Do you think Satoshi got rid of his private keys?

[Poker Player]

This is one thing I have said in comments in other threads but I think it deserves a thread in itself to comment on, even if we can only speculate. I have searched and I see that it is usually claimed him to have lost them as most likely. In a quora thread the voted as best answer is:

Statistically speaking, Satoshi Nakamoto is (in order of likelihood) either dead, in prison, incognito or not able to find the keys to his wallet.

My personal opinion is that he is incognito; I see him clearly as someone who lives alone with a dog, doesn't like doing housework, grows zucchinis in the summer, hates shoveling snow, has arthritis in his knees, doesn't own a smartphone, his neighbors think him odd, he loves buying discount books at the flea market on Sundays, he's active on the internet under a plethora of pseudonyms and will likely release some of his coins when bitcoin reaches $1,000,000.

There are three possibilities:

1. He still has the private keys.
2. He does not have them or cannot access them (this includes his death without leaving them in inheritance).
3. He got rid of them on purpose, as a donation to the rest of Bitcoin holders. Recall his "lost Bitcoin is a donation."

Obviously I am referring to the million Bitcoins or so attributed to him for having mined them at the beginning. If Satoshi is still alive (or if they are still alive) I am sure he has a good amount of Bitcoin but that nobody links with Satoshi's name.

I think the most likely is option 3. Just as he started up Bitcoin for humanity and stepped away from the project I think at some point he purposely disposed of the keys to those Bitcoins, either for privacy, as a donation, or both. I find it hard to believe that someone as careful as he was would lose the keys and not have multiple backups.

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[Odohu]

It is possible that Hal Finney is Satoshi, and if he is not, then there is high chance Satoshi is another person and still very much alive. His real name might not even be Satoshi and there is high chances he is not Asian.

It will amount to a joke to think that someone inspired by the need for privacy, freedom and anonymity, to create Bitcoin, will divulge his identity easily.

As for his private keys being lost, the chances of that being true is also very slim unless perhaps, he intentionally decided to donate those Bitcoin to the community.  Besides, he would still be very rich in Bitcoin because he would have still be mining Bitcoin with different data.
 

[Lucius]

For me personally, all three options are quite realistic, and now it's just a question of how someone thinks about that topic, which will result in one option being more acceptable than the others.

Realistically, the best option for everyone would be for those private keys to be destroyed, because that way those coins would never appear on the market, but also no one else would be able to present themselves as Satoshi if they were to be found one day. I would also take the third option as the one that makes the most sense to me, because I also think that the person who wrote on this forum under the pseudonym Satoshi did not leave anything to chance and that even then he/she realized how important it is that these coins remain forever unavailable.

It could indeed be considered the largest donation anyone has ever made for Bitcoin.

[digaran]

And everyone thinks he stopped mining bitcoin since 2010? He is and has been the largest whale in bitcoin community. But it would be a good idea to spend some of it publicly but without revealing his identity, on charity cases, building schools, hospitals for those who need it most.

He is well and alive, hopefully with a bunch of young virgins  around him.🤣

[m2017]

~snip

I want to draw attention to another point. Initially, Satoshi planned 21 million bitcoins. If he has obtained ~1 million, which lies unmovable in his wallet, then this figure of 1 million bitcoin undoubtedly falls out of the general circulation (those same 21 million bitcoin). This is a clear contradiction to the original idea. He chose the figure of 21 million, not 20, right. If Satoshi could and wanted to make a donation to the BTC-community, he would have sold it cheaply in the early stages or distributed it to the rest of the bitcoin-network participants, rather than deliberately reducing, note, the number of coins by ~5 % (more precisely 4.76%). I don’t think that, purely technically, there was a problem in sharing these 1 million mined coins. Therefore, the conclusion suggests itself that Satoshi could not or can't do this.

Of course, Satoshi could not know (but could assume) that part of bitcoin would still be lost forever due to lost access to wallets by their owners, which, as a result, would further reduce the limit of 20 million bitcoin from the original 21 million.

[Nwada001]

1. He still has the private keys.
2. He does not have them or cannot access them (this includes his death without leaving them in inheritance).
3. He got rid of them on purpose, as a donation to the rest of Bitcoin holders. Recall his "lost Bitcoin is a donation."

First, I don't think the private key that the individual refers to as Satoshi is lost, nor do I think that he doesn't have access to it or even have those coins donated to the community yet, as he believes that everyone whom the owner no longer has access to is a donation to the community, as it's one step to reduce the number of supplies that could have possibly been in the market.
 
What I think, I think for the sake of privacy and security reasons, the group of people or the individual involve don't see it as a right thing to do yet to spend any scent from the early accumulated bitcoin as their are many eyes on those addresses, any where the coins are moved to will definitely be traced, even if they decided to use a mixing service, every one is curious to know who or whom those entities are so spending from that address will raise attention and it might also comes with lot of panic considering the amount in question. 

Obviously I am referring to the million Bitcoins or so attributed to him for having mined them at the beginning. If Satoshi is still alive (or if they are still alive) I am sure he has a good amount of Bitcoin but that nobody links with Satoshi's name.

I believe the person or group of people are so much alive, and if time is not taken, they are among the top bitcoin holders right now, the already known address attached to the name "Satoshi" excluded, with or without them losing access to their early holdings. I still so much believe that they are part of the firm that is controlling the biggest minning pool right now, so one will have such knowledge as they do and will want to feel reluctant and stop accumulating. That's not possible, nah.

[TheUltraElite]

I dont think of anything related to satoshi. Whats the point? Some person or group created bitcoin but needed to remove their identity in order to save themselves from possible robbery and extortion. Let them be like that and wait for more news to come up in future.

It is possible that we might never get an answer to these questions and is why searching for them is a waste, better to increase your own stash of sats and profit from that. Develop and grow, thats defenitely what satoshi would have wanted us to do.

[LoyceMobile]

His last posts didn't look like someone who was planning to leave. That makes me think he either got an accident, or is in prison.
Or, my personal favorite: Satoshi is a time traveller who went back in time to create Bitcoin, and is now spending his fortune in his own time.

[Victorik]

I dont think of anything related to satoshi. Whats the point? Some person or group created bitcoin but needed to remove their identity in order to save themselves from possible robbery and extortion. Let them be like that and wait for more news to come up in future.

It is possible that we might never get an answer to these questions and is why searching for them is a waste, better to increase your own stash of sats and profit from that. Develop and grow, thats defenitely what satoshi would have wanted us to do.

Lovely response.
Of all the issues we are faced with today, the identity of Satoshi is the least of them. Since he/they think staying anonymous is for the best, I strongly respect his/their decision(s), and I think it is for the best that we stop looking for answers regarding the identity of Satoshi, because in my opinion, I don't think we will ever find one. So these speculations are useless and heading no where if you ask me.

[Cantsay]

For someone who has always adviced the OGs that were opportuned to have signed up an account when he was still active to always keep their private key safe and never to delete any of their wallet I don’t think he should easily misplaced his own wallet. He/they know the importance of private key before anyone else so he should have figured out a way to keep them safe before even creating the first one.

But since we don’t know if “Satoshi” is a person or an organization, so I’d just assume that he or they are no longer with us in this work probably because death stole them(satoshi) from us or he’s somewhere in the unknown where he’s locked up.

[Lucius]

His last posts didn't look like someone who was planning to leave. That makes me think he either got an accident, or is in prison.
Or, my personal favorite: Satoshi is a time traveller who went back in time to create Bitcoin, and is now spending his fortune in his own time.

The posts on this forum cannot be taken into account exclusively when it comes to trying to understand the reason why Satoshi left the forum, and for some time (allegedly more than 1 year) he was in contact with some developers after he wrote the last forum post. In addition, history tells us that some very close associates of Satoshi at one point took a very negative attitude towards him and demanded more "decentralization".

gavinandresen: I just wish I could convince [Satoshi] to switch to a more collaborative development model.

Tritonio: what do you mean? what is the current development model?

jgarzik: mostly-closed. open source, closed development

gavinandresen: Satoshi is the gatekeeper right now, all code flows through him.

Source

Of course, for all those who want to know the real history, which is very likely the closest to the truth, everything can be found in perhaps the best article written on the subject, which also has direct links to all relevant links. Satoshi logically decided to leave/disappear after everything, because when the majority attacks you and doesn't agree with your decisions, what else is left for you?

Software version 0.3.19, Satoshi’s last, would arrive the next day on December 13.

Read now like the final public message from Bitcoin’s creator, it seems tactical that he chose to wind down measures taken in the wake of the value overflow exploit, a sign he might have felt his mission to lock down compromises to the code had been realized.

Still, it’s difficult to say if Satoshi’s decision to walk away was his alone. After all, over the year, there had been a dramatic change in tone toward his leadership.

As to whether he intended to leave, however, Satoshi was definite, his sign-off observable when he removed his name from Bitcoin’s copyright statements[X]. Thereafter, he would also update Bitcoin.org, adding the names and emails of other developers – including Andresen, Sirius, Laszlo and Nils Schneider (tcatm) – to its contact page and removing his own[X].

What little we know about the transition was represented by Andresen publicly when he claimed a week later to have received Satoshi’s “blessing” to start “more active project management.”[X]

In the interim, Andresen assumed the trappings of authority, putting out a “help wanted” post and making clear to new volunteers they would now need to move the project forward.

The Last Days of Satoshi: What Happened When Bitcoin’s Creator Disappeared

[philipma1957]

This is one thing I have said in comments in other threads but I think it deserves a thread in itself to comment on, even if we can only speculate. I have searched and I see that it is usually claimed him to have lost them as most likely. In a quora thread the voted as best answer is:

Statistically speaking, Satoshi Nakamoto is (in order of likelihood) either dead, in prison, incognito or not able to find the keys to his wallet.

My personal opinion is that he is incognito; I see him clearly as someone who lives alone with a dog, doesn't like doing housework, grows zucchinis in the summer, hates shoveling snow, has arthritis in his knees, doesn't own a smartphone, his neighbors think him odd, he loves buying discount books at the flea market on Sundays, he's active on the internet under a plethora of pseudonyms and will likely release some of his coins when bitcoin reaches $1,000,000.

There are three possibilities:

1. He still has the private keys.
2. He does not have them or cannot access them (this includes his death without leaving them in inheritance).
3. He got rid of them on purpose, as a donation to the rest of Bitcoin holders. Recall his "lost Bitcoin is a donation."

Obviously I am referring to the million Bitcoins or so attributed to him for having mined them at the beginning. If Satoshi is still alive (or if they are still alive) I am sure he has a good amount of Bitcoin but that nobody links with Satoshi's name.

I think the most likely is option 3. Just as he started up Bitcoin for humanity and stepped away from the project I think at some point he purposely disposed of the keys to those Bitcoins, either for privacy, as a donation, or both. I find it hard to believe that someone as careful as he was would lose the keys and not have multiple backups.

Personally he never existed and is a pseudo name for the inventors of the Blockchain.

The blockchain was created as a response to the 2008 stock market/real estate crash.

Down the road all those early coins will be released.

[NotATether]

As for his private keys being lost, the chances of that being true is also very slim unless perhaps, he intentionally decided to donate those Bitcoin to the community.

He already did. He's not dumping his coins onto the Coinbases and Binances of the world for whales to collect, which would've almost certainly doom the project had he collected his due in its early days, and even today it is enough to put us in an "ice age" bear market for several years, if not decades (and make Bitcoin like other altcoin projects in the process).

[franky1]

logic and common sense is that when developing new versions of bitcoin code he changed wallets.. never intending to keep the coins all along thus he never had need to backup the wallet. thus when he updates a version of bitcoin, bye bye keys

not so much a direct intention to destroy wallets on his departure.. but more of a not concerned with backing up wallet when upgrading his node

[Dunamisx]

There are three possibilities:

1. He still has the private keys.
2. He does not have them or cannot access them (this includes his death without leaving them in inheritance).
3. He got rid of them on purpose, as a donation to the rest of Bitcoin holders. Recall his "lost Bitcoin is a donation."

Any conclusion on the exact situation to Satoshi Nakamoto bitcoin he hodl is never a problem to the bitcoin network than to serve as more benefits to the entire network, just as every giant whales are holding their coins and some are releasing theirs and the market remains ever thesame being volatile, for every lost coins, the network receives them back and we see the inference from the market price, since Satoshi Nakamoto himself is anonymous then if his coins remains also unpredictable to the world is never a bad decision, afteral there will always be an opportunity for the market rise and dump each circle we are.

[stompix]

I want to draw attention to another point. Initially, Satoshi planned 21 million bitcoins. If he has obtained ~1 million, which lies unmovable in his wallet, then this figure of 1 million bitcoin undoubtedly falls out of the general circulation (those same 21 million bitcoin). This is a clear contradiction to the original idea. He chose the figure of 21 million, not 20, right. . If Satoshi could and wanted to make a donation to the BTC-community, he would have sold it cheaply in the early stages or distributed it to the rest of the bitcoin-network participants, rather than deliberately reducing, note, the number of coins by ~5 % (more precisely 4.76%).

If he had planned to release them back then it would have made no sense mining for so long and hoarding them in the first place, right?
Besides he viewed things differently and saw no need for redistribution:

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more.  Think of it as a donation to everyone.

[franky1]

i think that satoshis best gift to the community ws not just the code, nor the lack of desire to backup keys.. but to have re-used a p2pk key several times thats still funded to this day which proves even the most vulnerable keytype use of bitcoin has to this day 14years later, not been bruted or hacked.. which in of itself is the best proof of security anyone can ask for

[crwth]

Everything we say is just speculation, there's nothing that we can really do and verify no matter what happens unless someone really proves that he can sign using his wallet and private keys.

What do you think will happen if there's an activation or movement of his wallet? Would it be a negative thing or not?

There are just so many things that could be possible but there's no way of verifying it.

[tbct_mt2]

1. He still has the private keys.

If he (assume Satoshi Nakamoto is a male person) is alive, I believe he still has private keys.

2. He does not have them or cannot access them (this includes his death without leaving them in inheritance).

I don't know he is already dead or just around so I can not say. If he has family, wife and children, with his carefulness, I am sure he would have told them about how to access his wallets like Hal Finney did.

3. He got rid of them on purpose, as a donation to the rest of Bitcoin holders. Recall his "lost Bitcoin is a donation."

I don't believe he does it because he recommended people should never delete a bitcoin wallet.

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

[Btc_1856]

1. He still has the private keys.

I still believe he is still holding his private key because he is the creator of bitcoin and he is the one who has the strongest belief in what he created regardless of what bitcoin will be like in the future. He needs to keep some for himself as a souvenir or to enjoy what he has created. So I don't think he would give up his private key unless he died. But I always hope that he will not die or be captured, he deserves to enjoy the best things that he himself has created.