin. They just wants their money in coins which is a max of 5M (Im not sure exactly how much, but Im sure you can work it out from looking at the blockchain).

As explained they cannot cash out yet as doing so would decrease the value of their own holdings too much. They have no choice but to wait until there is enough interest that they will be able to cash out their holdings without having such a large effect on the ecosystem.

My guess is that will be another few years at least.

ANyone who wants to know more about Satoshi should talk to Gavin and Theymos. Not only does Theymos know the exact location of Satoshi due to the fact they were a regular on these forums for so long, but both of them have the secret 'Alert' keys that can only have been supplied to them by Satoshi. They for certain will know who Satoshi is; and I'm guessing they are staying quiet for a reason.

PS. I'm referring to Satoshi in the plural due to my belief that 'Satoshi' is a pseudonym for a collection of people.

There is no way that those coins are lost. Someone smart enough to (1) create bitcoin and (2) leave the community to remain anonymous and just sit on the 5M (max) coins that they had created would definitely not loose such a huge number of coins.

Clearly 'Satoshi' is very much in touch with bitcoin and is tracking these forums regularly to work out a good time to release the coins and cash out. The problem for Satoshi is if they touch those coins, it's going to cause a huge amount of interest. Any cashing out would cause chaos. It doesnt matter if he only liquidated a small proportion - it would show in the blockchain that he/they is active and any action by itself that hinted a liquidation of such a large number of coins would be sure to cause a huge sell-off and problems for bitcoin, hence devaluing Satoshi's large holding. Maybe they should have thought about that problem when they designed the blockchain

The identity of Satoshi is no secret (a simply Google search and some reading will reveal the persons who are Satoshi - it has already been uncovered by a journalist) - and it is not just a single person.

I was thinking that OP's concerns are extremely valid. There is no way that those original coins are lost.

In my opinion, Satoshi is more than one person, due to the complexity of bitcoin - I dont think a single person could design the whole of bitcoin.

I'd also say that the identity of Satoshi is highly critical to bitcoin due to the reasons given by the OP. The fact that Satoshi remains anonymous and has not touched their original coins is ominous.

My guess is that they 'Satoshi' realised the risks of remaining involved after the project started gaining mass adoption and decided, once the bulk of the design and development of the system had been completed, to let others develop further the concept. Satoshi would be happy to do this, as they would have accumulated the (max) 5M coins already and be happy just to sit on this huge amount of current & future wealth, without feeling any pressure to contribute further to the system.

So the OP states that Satoshi has not moved any of their coins since they were mined. This means they are still just waiting for the system to become more stable and adopted before moving coins out. If they were to move coins from those original addresses, it would be sure to cause alot of chaos at this stage in bitcoin's development (as noted by OP). I would guess that Satoshi, as the persons who invented bitcoin, would prefer for the system to gain mainstream adoption before they touched the original coins.

I'm sure that they have been thinking alot about what to do with those original coins. There is no way that those coins are lost. Someone smart enough to (1) create bitcoin and (2) leave the community to remain anonymous and just sit on the 5M (max) coins that they had created would definitely not loose such a huge number of coins.

Clearly 'Satoshi' is very much in touch with bitcoin and is tracking these forums regularly to work out a good time to release the coins and cash out. The problem for Satoshi is if they touch those coins, it's going to cause a huge amount of interest. Any cashing out would cause chaos. It doesnt matter if he only liquidated a small proportion - it would show in the blockchain that he/they is active and any action by itself that hinted a liquidation of such a large number of coins would be sure to cause a huge sell-off and problems for bitcoin, hence devaluing Satoshi's large holding.

Regarding the identity of Satoshi, there are some good existing posts already on these forums. (I'll leave it to the reader to run a search)

The New Yorker article I believe did not get anywhere to discovering who is Satoshi. As stated, I don't think it could be 1 person, simply because the design and code is so complex and well built. In addition, it is unlikely that Satoshi, given his/their need to remain anonymous after creating Bitcoin, would attend a cryptography conference.

http://cryptome.org/0005/bitcoin-who.pdf

I would also suggest that it is likely to have involvement from both US and Europeans, given that many of Satoshi's posts use American English, yet The Times of London is quoted in the blockchain.

The most convincing arguement for who is Satoshi that I've read is this article, which pins it to 3 engineers - not academics - who have coauthored a range of papers around cryptography. The author located their identities by performing phrase analysis on the original Satoshi paper.

Charles Bry

Vladamir Oksman

Neal J. King
http://www.facebook.com/neal.j.king

* a phrase in Nakamoto's Bitcoin paper is replicated in a patent application filed the same year
* the domain name for Bitcoin was registered 72 hours after the patent application was filed
* Satoshi's posts were made during European working hours and are a mixture of US and UK English (implying US and European involvement)

http://www.fastcompany.com/1785445/bitcoin-crypto-currency-mystery-reopened

Its likely that 1 of these 3 men, if not all of them collectively hold a huge fortune in bitcoins (a theoretical max valuation of nearly $250m) and are waiting to cash out, but have chosen not to do so yet for the reasons given earlier in this post.

Also, I notice that Satoshi was at one point a regular on these forums. Therefore one of the people out there who might be able to help with confirming this identity is Theymos, the forum admin.

Yes indeed, of course they may be innovations to overcome this.

Guess we'll see

Sorry, I read your comment but I dont see how this article or paper contradicts what I was saying

Show me a link to amazon where I can buy a DNA computing device. Then I'll conclude that what you're talking about is more than just a concept.

RE: dancupid

"Moore's law" is not really a law. It was just an analysis by a guy 40 years ago who predicted a trend in microcomputing (that is computers getting smaller and smaller). For some reason this prediction has been given the word "law" but actually this is wrong.

Let me repeat what I said before. There is a hard limit to how much information can be stored on a chip. Its just we havent reached it.

Therefore the concept of distributing an unlimited sized file to every node on the network is fundamentally not sustainable or economical - READ: flawed. Storage will not be getting cheaper forever but under the current design of bitcoin, the filesize of blockchain will be getting bigger forever.

This analysis doesnt even take into account the bandwidth usage requirement as well, which will also be getting bigger forever.

So you are including DNA computing technology in your investment analysis of bitcoin? This has not even been invented yet. It's just a concept. It is ridiculous to speculate on DNA storage - it's like talking about nuclear fusion.

Its clear that for the foreseeable future, storage is not unlimited, and also bandwidth is not unlimited. The unlimited size of the blockchain; the fact that anybody can add transactions for no cost, eg. SDice. The overhead with distributing an unlimited sized file to every node. IMO, that's the bitcoin end game - ignoring any government influence.

We're already seeing the beginnings of this problem with the patch from psi that's now available, that skips SDice transactions for miners.

So this has worked in the past - but why should it continue to work in the future?

There is a hard limit as to how much information can be stored on a chip. It's just we havent reached it in 30 years.

I'd argue that there are a number of fundamental indicators that show that the system has significantly more fundamental value than it did in 2011.

Suggestions of a bubble at this level are therefore ridiculous. You're just worried about the 'rate' of price increases vs. the actual fundamental value of the system itself. If the current growth continues in usage, then current price rise is totally justified imo. But then markets are not always rational so who knows what lies ahead.

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-transactions

http://blockchain.info/charts/hash-rate

http://blockchain.info/charts/my-wallet-n-tx

According to this page, there are about 11m bitcoins issued in total.

http://blockexplorer.com/q/totalbc

Less than 0.1m are traded daily on Gox

According to Bitcoincharts, Gox has 70% market share of trading. So reasonable to assume that no more than 0.2m are traded daily. That's about 2%, and that would seem to be a generous estimate.

Just wondering, where are the other 98%? I'm guessing its a cross between coins just held for savings and coins being spent in the 'economy'. The only question is, what if somebody is holding all these coins and then dumps a huge amt onto the market? That's gonna have a big price impact.

Cheers,

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/volumepie/

The demand vs supply dynamic on the order book does not point to another crash

There's also one other thing I'd add

In 2011, in the build up to the crash, the atmosphere on these forums was much different. People were talking about Bitcoin taking over the world, becoming the next US dollar, about a massive wealth transfer, things like this.

There was no discussion of any problems or obstacles, no consideration. Bitcoin had also not had some of the damages to its reputation from fraud, hacking, etc.. Many people had invested without considering these aspects.

I'd say the atmosphere is different here today. People are more aware of the risks and are not going to sell out quickly. Many people have seen what happened in the past and taken that into account when they bought into the currency.

Given the supply / demand trend that has been holding up recently, I also think a fizzle out is unlikely. I think we'll see trading in the 28 - 32 range, until further news is released which could affect support or resistance

Well maybe the value of bitcoin has really increased alot recently

After all it has backing from some mainstream investors (ala coinbase)

It has gained traction amoungst alot more users (just look at the blockchain)

I would say the 'system' is worth a lot more now as an investment than it was back in 2011, when there was a crash

Plus there are many more people trading the currency now on Gox and elsewhere and the markets are much deeper. A crash would be alot less likely.

ALot of the recent price rise has been due to coinbase, reddit and the usage of Bitcoin on legitimate sites. I'd say that its not unreasonable to assume the valuation of bitcoin is significantly higher now than in 2011, therefore a significantly higher price would also not be illogical.

The rate of growth (or shape of the hockey stick) does not mean that there is going to be a crash. A crash would be caused by investor panic - maybe especially if people realise there is no fundamental value  / fundamentals don't match the pricing.

ALthough I admit its more likely there will be a crash in the case of herd instinct investment (everybody invests at the same time which causes the hockey stick)

Sorry it may be obvious or already mentioned, given that we're talking about China

How is bitcoin going to work through the great firewall of China?

Why? What's wrong with speculation?