can satoshi kill bitcoin?

[stompix]

Too many people are in it already. He has a large portion but not large enough!

If the amounts of coins he owns would be a threat then we might really have a problem.
Fortunately , you can't kill Bitcoin buy owning 1 million coins.

[Sephera]

What will alert key do?

[drewster]

Code wise, bitcoin has grown beyond the control of any one person now.  However, Satoshi does own close to 1,000,000 bitcoins.  If he sold them all at one time, it would likely seriously depress the market price of bitcoins.  I think that's about the only serious negative thing he could do, and I can't imagine why he'd want to really, as I'm sure he wants his bitcoins to be worth as much as possible, just like most everyone else does.

What would stop Satoshi from launching a 51% attack?
I'd say yes he does have kill switch capability but I don't think he's interested in using it at this time.

I've heard he tried to get the miners for that 51% attack from BFL , so we're safe for a few decades.

Ha! - Nice.

[wumpus]

What will alert key do?

Just as the name implies, it can send alerts to the reference client.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Alerts

[polarhei]

exposed is very hard to erase. If bitcoin is not open sourced, then able to do easily.

To kill, Governmental policy may do, people will try to bar this.

[pand70]

Satoshi can drop the price of bitcoin to zero if he decides to sell his massive stack. Other than that you are not following anyone except yourself with bitcoins.

[stompix]

Satoshi can drop the price of bitcoin to zero if he decides to sell his massive stack. Other than that you are not following anyone except yourself with bitcoins.

Even he won't be able to drop it to 0.
There are enough orders on gox alone to buy all his coins at 1$ .

[jdbtracker]

Hey what if they sold their coins for litecoin? That could give a hell of a ticker boost to another currency.

[jackjack]

Satoshi can drop the price of bitcoin to zero if he decides to sell his massive stack. Other than that you are not following anyone except yourself with bitcoins.

Even he won't be able to drop it to 0.
There are enough orders on gox alone to buy all his coins at 1$ .

Don't forget buying orders, the price will drop to something FAR above $1

[wumpus]

Satoshi can drop the price of bitcoin to zero if he decides to sell his massive stack. Other than that you are not following anyone except yourself with bitcoins.

Even he won't be able to drop it to 0.
There are enough orders on gox alone to buy all his coins at 1$ .

And once he sold them, almost all coins are in circulation. He can only pull of that stunt once. That removes a large uncertainty so it may bounce back higher.

[bryant.coleman]

Satoshi can drop the price of bitcoin to zero if he decides to sell his massive stack. Other than that you are not following anyone except yourself with bitcoins.

Not to zero. May be to $300-400 levels. 1 million BTC is approx. the volume of all Bitcoin exchanges in a 72-hour time period.

[descarte]

I mean if he comes back and make an announcement like "I've made a mistake in the past and believe that xxxcoin is actually the way to go, therefore I was immersed in this new coin for the past few years and this coin has now matured". What would you do? Are you going to ignore him and keep investing in bitcoin?

Don't you think this announcement will cause massive panic in bitcoin value? If he ever comes back, everything that he says or do will be big news and can shift investments, unless we can prove that he is a lunatic.

[bryant.coleman]

I mean if he comes back and make an announcement like "I've made a mistake in the past and believe that xxxcoin is actually the way to go, therefore I was immersed in this new coin for the past few years and this coin has now matured". What would you do? Are you going to ignore him and keep investing in bitcoin?

First he will have to prove that he is the "real" Satoshi. Not going to be easy. And he will have to face hundreds of thousands of Bitcoiners, who have put a lot of investment in to BTC. Not going to be easy either.

[dewdeded]

First he will have to prove that he is the "real" Satoshi.

Noo. He doesn't need to prove anything.

If his announcement is signed with this PGP key it's him. No doubt, no proof necessary.
If its not signed with his key, it's not him. Easy game.

[jdbtracker]

If they did come out, they would rally the community without a doubt... hopefully   Whatever project they started would grow exponencially they wouldn't even have to do anything just discuss. I read a lot of the original posts and I have to say they focused on team building, technical craft, etc, It's unlikely they would come back and strip a project that they built, It's software it can only get better with time and effort.

But if they did wow, it could be tough they could easily build a new coin or take the current project in a completely different direction, possibly changing the balance of what the community has been building for years, There would be a lot of unhappy people, and things change when you have a real concrete person or group with their own vision... I think it would hinder the project, another bottleneck, a centralization to the community, but I'm hoping if they do come back that they are community builders, encouraging the innovation brought forth by the community. There is simply too many unknowns out there for a single person to think that they know everything... that's how you end up with dying communities, monolithinc organizations unable to cope with change, soon to be forgotten. Id rather the Cryptocurrency community not get stale, I really like all the ideas that people bring forward, good and bad, annonymizing and open, scammy and legit, they all give us pause to think of how we can make things better.

[Bitcoin Oz]

I doubt he/she/they would come back.

For one thing they would be JFK'd by the bankers.

[descarte]

if satoshi is a real person and people who knows him can vote for him, then it will give a lot more confidence in bitcoin.

Imagine linux is created and maintained by some unknown person/group, do you think it will be as widely used as today? Imagine nobody knows linus and his personality...

being anonymous can be good or bad.

[pand70]

I doubt he/she/they would come back.

For one thing they would be JFK'd by the bankers.

I don't think that bankers could care less about satoshi. It's to late now.
Criminals on the other hand might actually care for his stack of bitcoins 

[jdbtracker]

I doubt he/she/they would come back.

For one thing they would be JFK'd by the bankers.

I don't think that bankers could care less about satoshi. It's to late now.
Criminals on the other hand might actually care for his stack of bitcoins 

The Batman creed... They wear a mask to protect the people they love, Alone they'd face hell head on if it was not for them.

[hilariousandco]

I doubt he/she/they would come back.

For one thing they would be JFK'd by the bankers.

Why would Satoshi be a threat to them? He was just the creator, not the operator or in charge.