Satoshi Nakamoto - 1,5 million Bitcoins - We need answers

[Phinnaeus Gage]

+1,000

http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html    WATCH THIS VIDEO--ONLY 3 MINUTES LONG

Thank you so much for looking up the video!

Speaking of Ted.com, what are the chances of having Bitcoin's main spokesperson give a talk at TED about Bitcoin early next year? Seems to me to be a perfect fit.

Yeah, it's been suggested before that Gavin hold a TED talk. It was, if I remember correctly, concluded that it might still be too early. Maybe it's time now . It'd be quite a receptive audience, I think, that also tends to have some money (a big plus for us ^^)

Maybe Gavin (while I think he'd do a great job) is not the right guy for this one, though... there are a few other eloquent bitcoin people. Damn, if forum search was better I would try to find the post where someone made a list. Any suggestions?

I just tried looking for it for you, but I'm so tired, I'm not sure if this is the list or not.


Danny Casolaro
Frank Nugan
Fred Alvarez
Paul Morasca
Mary Quick
Larry Guerrin
Abbie Hoffman
Jonathan Moyle
Alan Standorf
Dennis Eisman
Anson Ng
Ian Spiro
Robert Maxwell
Paul Wilcher
Pete Sandvigen
Alan Michael May
Jonathan Myle
JohnCrawford
Vali Delahanty
Barry Kusnick

[molecular]

What surprised me about molecular's analysis though is the amount of coins that were never moved. I wonder if that is the usual trend, or it shows a different behavioral pattern for first comers. Has anybody made a "the number of coins that haven't moved since" graph?

Been thinking about that one or a similar analysis (coin age) and thanks to your post, finally came around

I did this by identifying the leaf nodes of the transaction chains and then determining the time of the block these were included in. That's the "last time these coins were moved".

CAVEAT: I know I'm making the mistake of including blocks from orphaned chains here. Still looking for an easy way to exclude these. The error should not be too huge, though.

select year(from_unixtime(block.block_nTime)) as year, month(from_unixtime(block.block_nTime)) as month, sum(txout_value)*1E-8 
from block_tx 
  inner join block on block.block_id = block_tx.block_id 
  inner join tx on block_tx.tx_id = tx.tx_id 
  inner join txout on txout.tx_id = tx.tx_id 
  left join txin txin2 on txin2.txout_id = txout.txout_id 
where txin2.txout_id is null 
group by year, month;

Made a pretty histogram of the result:

like it? even 0.01 BTC help continue cool queries: 1SQL2R5ijCn2ZiBG8aDYpCiecNPuxzMJJ

Note: 2009 summed up = 1,205,454 - all summed up: 7,087,766

Now, what conclusions can we draw from this?

[molecular]

True. My finding was, that the very early adopters did not sell out.

Why wouldn't they sell their BTC, when they had a good chance to do that? [$20 per BTC]

Because they are not greedy bastards but want bitcoin to succeed for other reasons.

[molecular]

I believe that vast numbers of Bitcoins were found and lost in the early days, because back then, people were mining just because Bitcoin was an interesting technology project. When they lost interest and quit mining, wallets were easily lost in OS reinstalls etc. because why would you bother backing up a bunch of funnymoney?

So I predict that a big portion of those early Bitcoins that have not been moved, will never ever be moved, because the wallets are just lost.

I tend to disagree. Who reinstall their OS without migrating his data? Also: the early early miners where probably "hoping like hell" it would succeed, why else go to the length of writing the code. A backup of wallet.dat is cheap enough. I don't think many of the old coins are lost, but that's speculation for now.

EDIT: also, I see what you did there. Your prediction might be very hard to falsify.

[newminerr]

Because they are not greedy bastards but want bitcoin to succeed for other reasons.

That's exactly what i think.

If satoshi [and "friends"] were greedy and started bitcoin and mined coins for the sole purpose of money, he had a pretty sweet chance to dump his whole BTC into the markets for half the price and become a millionaire.

[payb.tc]

True. My finding was, that the very early adopters did not sell out.

Why wouldn't they sell their BTC, when they had a good chance to do that? [$20 per BTC]

Because they are not greedy bastards but want bitcoin to succeed for other reasons.

or, they were greedy bastards that were holding out for $35 per BTC and just missed out.

(not that i think that's the case)

[nostrum]

Interesting graph. Looks like people started saving their bitcoins in 2011/3.
Any chance you could add the number of bitcoins in existence + market value in the same graph?

[molecular]

Interesting graph. Looks like people started saving their bitcoins in 2011/3.

That march spike is actually an even smaller spike in week 9 (beginning of march), as you can see in a weekly breakdown I did: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37422, where I speculate that this is the MysteryMiner keeping his coins.

Any chance you could add the number of bitcoins in existence + market value in the same graph?

I've thought about adding the amount of coins mined in each month. (Consider making a small donation if you want to increase my motivation: 1SQL2R5ijCn2ZiBG8aDYpCiecNPuxzMJJ)

I could also add the market value, if I had the data. Can anyone help me with that?

[Gabi]

Remember that back then coins were so worthless and abundant that probably some people just deleted their wallet.dat after a while and so on...

[Ten98]

Remember that back then coins were so worthless and abundant that probably some people just deleted their wallet.dat after a while and so on...

I feel a little bit sick when I think of all the people that must have done this. Deleting a fortune in the blink of an eye

[AssemblY]

As you can see on the fifth graph here http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ , for many months Bitcoin was very unknown to the public and because of that difficulty didn't change to the upside. If I have understood it correctly around 1,5 million Bitcoins were created from February 2009 until the end of same year. Also if I have understood it correctly very few people mined under this time period making the conclusion that Satoshi Nakamoto and a few more people have a considerable amount of Bitcoins (worth today around 16 million dollars). You could also suppose that a majority of this coins are in the hand of Satoshi Nakamoto. Today it has gone more than two years from the birth of Bitcoin, I am convinced that Nakamoto has big plans for Bitcoin and he/she/they have put considerable amount of time and effort in this interesting project.

I am talking for my self, but I think that my thoughts concern also others that are thinking alike. I want to invest a considerable amount of money and time into this project/currency/commodity/freedom. But I think that until the person(s) behind Bitcoin doesn't come forward I think that the best I can do is to reconsider if I should invest time and money into this project. Because not getting any answers makes Bitcoin to become something uncertain and vague. If Bitcoin should become worth 100-10000+ times more than it is today, and be a serious threat to the establishment and the status quo of the financial world of today, we should demand for some sincere answers to this questions.



My questions:

How many Bitcoins in total does "Nakamoto" have?

What is "Nakamotos" estimation of how many early adopters there is that have more than 200 000 bitcoins, 100 000 bitcoins and 50 000 bitcoins?

What was the purpose of creating Bitcoin?

What is your plan for the future of Bitcoin as "Nakamoto" sees it today?

What are "Nakamoto" going to do with the wealth that has been created?




Until this questions are not answered, and I am pretty sure the person/group behind this project can read this, we should really reconsider buying in until we get some answers. If this is going to get big, this questions will always hunt us until they are answered.

Hence the 1 or 2 years new people will be asking the same questions, and you can be the person who took and made many bitcoins, or be the guy who just cried, and did nothing.
Stop asking questions and go mining, BTC is really what it is, dot.

[Piper67]

Heh... dude, you need answers... I need bitcoins!

[molecular]

Any chance you could add the number of bitcoins in existence + market value in the same graph?

I've thought about adding the amount of coins mined in each month. (Consider making a small donation if you want to increase my motivation: 1SQL2R5ijCn2ZiBG8aDYpCiecNPuxzMJJ)

Well, whoever it was, I got a donation which increased my motivation:

like this chart? consider donating: 1SQL2R5ijCn2ZiBG8aDYpCiecNPuxzMJJ

[stryker]

I dont think the op is a newb, this is a valid question, on my mind and I'd be anyone thinking about investing serious money in bitcoin... I dont suppose ny1 here doing the childish name calling does not have a stash?

[elggawf]

EDIT: this puts a lower bound to the answer of question 1: "How many Bitcoins in total does "Nakamoto" have?" (assuming "Nakamoto" means "Satoshi and friends"). Answer: at least 1.2 Million.

No it doesn't, because the fact that the coins haven't moved is not proof positive that someone is still in possession of them. We'll probably never have proof-positive they're not, because a) no one's going to admit to burning what's now worth a few million bucks and b) there's no way to prove you're not in control of them anyway.

Given how long Bitcoins went being almost completely worthless, I would hazard a guess that a not insignificant portion of those BTC will never move, ever.

[Karmicads]

In all seriousness, it would make no sense at all for Satoshi to step forward and disclose anything about himself. It is obscenely smart for him to have disappeared and here's hoping he lives out his days in peace, wealth, and comfort, reflecting upon the incredible invention he has bestowed upon mankind.

+1

[Raize]

So I predict that a big portion of those early Bitcoins that have not been moved, will never ever be moved, because the wallets are just lost.

I can attest to the fact that I started CPU mining in 2009 when I first found Bitcoin, and then when I found out they were worth nothing and there was no way to sell them, I removed the program. I didn't get back into it till the end of 2010 when they were actually worth something. My guess is that I didn't CPU mine for more than a day or two, but those coins I earned will never be used again.

[Trader Steve]

Greed is good. It is our desire to improve our lives. It is our desire to create and produce those things that others would voluntarily trade for. This process enriches both the lives of ourselves and of others. It is only when fraud, deceit, plunder and murder are used that greed becomes bad.

[becoin]

But I think that until the person(s) behind Bitcoin doesn't come forward I think that the best I can do is to reconsider if I should invest time and money into this project.

Same here. So I've decided not to invest until I know who are people that labeled themselves 'Satoshi'.

[the joint]

In my opinion, anybody who thinks 'Satoshi' didn't create Bitcoin with the intention (at least, in part) of getting rich, I think you're fooling yourself.  It's clearly built into the structure.  

Yet we haven't witnessed an intense development effort for such novel systems before or since Bitcoin. There were many different plans for a distributed currency (e.g. a distributed anonymous version of ripple), but only by a handful of people. In my experience, you just can't and don't work on such stuff if you intend to get rich. He must have imagined gaining wealth as a consequence of his success, but the reason the structure is built this way is definitely about success of the currency. As a consequence, people who believed in it got to have more coins. Even so, there are many early adopters who (at least claim to) have very little coins left.

To me, this is a a weak argument.  Obviously, we haven't witnessed  an "intense development effort for such novel systems" since Bitcoin because that would be a period of what...2 years?  And, the Internet has only been around for a couple decades before Bitcoin.  The age of digital global information exchange is still in its infancy.  And, I would argue there have been novel attempts on a smaller systemic scale.  Linden dollars, for one.  Did Linden dollars make the 2nd life owners wealthy?   You betcha.  Now you got Facebook Credits.  Perhaps you could even go before digital communication and look at things like Baseball Cards, the popularity of which exploded in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  This could be thought of as a currency for kids (after all, there were price guides that pegged the value of a baseball card to a fiat currency).  Who got rich?  Baseball card manufacturers (the Satoshis)  and card shops (the exchanges).

Edit:  With the baseball card analogy, although they were also very popular back in the days when kids put them in the spokes of their bicycle wheels and milk men delivered them at your door, the explosion of popularity in the late 80's and early 90's was aided through digital communication.  Online price guides, auctions, etc.  helped to 'stabilize' the value of cards.