Just curious, why did he create bitcoin?
A pyramid scheme is my best bet.
1. He "invents" it
2. He mines it for 50 bitcoins each time.
3. He makes sure others can only get 25 bitcoins and less and less, making his 50 bitcoins worth more eventually/on the long run.
4. He limits the output to 21 million ensuring his bitcoins become worth even more.
5. Perhaps even writes a sloppy client so even more wallets are lost lol
6. Uses multiple cpus from the start to out smart single cpu users
7. Announces/publishes it after he mined lots of t.
8. Perhaps even got into contact with criminals/drug dealers to make the system popular and get a user base
9. He designs the system to give out some free bitcoins/money to encourage others to spread the word, like a true pyramid system, making them coins more valuable.
10. All bitcoin users behave like pyramid scheme suckers, promoting it to others to make them coins more valuable and sought after/desired.
Now he has some problems perhaps:
1. Perhaps he lost the private keys, seems somewhat unlikey, but a harddisk crash or other corruptions because of overheat is plausible.
2. He cant spent the coins, those coins will be watched like hawks on rabbits, if he does he may be arrested for questioning
3. Database is getting out of control, he may run out of time to cash in.
4. Other attacks/problems possible too, virus/trojans/etc.
Others/the system have problems too:
1. Perhaps some private keys lost to crashes.
2. Millions of bitcoins stolen.
3. Millions of bitcoins to be seized.
And then people claim the chinese are coming... no I think the loss of bitcoins is what triggered the shot up in dollar value.
Perhaps the price was being controlled by silk road and such... now that he's gone the price free-falls upwards because of bitcoin shortage.
And yes... the chinese may be coming as well adding insult to injury
It was a brilliant scheme to get rich quick... and many suckers fell for it ! =D
Other motivates might be at play as well (for example assuming it was Samsung, Toshiba, Motorola):
1. Selling lots of cpu/gpus/hardware.
2. Overheating/kill PCs trying to bring back demand for PCs