50 million dollars is a decent chunk of change for almost any software developer or economist. It's the kind of stash that, even if you are in Bitcoin for the long haul, the temptation to cash out just 2% of it and buy a yacht or an island or something is just too great
It is possible he cashed out part of his coins. It is almost impossible he had only one walled and not 2% of his coins stored somewhere else.
1) Satoshi's coins are lost
It is most likely what happened to early bitcoins.
2) Satoshi's coins are in the hands of some kind of corporate entity
Noy impossible but somehwat unlikely. First the private keys must be to the company and then the company decided not to move them. Not smart decision from security perspective.
Honestly, if whoever this Satoshi person was wanted to do anything nefarious or silly, why would they make it open source and available for everyone to look at?
He already can do silly things with coins he have.
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.
It is pure speculation. There are many white spots in that story and few things does not glue together.
Absolutely. Satoshi has been quoted as saying that there is absolutely NO reason to ever destroy a private key or wallet even if they contain no balance. Those coins are not lost
Hi did say it where? He is right, I also always keep all wallets and private keys I ever come across, really no need to delete them.
Back in 2009 when Satoshi still did personal e-mails to members, it was pretty easy with a tracking pixel to pinpoint where he was at the time even though he used a foreign e-mail server. His Mac was using a plain vanilla e-mail client that would load the pixels from the same place for every message he read from me, so if the search is where was he at the time years ago, I can shed some light on that.
As I know he used Tor to send e-mails and the tracking pixel would not work as intended trough Tor. And I doubt he would be so careless, this is decade old technique used to deanonymize someone by skids and feds. Even Digital Fortress mentioned this trick.
My guess is that he is either still involved, just under a different name to avoid fans from overwhelming him or just has changed his lifestyle completely and left the world of digital currency behind
You can never leave computers, coding or hacking if you are into it. It is so much better than sex or drugs combined. He either is still here or something very bad happened to him.
Dead? Possible, of course, but super intelligent people have a habit of surviving, and I'd put him in this class.
And I thought that super healthy people have habit of surviving. It would be bad if he left and did not implement some dead hand system in case of his imprisonment or death.
Given his history, his UID would have to be the most unlikely person anyone could conceive of.
My vote goes to Atlas.
I vote then for Dank or Luke-Jr.
My favorite contrarian guess is MysteryMiner.
I'm not Satoshi and even if I am I will never tell You!
You just wait until he releases the next thing he's working on. I doubt he has been Idle.
Bitcoin might be one hit wonder. His next thing might be something unimpressive like video codec filter or server database engine. Or Satoshi is cheesing all day long looking at awesome boobs.
Imagine you are Satoshi:
You invented the biggest thing since the Internet, so you're obviously proud of it, and want it to become a success. This is even more important than becoming rich.
You are really afraid that governments are going to try to prosecute everything and everyone related to Bitcoin
In next few years we will see. Obviously Satoshi knows Phil Zimmerman story. No one wants to end up in Camp Justice for creating and exporting ammunition using his code compiler.
