Do you think Satoshi got rid of his private keys?

[Keawe]

I would think he destroys them and everything related to bitcoin on his PC. At the time of his vanishing BTC was valued at somewhere between 100-900.  It was his only way to remain anonymous, and his gift to the world.  People and privacy over profits.  What's strange with the timelines of events is the block with 180 billion btcs which was believed to be an attack.  However, within about two years of this DOGE is launched and the supply is 100 Bill.  I think Satoshi created Doge as well.  BTC

[thecodebear]

I would guess he is either dead or just never bothered storing his keys and was just mining in order to start and participate in his project, or both.

[L4rs_]

The money involved is huge and Satoshi can do and undo at any time he is ready. I hope such a name Satoshi is not a person, you will be seeing dramas over time, but it will take time, and certainly not soon, so we should just forget it for now. Of course, if Satoshi is rich already, there will be not much need to liquidate his Bitcoin as he is not hungry, he might have the plan to deal with it later, but it might be after some decades.

Trust the bitcoin's founder's name is not Satoshi because I bet that all gov agencies already checked this

[btc78]

I think no, Satoshi Nakamoto does not get rid of his keys.  I chose 1, since I know it is the basic knowledge to keep our private key safe, and Satoshi being the developer knows the importance of it the most.  I don't think Satoshi will wipe out his storage together with his private key just to show or say something.  No one will ever waste and delete the fruit of his creation unless Satoshi is scheming something

it’s possible that he’s committed so much to disappearing and not touching his bitcoins ever again that he decided to let go of his private keys one thing’s for sure though is that if he doesn’t have his private keys anymore it would never be on accident and losing it would be deliberate

[L4rs_]

Honestly it's too crazy that we still dont know the 4th richest man of the earth nor we do know who created Bitcoin

Damn I really hope this gets solved in the future

[X-ray]

the question that only satoshi can answer, the rest of us are using crystal ball here  .

but joke aside, this can be the case, can't imagine someone who hold their BTC all the way to hundred of billion dollar worth and never even touched a cent.
that'd be the mother of diamond hand if any.

so it might be the case that he got rid of his private key, maybe for the reason to mantain circulating supply of BTC, but really no one knows for sure.

[FinneysTrueVision]

It is not likely that Satoshi somehow lost his keys by accident. In 2024, we have seen addresses that received some coins in the first days of Bitcoin’s existence and went dormant for the next 15 years suddenly started showing activity again. If those people managed to maintain access to their keys all this time, I don’t see why Satoshi wouldn’t also.

By the time he disappeared, Bitcoin was worth more than $1, making Satoshi a millionaire. Access to that kind of wealth is not something you destroy in a casual manner.

[Cricktor]

Honestly it's too crazy that we still dont know the 4th richest man of the earth nor we do know who created Bitcoin

For me this is exceptionally good opsec and for the sake of Satoshi's security nobody should try to de-anonymize them^[1].

What would you do if every criminal or government thinks you've likely mined around a million Bitcoins? (See fictional miner "Patoshi", http://satoshiblocks.info/, I don't judge if "Patoshi" might've been Satoshi or not; the majority of those nearly 22k mined blocks haven't moved yet.)

You can't prove you don't have the keys anymore, so there are a lot of unscrupulous subjects who would do unspeakable things to Satoshi to obtain those coins. I'm pretty sure, disclosing Satoshi's identity is like a death sentence for them. Who wants that??

Let's respect their decision to be and stay anonymous. It's a great mystery and aura! Bitcoin works without knowing who Satoshi Nakamoto actually is.


^[1] I don't believe that Satoshi Nakamoto is a group of people, because it would be exponentially harder to keep a group anonymous and nobody of the group makes an accidental error or breaks anonymity due to growing disagreement. Sometimes I use "they, them, their" for an individual when I don't want to assign gender for whatever reasons.

[Jeorgejs]

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."

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.

Honestly, nobody really knows. most people think Satoshi didnt get rid of his private keys some think he probably still has them but just decided not to touch his coins. The fact that they’ve never moved seems intentional.

Some people guess he might have lost or destroyed them on purpose, maybe to show that bitcoin wasn’t about him making money. Either way, the mystery is part of what makes it so fascinating.

[Fivestar4everMVP]

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.

I completely agree with you on this bud, this topic, aside being discussed on several online platforms have always hit my mind and I've always come up with three possibilities just as you mentioned up there in the part of this post I snipped out.

Either
1. He or they are dead (can't imagine more then one person as satoshi nakamoto all dying the same time though, even if they were all involved in the same accident, wild) so, except he is one person, then this is a possibility.
2. He is waiting for Bitcoin to reach a certain price target before he decides what to do with that stash.
3. He (on purpose) abadoned that wallet.

Like you rightly said, that wallet isn't the only one Satoshi has, he possibly will still have other unknown wallets containing even several millions of bitcoin altogether, so abandoning this particular wallet with that number of bitcoins may not be nothing for him, my personal opinion though.
So, I don't think he lost his keys, not at all.

[Free Market Capitalist]

Lol. Nice bump

Like you rightly said, that wallet isn't the only one Satoshi has, he possibly will still have other unknown wallets containing even several millions of bitcoin altogether, so abandoning this particular wallet with that number of bitcoins may not be nothing for him, my personal opinion though.
So, I don't think he lost his keys, not at all.

Yes, but let's see if we can agree. I think the most likely scenario is that he got rid of the Bitcoin keys from the early days, the ones that are clearly attributed to him. And in this case, he would have others that are not attributed to him, and those are the ones he would use for personal use, if he is still alive. When you say that he didn't lose his keys, it's because you believe that he intentionally abandoned the Bitcoin keys attributed to him but keeps others. If that's the case, we agree.  

[stwenhao]

Do you think Satoshi got rid of his private keys?

No.

You should never delete a wallet.

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

If that would be the goal, then he would use the Script he invented, to make a puzzle out of it, or he would send it to OP_TRUE, make a timelocked transaction, or use a lot of other available methods (for example: "send me a 50 BTC, to receive 100 BTC" can be done in a trustless way, with sighashes he invented; and he also did such "coin doublers" manually). Also, tracing these coins is useful for tracing secp256k1 security, because then, if you have more than one UTXO, not all coins will be broken instantly, and the movement of your first coins will alert you.

Obviously I am referring to the million Bitcoins or so attributed to him for having mined them at the beginning.

I think Patoshi is not Satoshi. The pattern in Patoshi blocks is different than in the Genesis Block, and in blocks, which are known to be mined by Satoshi.

Also, Patoshi pattern is not a nice, single chart, where you can easily see, that "all of these coins are owned by Patoshi". Instead, there are many lines, because PCs were restarted every sometimes. Which means, that many such lines may be assigned incorrectly to Patoshi, while they were mined by someone else.

[peter0425]

I would think he destroys them and everything related to bitcoin on his PC. At the time of his vanishing BTC was valued at somewhere between 100-900.  It was his only way to remain anonymous, and his gift to the world.  People and privacy over profits.  What's strange with the timelines of events is the block with 180 billion btcs which was believed to be an attack.  However, within about two years of this DOGE is launched and the supply is 100 Bill.  I think Satoshi created Doge as well.  BTC

What is this theory of Satoshi creating DOGE lol? The creators of DOGE already turned down the allegations with sarcasm even because it was pretty ridiculous. Satoshi did not create DOGE. One of the founders of doge, Billy Markus, is not Satoshi.

X influencer Ian Miles Cheong cheekily responded with, "But you created Bitcoin." Markus, brushing off the claim in his characteristic humor, responded, "Yes, and I created the internet and oxygen," highlighting the absurdity of the speculation.

[Lucius]

What is this theory of Satoshi creating DOGE lol? The creators of DOGE already turned down the allegations with sarcasm even because it was pretty ridiculous. Satoshi did not create DOGE. One of the founders of doge, Billy Markus, is not Satoshi.
~snip~

When people run out of sensible theories, they start making up some really stupid ones. The world is full of people who are willing to say anything to get their name in the media. Has anyone already stated that Satoshi was an alien who disappeared because he had to go save the galaxy from evil forces from another dimension?