What would you pay for the keys to the genesis block/address

[Amph]

I think you guys are missing the problem with 'buying' keys. You can't actually know if the person you bought them from has retained the key - so you don't actually know if your the sole owner. That being said, I personally wouldn't buy it (except for a profit) - nothing really special I can do with it aside from a signing messages I guess.

well you could just move your btc from there anyway and store them in another wallet with another key, i don't really see the problem here

[futureofbitcoin]

How about satoshi takes out the dust coins, and make the genesis key public?

[pitham1]

Why would you pay that much for just a collectors item? Its not spendable.

With the keys, you can claim you are Satoshi.
And that could be worth a lot. 

[philipma1957]

i would only pay for the spendable coins plus something extra as people from time to time will donate a few bits to that address. other than that there is no real benefit in having that address.

I would love to own that address with full access  to it.  But that is for the collector in me. It is truly a one of a kind item.

[futureofbitcoin]

collector items are usually something you can show to others. For example, you can't really collect a secret that Einstein shared with your great grandfather and passed down to you. There's no verifiability and you can't really show it to anyone.

Pretty much the same with these addresses. I mean I guess you can "show" you have access to it by sending some bitcoins to someone's wallet from that address, but that's not really showing the item itself.

[philipma1957]

collector items are usually something you can show to others. For example, you can't really collect a secret that Einstein shared with your great grandfather and passed down to you. There's no verifiability and you can't really show it to anyone.

Pretty much the same with these addresses. I mean I guess you can "show" you have access to it by sending some bitcoins to someone's wallet from that address, but that's not really showing the item itself.

well  we could argue all day one way or the other but i do not expect Satoshi to be sending me a pm with full access to that address anytime soon.

[Sarthak]

Simple! The account holds 65.44243457 BTC! I would send 65.44233457 (0.0001 tx fees)!
No more! No Less  
#Like_A_BosS

[cryptworld]

I'd pay quite a large amount for them . Though I heard that there was a glitch in the code so they are not spendable.

To be clear:

• The 50 BTC coinbase output is not spendable.
• The 15.44243457 BTC which have since been sent to the corresponding address are spendable.

why are not the 50 BTC spendable?

[Bit_Happy]

What would you pay for the keys to the genesis  block/address?
If the funds were easy to spare, I would pay at least 50 BTC, but only because it is so rare.

[bitgeek]

I wouldn't pay more than 65BTC or the equivalent in fiat. It's doesn't have any special value to me and I wouldn't treat it as a collectible.
I'm sure it's worth a lot more to some people, just like art. For one person it's just a pretty picture worth $50. For another, who's a fan of the artist and collects his works it can be worth a million.

[teukon]

why are not the 50 BTC spendable?

Good question.

Bitcoin Core maintains a local database of transactions.  When it receives a new block, it unpacks it, checks it, and adds all if its transactions to this database.  Part of the checking process is to ensure that all of the new transactions are based on older ones (transactions already in the database).  Thus, the database contains all transactions from all valid blocks relayed by the network.

However, the genesis block is special in that it is not relayed by the network.  Bitcoin Core manually inserts the genesis block into a local database of blocks at the beginning of time.  Thus, the one transaction in the genesis block is not automatically added to the local database of transactions.

Of course, we could try to "fix" this problem by modifying Bitcoin Core to manually insert this "transaction" into the local database at the beginning of time.  Unfortunately, if Satoshi were to then spend these coins, the new clients would happily accept his transaction into a block just as the old clients would reject any blocks including it.  Satoshi would have the ability to fork the blockchain; an unacceptable situation.

[philipma1957]

I wouldn't pay more than 65BTC or the equivalent in fiat. It's doesn't have any special value to me and I wouldn't treat it as a collectible.
I'm sure it's worth a lot more to some people, just like art. For one person it's just a pretty picture worth $50. For another, who's a fan of the artist and collects his works it can be worth a million.

yeah I would think to some it has a lot of value. to others it is worth just 65 btc in change.

[Bizmark13]

I'm definitely not 100% sure about this but don't many altcoins also use the same genesis block as Bitcoin? I believe this was an intentional design built into many altcoins by their developers as a way of thanking Satoshi for having invented cryptocurrencies in the first place. Assuming this is true and also assuming that they don't also suffer from the same glitch that makes these coins unspendable, then having the keys to the Bitcoin genesis block would allow you to have access to the genesis blocks of many other altcoins, no?

[Kprawn]

Even if it was "spendable" ....who would want to spend it? {It's a collectors item}

I would also not trust someone, even Satoshi with being a co-owner of that block. {You do not know, if he made a copy of the private key for himself}

Let's rather leave it there, for the mystery of the origin of Bitcoin to continue. {The virgin coins of Bitcoin} 

[futureofbitcoin]

why are not the 50 BTC spendable?

Good question.

Bitcoin Core maintains a local database of transactions.  When it receives a new block, it unpacks it, checks it, and adds all if its transactions to this database.  Part of the checking process is to ensure that all of the new transactions are based on older ones (transactions already in the database).  Thus, the database contains all transactions from all valid blocks relayed by the network.

However, the genesis block is special in that it is not relayed by the network.  Bitcoin Core manually inserts the genesis block into a local database of blocks at the beginning of time.  Thus, the one transaction in the genesis block is not automatically added to the local database of transactions.

Of course, we could try to "fix" this problem by modifying Bitcoin Core to manually insert this "transaction" into the local database at the beginning of time.  Unfortunately, if Satoshi were to then spend these coins, the new clients would happily accept his transaction into a block just as the old clients would reject any blocks including it.  Satoshi would have the ability to fork the blockchain; an unacceptable situation.

so is the total number of "usable" bitcoins, assuming none are lost to accidents, 20,999,950 instead of 21 million?

[Troonetpt]

if it can't be payout, then it worth nothing.
The only use of the genesis  block/address key is used to prove the identity of satoshi.

[chennan]

It is no worth more than 65.44243457 BTC if the amount is spendable otherwise it is worthless.

[walter3211]

I doubt satoshi owns the key of this genesis bitcoin address due to the fact that the 50 BTC is unspendable. So many ppl just send dust amount to this genesis address to destroy their bitcoin. 

[ensurance982]

Huh, good question... I think there will still be some BTC trickling in over time, but not that much if the price goes up again or even stays at current levels. I'll say... 75 BTC.

[zebedee]

so is the total number of "usable" bitcoins, assuming none are lost to accidents, 20,999,950 instead of 21 million?

There were 100 BTC lost in two duplicated coinbase transactions (i.e. two pairs of blocks with the same coinbase txn, and as the protocol assumes txnID and output index are sufficient to designate an unspent output, means the later coinbase "overwrote" the earlier as it hadn't been spent by overwrite time), which is why version 2 blocks were created to eliminate that loophole.  So no, there are 150 BTC at first glance "granted" in blocks that are actually irretrievable forever.

There have been cases of miners claiming less than the reward + fees, "just for the hell of it", though I believe those are fractional BTC.

Then there was the Karpeles gox fuckup where he sent coins to provably unspendable scripts, because testnet was too much effort.  That was around 2600 BTC IIRC.

So almost 3 thousand BTC simply don't exist any more, no matter what random numbers some lucky bastard generates.