Satoshi might be mentally derranged

[Anon136]

Satoshi probably would never spend his coins as that may reveal his identity. I wouldn't be surprised if he destroyed the keys for all his early BTC so he wouldn't be tempted to use them some time later. He could still mine a lot of BTC for himself when number of miners significantly increased, but that would not include easily traceable coins from 2009.

imagine if bitcoins became truly mainstream and your right satoshi could never spend them so he gives them to his offspring. Imagine being his offspring and having your dad hand you 100 trillion dollars one day near the end of his life =P

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

Satoshi very likely crafted the identity to avoid the very kinds of attention that Gaven Andresen is having to deal with, but would have the added pressure of being "the guy who invented it all" and likely would have to take the brunt of a lot of verbal abuse from people who believed him to be the next incarnation of Satan or something. And so out of respect for the obvious talent of this individual to let go of any need to be a central figure, I offer heartfelt thanks for being strong enough to step out of the limelight and just allow Bitcoin to grow "in the wild" as it were, without having to be the one pumping it up into something it's not, or whatever.

Agree with you. 

I don't know what's more amazing:

1. That he (they?) knew enough about various fields (economics, p2p, software,crypto) to tie everything together brilliantly in an unprecedented stroke of insight with a working real-world implementation as a bonus.

2. That he (they) could see so far ahead in terms of a successful outcome to the Bitcoin experiment, so as to cover his (their) tracks so thoroughly from before the very first step.  The entire planet is trying to figure out his identity, yet his precautions resist being cracked.  Most of us would've slipped up somewhere, most likely talking about prelliminary ideas on mailing lists or forums or to friends or family while developing the concept, before grasping its significance or feeling the need to seriously assess political risk.

In fact, the latter point makes me think it was a single individual.  These kinds of secrets and paranoia would be very hard to maintain as a group, especially when extended to friends and family of multiple individuals, who would undoubtedly take an interest and at least once ask "what's this new project you're working on which is taking up so much of your time?".

[bg002h]

DPR = Dread Pirate Roberts = founder and main operator of Silk Road drug trafficking site that buys/sells things with BTC.

Nice article in Forbes about him.

I don't have nearly as many. He must be the richest person on Earth, then. Is there anyone else who publicly owns 100kBTC or more?

Lol.  Hard to be the richest person on earth if all you own are Bitcoins...even f you owned all of them and could sell each one at current trading prices

[pretendo]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Precursors

he was a precursor

[theymos]

Any normal person would have told people about the giant programming project to which he dedicated 2+ years of his life, and these people would have eventually blabbed, so Satoshi must have been unusual. I always pictured him as a shy but brilliant guy who doesn't normally deal with people. "I'm better with code than with words," he said. Maybe he left when he saw that Bitcoin's future had a lot more social problems than technical ones.

I don't believe that Satoshi was a group of people. I was here when he was active on the forum and I directly communicated with him a few times, and I got a distinct impression that he was one person.

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

Any normal person would have told people about the giant programming project to which he dedicated 2+ years of his life, and these people would have eventually blabbed, so Satoshi must have been unusual. I always pictured him as a shy but brilliant guy who doesn't normally deal with people. "I'm better with code than with words," he said. Maybe he left when he saw that Bitcoin's future had a lot more social problems than technical ones.

I don't believe that Satoshi was a group of people. I was here when he was active on the forum and I directly communicated with him a few times, and I got a distinct impression that he was one person.

Thanks for corroborating.  Even when reading his public output both here and on the various mailing lists, it seems very homgeneous, traces of multiple individuals would be obvious even if they were trying to be careful. 

This is similar to the Kennedy thing, the simplest explanation that goes with the facts is that there is only one gunman, and that's what makes his accomplishments especially significant. I hope he is happy with how things have turned out, and if not, then at least I hope he can buy himself an island and live out the rest of his days in peace with 100% privacy.

[chronocoin]

Isn't it possible that he is working on something more important than bitcoin now?

Or that two years of being nagged for free BTC got to be tiresome?

[Herodes]

I could also imagine someone not caring about the money. Some people do honestly not care about money. That may be weird for some people to grasp, but if Satoshi is a single individual, perhaps the reward of seeing his invention spring to life is a reward enough in itself, and that he will never touch those bitcoins we think he owns.

He created bitcoin as an answer to attempt solving the problem with the world monetary systems, he was angry with how the current system works. And many reasons the current system is not good, is because of greed. Perhaps Satoshi is not a greedy person, he just wanted to contribute and create something better.

Now, most of you would probably take all that money and retire and move to some tropical island, but perhaps Satoshi is still teaching at a university, and living a rather quiet life. Since he obviously like intellectual challenges, I don't doubt that he's still exercising his mind.

Also, it might not be a single individual at all, perhaps a group.

[marcus_of_augustus]

2. That he (they) could see so far ahead in terms of a successful outcome to the Bitcoin experiment, so as to cover his (their) tracks so thoroughly from before the very first step.  The entire planet is trying to figure out his identity, yet his precautions resist being cracked.  Most of us would've slipped up somewhere, most likely talking about prelliminary ideas on mailing lists or forums or to friends or family while developing the concept, before grasping its significance or feeling the need to seriously assess political risk.

In fact, the latter point makes me think it was a single individual.  These kinds of secrets and paranoia would be very hard to maintain as a group, especially when extended to friends and family of multiple individuals, who would undoubtedly take an interest and at least once ask "what's this new project you're working on which is taking up so much of your time?".

Or a "Above Top Secret" classified special psy-op team ... run with almost military precision and attention to detail, roll-out schedule, etc to create the "Satoshi" myth. Unlikely given the evidence but not impossible.

[MysteryMiner]

That he (they) could see so far ahead in terms of a successful outcome to the Bitcoin experiment, so as to cover his (their) tracks so thoroughly from before the very first step.  The entire planet is trying to figure out his identity, yet his precautions resist being cracked.  Most of us would've slipped up somewhere, most likely talking about prelliminary ideas on mailing lists or forums or to friends or family while developing the concept, before grasping its significance or feeling the need to seriously assess political risk.

Paranoid people who understand how to be anonymous can do such things easily and routinely.

Any normal person would have told people about the giant programming project to which he dedicated 2+ years of his life, and these people would have eventually blabbed, so Satoshi must have been unusual.

I also don't speak with people in real life about computers. They don't understand a shit and only babble half-truths about what I said or done.

I always pictured him as a shy but brilliant guy who doesn't normally deal with people. "I'm better with code than with words," he said. Maybe he left when he saw that Bitcoin's future had a lot more social problems than technical ones.

It is possible but not the absolute and final truth.

Or maybe Satoshi was too busy making and selling physical bitcoins.

I could also imagine someone not caring about the money. Some people do honestly not care about money. That may be weird for some people to grasp, but if Satoshi is a single individual, perhaps the reward of seeing his invention spring to life is a reward enough in itself, and that he will never touch those bitcoins we think he owns.

It is true. But if he don't care about money he might barter them for few exabytes of SSD storage for his next experiment with computers. Having large storage cluster from SSDs does not take away the enjoyment of creating Bitcoin.

[arklan]

regarding one or many: i think the logical thing would be one figurehead, one spokesperson, who does all the outward communication on forums and mailing lists. only way to keep it consistent. but determining how many may have worked together behind that figurehead? yea. good luck.

i would love to see it revealed someday though, when it's not a risk to their safety. like as a biography or something. gotta be a fascinating story.

[theymos]

I'll probably release Satoshi's PMs and logged IPs addresses in ~8 years. This'd probably be of great historical interest. (Though he always used Tor, as far as I can tell.)


2021 edit: I changed my mind: I am not going to release Satoshi's PMs in 2021. See my post here.

[Hei_]

I'll probably release Satoshi's PMs and logged IPs addresses in ~8 years. This'd probably be of great historical interest. (Though he always used Tor, as far as I can tell.)

nah dont think so

[MysteryMiner]

I'll probably release Satoshi's PMs and logged IPs addresses in ~8 years. This'd probably be of great historical interest. (Though he always used Tor, as far as I can tell.)

It might happen sooner. With SQL injection and database dump. Or hacking one of computers where forum backups are stored.

[iCEBREAKER]

How about he cared more about this project than personal riches and glory, and is helping under a new name. Just a thought.

Could be!

Phenomenally brilliant people like Satoshi are often mentally unstable.  Out on the fringes of edge cases, one borders chaos and madness.   

For example, Van Gogh was so transcendently ingenious he went crazy.  Well, absinthe was involved too.  But the theory is, he was self-medicating.

[nameface]

If Satoshi(s) were publicly around right now, you all realize they would be considered enemies of the State, much like Assange?

[AlphaWolf]

Spoiler alert:  Kevin Spacey is Satoshi.
http://youtu.be/KnGo6Qm0Wt8

[gollum]

If Satoshi would get Nobel Prize, would it be in the field of Economics or Peace? Or maybe both?

The Nobel Peace Prize 2006 was awarded jointly to Muhammad Yunus and Grameen Bank "for their efforts to create economic and social development from below"
http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/peace/laureates/2006/

[marhjan]

We are all Satoshi.

And Satoshi is all of us....

Seriously people - Satoshi still walks/posts among us in this forum under a different name or names.  Anyone who believes otherwise and has been around longer than a week or so is either delusional or extremely naive IMHO

[BTC Books]

EDIT: I think there is at least a hint of possiblity that DPR is actually Satoshi.

This actually makes a great deal of sense.

Once having released bitcoin into the wild, would Satoshi just leave it there?  Or would he nurture his baby?  As a rational first step for the adoption of something as bizarre as bitcoin, it's pretty obvious that SR is... well... pretty obvious.