The idea of taking away all of Satoshi's bitcoin?

[Hueristic]

Zooko has no right to say what everyone should mutually agree or not. Remember, blockchain is not a democracy, that majority will decide its future.

He has his own trusted shitcoin to worry about.

[qwk]

if we really recycle those 10-year-old unmoved bitcoin into new mining rewards, then all of Satoshi's addresses will be emptied too! This could possibly boost up the confidence of investors/holders, as the fear of Satoshi dumping his/her bitcoin will vanish.

Just playing devil's advocate here.

TL;DR: The idea of "recycling" unused Bitcoins is intriguing.
Unfortunately, it is most likely unusable any time soon.

1. satoshi's stack is a ticking time bomb
We're using a currency where at least 5% (probably much much more) of the supply are in the hands of a handful of unknown entities.
They could, at any time, drop their stash on the markets and crash the exchange rate, thus destroying the wealth of thousands, if not millions of HODLers.
No prudent person, responsible for the wealth of others, e.g. a pension fund manager or a secretary of the treasury should even think about storing a significant share of his funds in Bitcoin, as long as the time bomb is active.
No prudent politician should advocate the widespread use of Bitcoin for fiscal matters.
Thought experiment: let's assume I'm an advisor to POTUS and he asks me "should we stop using the Dollar and use Bitcoin instead?", my unequivocal answer would have to be "no Sir, Satoshi could be the Chinese or the Russians, and once we're at war with them, they'll destroy our economy".
Destroying the stash could defuse the time bomb.

2. diminishing block rewards might become a problem
The general consensus when it comes to ever decreasing block rewards seems to be that "transaction fees will cover that".
But the truth of the matter is: we don't know.
Transaction fees are a special case of "tragedy of the commons" where higher fees might be in the interest of everyone, but each and every single one's interest lies with low or zero fees.
This situation is prone to abuse.
Political entities might take over from economically driven miners, concentrating mining power in the hands of states rather than individuals, offering low or zero fees in return.
A situation with an overwhelming percentage of mining power in the hands of states is ripe for censorship (if not worse).
Even the build-up of "51%-first-strike-capabilities" in an arms race of deterrence in the age of cyber-warfare is not an unthinkable scenario.
Recycling "unused" coins into new block rewards might defuse that situation, by incentivizing private miners.

Caveats
Recycling "unused" coins into new block rewards is a "good idea", but most likely unwanted by the community.
I actually expect basically zero support.
Even if consensus could be reached about recycling, finding a workable, agreeable threshold for the time after which coins may be safely regarded as unused would have to be highly conservative.
Let's assume we could agree on recycling 100-year-old coins.
That would not solve the "satoshi time bomb" for another 90 years, but still leave us with possible "state-miners" within the next 50 years or so.

Conclusion
Nothing gained for another 90 years, but a whole new era of "blockchain wars" on an even greater scale than with the block size-debate?
No thanks.

[RocketSingh]

Zooko has no right to say what everyone should mutually agree or not. Remember, blockchain is not a democracy, that majority will decide its future.

He has his own trusted shitcoin to worry about.

Indeed.

[Quickseller]

if we really recycle those 10-year-old unmoved bitcoin into new mining rewards, then all of Satoshi's addresses will be emptied too! This could possibly boost up the confidence of investors/holders, as the fear of Satoshi dumping his/her bitcoin will vanish.

Just playing devil's advocate here.

TL;DR: The idea of "recycling" unused Bitcoins is intriguing.
Unfortunately, it is most likely unusable any time soon.

1. satoshi's stack is a ticking time bomb
We're using a currency where at least 5% (probably much much more) of the supply are in the hands of a handful of unknown entities.
They could, at any time, drop their stash on the markets and crash the exchange rate, thus destroying the wealth of thousands, if not millions of HODLers.
No prudent person, responsible for the wealth of others, e.g. a pension fund manager or a secretary of the treasury should even think about storing a significant share of his funds in Bitcoin, as long as the time bomb is active.
No prudent politician should advocate the widespread use of Bitcoin for fiscal matters.
Thought experiment: let's assume I'm an advisor to POTUS and he asks me "should we stop using the Dollar and use Bitcoin instead?", my unequivocal answer would have to be "no Sir, Satoshi could be the Chinese or the Russians, and once we're at war with them, they'll destroy our economy".
Destroying the stash could defuse the time bomb.

You could make this same argument for anyone who has a very substantial stash of coins. I believe Tim Draper purchased enough coins from the DOJ (who got them from SR/DPR) to do similar damage that you describe. The Gox trustee is in a similar situation (who actually represents the interests of thousands of people), and ACTUALLY DID crash the price by nearly 2/3 in late 2017/early 2018 by selling off a portion of its stash. Once the GOX coins are eventually distributed to former accountholders, there is a good chance many will sell, similarly crashing the price as if a single person was selling as many coins.

Similarly, we do not know if satoshi is one person or a group of people. We also do not know if he was mining for himself or mining for many people when he was mining -- for example, 10 people could have each given him a list of addresses to payout the block rewards to, and satoshi used a custom implementation payout the block rewards to those addresses.

2. diminishing block rewards might become a problem
The general consensus when it comes to ever decreasing block rewards seems to be that "transaction fees will cover that".
But the truth of the matter is: we don't know.
Transaction fees are a special case of "tragedy of the commons" where higher fees might be in the interest of everyone, but each and every single one's interest lies with low or zero fees.
This situation is prone to abuse.
Political entities might take over from economically driven miners, concentrating mining power in the hands of states rather than individuals, offering low or zero fees in return.
A situation with an overwhelming percentage of mining power in the hands of states is ripe for censorship (if not worse).
Even the build-up of "51%-first-strike-capabilities" in an arms race of deterrence in the age of cyber-warfare is not an unthinkable scenario.
Recycling "unused" coins into new block rewards might defuse that situation, by incentivizing private miners.

You are highlighting a flaw in a POW based cryptocurrency that has diminishing block subsidies. I believe etherum initially had a solution to this by never dropping the block subsidy to nearly zero, and having constant, small inflation (which actually also solves some economic problems, but that is off topic here). IOTA's solution to this problem was to require a small amount of POW to confirm your own transactions, and have nothing resembling a block reward.

Your solution also will only delay the inevitable when these long unspent coins are "recycled" back to the miners. It would also encourage spending coins without a corresponding economic transaction, which will result in higher tx fees for everyone. 

[qwk]

Just playing devil's advocate here.

Again, just playing devil's advocate

1. satoshi's stack is a ticking time bomb

You could make this same argument for anyone who has a very substantial stash of coins.

Absolutely.
Of course, a 1-Million-BTC-size nuclear warhead in the hands of an unknown and potential irrational entity is probably a little more terrifying than a, say 100K-BTC-load in the hands of a well-known entrepreneur with comprehensible motives.

2. diminishing block rewards might become a problem

Your solution also will only delay the inevitable when these long unspent coins are "recycled" back to the miners.

Right.
Then again, the whole argument is a little far-fetched, because it's most likely a problem of the more or less distant future.
If, by recycling, we turn it into a problem of the far distant future, I consider it "problem solved" for my lifetime

It would also encourage spending coins without a corresponding economic transaction, which will result in higher tx fees for everyone.  

True, I hadn't considered that.

[JayJuanGee]

The ideas of this whole thread causes me to consider the expression "let sleeping dogs lie," and perhaps, your (qwk) meme above sparked more of this sentiment.

The initial idea is like this:



which includes the concept that overall the matter is likely better to just leave alone.

However, some members (likely a very small minority who are either lacking in logic or attempting to be too efficient in a futile attempt to conquer nature for no good reason) keep considering that there could be some value in attempting to recover or recycle satoshi's coins and have an inability to learn a lesson, like this: