What if ... S. Nakamoto lost all priv. key and can't use "his" btc?

[croato]

If keys are lost, coins are lost. Personally, i think he just buried that coins there but everything is possible. We dont even know for sure if he is still live.

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[spazzdla]

If keys are lost, coins are lost. Personally, i think he just buried that coins there but everything is possible. We dont even know for sure if he is still live.

I hightly doubt it.  Odds are very high he destroyed them as 1 Mill BTC could decimate any value it has. 


IMO he has a stash of several thousand BTC,  no one he knows, knows he has it.  It would seem his ability to hide himself was unmatched, may he forever remain unknown.

[eddie13]

Do we know that he did have the keys for the genesis block in the first place? Did he ever sign from that addy or anything?

Is it possible the genesis block was mined to an address that he never had the private key to in the first place?

[Raimonn]

He knows how it works, and that is impossible to recover the bitcoins if the keys are lost. I suppose that with all that he knows about security and bitcoin network he would have copies of his wallets. But if he lost it and can't recover from any copy, that isn't a problem for us, with less bitcoins in circulation, our bitcoins would have more value.

[hughbt]

If he didn't lose it, it is a great sign for all investors. It means he values Bitcoin a lot more than than the current ATH. There is also no reason for him to sell his stash(unless he has some kind of personal problems) at the current price. Also after mass adoption of Bitcoin there would be no reason for him to hide, so the price will be very high + he will be safe. Perfect moment to sell.

I wonder if he would be able to transfer and sell his coins before the market reacts and what that reaction would be.

[redsn0w]

His btc not him bitcoin  , however who cares?

[Mickeyb]

As subject...
What if ...
S. Nakamoto lost all priv. key and can't use "him" btc?
(can't sign a message etc etc?!?)
I know it's likewise "impossible" but did you think there is a possibilities about this?
Or even, if this happened, what are the consequences for btc environment?
Thank you to all responders/readers

Have you thought about that he has actually done this on purpose, so that he wouldn't fall in a temptation one day to use, sell his bitcoins or to intervene when we asked him to, about the block size increase for example.

I think about this every now and then and this is not impossible.

About your questions: Really nothing, our coins are just worth a bit more!

[bitbollo]

His btc not him bitcoin  , however who cares?

however... me  

I dont think he would ever lose those private keys
But in case he did.. well.. he kinda deleted "some" coins and made all other coins be worth more.

you do know that in the first year 2009-2010. bitcoinqt was very buggy and the coins were worthless so most days he would compile new versions to test out and require deleting wallets to test out new ways of storing keys. so its obvious that he doesnt have access to all the keys..

but this a really interesting "news" (for me).

about old forum, there is a backup to read "from" post 0 ? I remember that this is only a "new" version of an old forum...

[Meuh6879]

S. Nakamoto lost all priv. key and can't use "him" btc?

it (they) don't have do this error.
proof : http://btc.blockr.io/address/info/12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX

[junglist.massive]

no way he lost it.
How you can imagine to make that kind of mistake in project that you invent? He is waiting for 5k or 10k and will start to selloff

[BillyBobZorton]

Or even, if this happened, what are the consequences for btc environment?
Thank you to all responders/readers

I dont think it can be proved Satoshi coins are really lost, so as long as noone spending a lot of early coins (first month or so), we can assume Satoshi either lost the coins or he does not want to spend these coins.

There is a way to prove the coins are lost by sending them to obvious unspendable address, but there is no reason to do it.

At this point it's clear that if satoshi is still holding coins, he is the ultimate holder, he is the most legendary holder of coins ever. I mean he is super rich and not a single BTC was ever expended. The other possibilities is he died or he lost them.

[Light]

Possible but unlikely.

As to economic effects - this has none until it is confirmed, and given that he hasn't spoken out to date since he left - it's quite likely you'll never find him and there will never be a confirmation. Not to mention, even if you did - do you think he would just casually state he lost all of his private keys? If anything that would reduce confidence in Bitcoin - if it's creator couldn't even store his own keys safely how is a layperson meant to?

[Spoetnik]

So let me get this straight guys.

People have speculated he has 1.5 million coins worth right now $566,490,000.00 USD

How smart are all of you ?

1 single guy holds half a BILLION dollars in Bitcoin possibly and that means ? Nothing ? really ?

No offense but i am not usually surprised by all the dumb posts in this forum section.
To say his coins don't matter etc would be retarded.

He could trigger an avalanche that would crush the price into nothing.
If he wanted to destroy Bitcoin he could dump half and then threaten to dump the rest when he feels like it.

And yeah it -IS- very possible he had a drive failure or something and lost his wallet.
Or maybe he just didn't care way back and thought screw it, i am deleting all this bs..
Maybe he died ?
Who knows..

Proof either way though would be monumental !

[jacktheking]

I actually believe that Satoshi Nakamoto lost his private key and PGP key. As someone who is very formal and good , if he really want to leave the community he would delete everything that would lead him back. Cannot use his BTC means that there will be lesser supply of Bitcoin. Thus, the Bitcoin price will increase. This will also lead to competition to crack Satoshi Nakamoto private keys to release those "locked" coins. Which will be good in the long term as big companies will want those billions of dollars.

Edit: Let's assume Satoshi Nakamoto is a person and is a man for my post. Too tired of writing he/she/they or his/she/their.

[jaylin]

Where did all this talk of him 'dying' come from?

[CoinBateman]

Where did all this talk of him 'dying' come from?

Well, nobody has any conclusive evidence that he as a person even exists. It is equally likely that 'he' is actually a group of people.

[DieJohnny]

So let me get this straight guys.

People have speculated he has 1.5 million coins worth right now $566,490,000.00 USD

How smart are all of you ?

1 single guy holds half a BILLION dollars in Bitcoin possibly and that means ? Nothing ? really ?

No offense but i am not usually surprised by all the dumb posts in this forum section.
To say his coins don't matter etc would be retarded.

He could trigger an avalanche that would crush the price into nothing.
If he wanted to destroy Bitcoin he could dump half and then threaten to dump the rest when he feels like it.

And yeah it -IS- very possible he had a drive failure or something and lost his wallet.
Or maybe he just didn't care way back and thought screw i am deleting all this bs.
Maybe he died ?
Who knows..

Proof either way though would be monumental !

I think those coins being spendable is so monumental to Bitcoin that satoshi is either dead or incapable of doing anything with them. He knows the impact, he full well understands what a million unspent coins means. He also would never have destroyed the keys as he knows that would mean nothing to the general population of bitcoiners. He would have sent them to a known unspendable address or he would have dispersed them evenly to every address with a balance.

He would have done something by now if he could have, but he can't. He is either Dead, in prison, or has had his computers taken by the government.

My guess is that someone down the road will get access to these coins or already has access to them. It may be that this was all an invention of the good old USA and they have 1 million bitcoins and are planning on a new currency to replace the dollar.

[zivone]

The public bitcoin transaction log shows that Nakamoto's known wallets contain roughly one million bitcoins. As of June 2015, this was the equivalent of US$250 million. Nakamoto's true identity remains unknown, and has been the subject of much speculation. It is not known whether the name "Satoshi Nakamoto" is real or a pseudonym, or whether the name represents one person or a group of people.

That 1 million bitcoin sounds really nice...

[zivone]

Where did all this talk of him 'dying' come from?

Well, nobody has any conclusive evidence that he as a person even exists. It is equally likely that 'he' is actually a group of people.

Thanks to this thread I finally googled about S. Nakamoto and all the while I thought he was a real person. Now I wonder what kind of people are behind the creation of this bitcoin or what are their agenda if there is.

On his P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto claimed to be a 37-year-old male who lived in Japan, but some speculated he was unlikely to be Japanese due to his use of perfect English and his bitcoin software not being documented or labelled in Japanese.

Some considered Nakamoto might be a team of people; Dan Kaminsky, a security researcher who read the bitcoin code, said that Nakamoto could either be a "team of people" or a "genius"; Laszlo Hanyecz, a former bitcoin core developer who had emailed Nakamoto, had the feeling the code was too well designed for one person

[ranochigo]

The total supply will decrease and the price would be higher. There isn't any significant differences right now. None of the Bitcoins were moved, excluding the 50BTC from genesis block which is unspendable. People are also burning Bitcoin. At most, we can divide Bitcoin in denominations smaller than satoshi if the supply is too limited. I don't find that a huge problem however. Those coins can be retrived by a fork but I don't think it is reasonable.