What Would Happen If Satoshi Nakamoto Moved His Bitcoins?

[HelliumZ]

Nothing will happen, business as usual will continue as before.
Many have answered that if Satoshi were to reappear, the market would be greatly affected by his Bitcoin moves, and if he were to sell his Bitcoins, the market would be in a very bloody state.
But the logic is that since Bitcoin is no longer limited to two people, it is spread among millions of investors and traders. So in this case, it is not possible to influence the entire market with two people's Bitcoin. Since Satoshi is in control of 5% of the total supply, if Satoshi comes, he will increase his circulating supply by 1.1 million dollars. Again, the market will return to normal after a few days and people will accept Bitcoin as before.

[Solokan]

Certainly, many people are thinking this way right now, because if Satoshi's BTC were moved, there's a potential for the price of btc to drop, but we don't know how far it would fall

However, I personally am not too worried about that because 1 million BTC is approximately 5% of the total BTC supply, as I recall So, in my opinion, even if Satoshi sold or simply moved those btc, it wouldn't cause a significant drop It's only a small portion, and many people would buy BTC when the price dropped, so in the end, I think btc would be safe

However, what I am worried about is that if the internet worldwide were to shut down forever, there's a potential for those who own bitcoin to be confused. Regarding Satoshi's 1.1 million BTC, I wouldn't be confused even if Satoshi sold or moved it

[Dizciple]

I don't think Satoshi will take such decision now and even though he or she take such decision that will going to affect some bitcoin and other coins because it will make some people to give up on bitcoin base on some challenges that will appear, if you are still holding your bitcoin don't allow such assumption to make you loose hope on bitcoin because Satoshi will not do such a thing now.

But did the people invest in Bitcoin because Satoshi's Bitcoin wasn't moved or they invested because they saw the potential of making profits from buying Bitcoin. What i think will happen is just that the market is going to react to the news but it'll still recover from it because there has been lots of people already invested in Bitcoin that only one man's move isn't going to end the whole market. In my own understanding, Satoshi is never going to move that Bitcoin because he didn't mine those Bitcoin for spending and was only mining Bitcoin into that particular wallet so it gives others hope to keep mining but he has other addresses that he has Bitcoin in and has being spending Bitcoin from those wallets since while being anonymous because Satoshi has always being key on privacy. This is also the reason why many people don't know him but only the few that started mining Bitcoin but they don't know each other physically, that's who he has other address for privacy.

[shinratensei_]

Honestly, considering how frequently people speculate about Satoshi moving his bitcoin, probably nothing will happen or at least it will depend on what the purpose of Satoshi moving his bitcoin. If Satoshi is sending it to burn address, price will sky rocket, maybe even triple in a day. If satoshi sending it for OTC, negative price impact but not as dramatic as many people thought. I do believe he will never move his bitcoin though. It's left untouched for decades even when the value is at tens of billions, why should it move now or in the future. Satoshi not touching even a penny from his bitcoin address at all after so many years tells me that he doesn't really need money.

[m2017]

Only thing that is sure: after this event there will be no FUD anymore about "what if Satoshi moved his Bitcoins?"

And a new wave of FUD will emerge: what if Satoshi starts selling off his bitcoins, crashing the crypto market \ killing bitcoin?

But seriously, new FUD will inevitably arise and persist in the crypto market (just as in any market). Whether or not the Clarity Act gets passed or no, whether China bans \ unbans BTC, and so on. Any uncertainty will trigger this effect.

Seriously, even if we see it from a purely mathematical perspective, this would increase the "circulating" BTC supply only by about 5-7% (depending which "lost bitcoins" we include).

Any increase in the volume of bitcoin in circulation will lead to a decrease in value. Not necessarily proportionally, however - and here is why (explained below).

According to the Quantitative Theory of Value, the value would go down these 5-7%. Nothing that strange in the Bitcoin world. And even if he sold them, he can't sell them twice, so after the event it is likely that the BTC price will recover fast.

I doubt the price would have dropped by only 5–7%, as the crypto market would have reacted with panic, triggering a wave of position liquidations - driven both by the fear of further falling and by forced sales (due to leveraged trading). I believe the drop would have been far deeper than just 5–7% (I wouldn't even venture to guess the exact figures). An "avalanche effect" could also kick in, where each successive sale triggers another, causing the momentum to build and driving the market sharply downward. True, you can't sell  specific batch of coins twice, but other BTC-holders could sell their coins. Market recovery after such an event might take a long time, potentially leading to a "mini-depression" characterized by "shattered dreams" and "psychological shock" - after all, no one wants to see Satoshi’s coins being moved or sold (for fear of the negative impact on the market).

Speculation on this topic has been going on for quite some time; it’s high time for Satoshi to take pity on the BTC-community and finally move (or sell) those coins, so we can finally see exactly what happens to the market.

As the "curse" of the early cypherpunks goes: every holder must carry the FUD surrounding Satoshi’s coins deep within their heart - until the end of all mining.

[pooya87]

Also look how they find that 1.1 million BTC estimation.

That's right and I'm well aware of Lerner's work but let me point out that it is still an educated guess but a guess nonetheless. The original link is this by the way: https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

It finds a series of patterns that form a bigger pattern but each individual "pattern" doesn't have to be linked to the others. Anybody else mining, could have produced similar patterns if they also ran the same code. It is the deterministic nature of the code that produced these patterns.

I also haven't seen any additional work be done to analyze how many of these coins were spent already by 2026. We already know many of the early miners have already spent their coins and Lerner himself mentions this himself back in 2013.
You see, he analyzed 36288 blocks and with 50BTC reward for each block that is a total of 1,814,400BTC and 665,600BTC was already spent which is proof that many others were also mining in the same period. The 1,148,800 he concluded probably belongs to Satoshi were coins that were never spent.
But as I said, other individuals running the same code could have produced the same pattern and there is no additional link between these block rewards (such as being sent to the same address). Each of them go to a different address (or rather public key in a P2PK output) with no connection between them.

So... it is a guess.

[drangos]

The cool thing is that it would be possible to move the coins, which would be a proof of control of their private keys, but it wouldn't be a proof of their key control. If a transaction from an address that is linked to Satoshi, then Satoshi returned or someone else had gotten the keys or they were stolen. It would be just as important as the coins themselves, if not more. Before reacting to the impact on the market, I would like to know if it's cryptographically linked to Satoshi's or if it was just a simple move and the movement was not Satoshi's.

[hmbdofficial]

Lets get one thing clear here: nobody knows how much bitcoins the entity known as Satoshi Nakamoto owns. The 1.1 million that you are quoting here is the most popular guess but still a guess.

What happens if it suddenly moved? Nothing much. We are going to definitely see some panic sellers, panic sell their coins and the market will be disrupted for a short time before going back to normal. The scale of that "disruption" depends on the market trend at the time:
- During bull runs when price is constantly going up and fresh money is pouring in, such FUD is not going to have a significant effect. So the panic sell will have a very small impact.
- During bear markets when price is going lower and sell pressure is already high, such a FUD could contribute to that sell pressure and intensify the drop. So the effect of panic sell is more intensified.

But it will be short term nonetheless.

This is Infact the best comment and the most convincing reply to OP if I want to be honest after reading through all other replies.

If those coin move people will definitely panic and people will start selling, that the normal market behaviour. But moving those coins may still not mean that satoshi is selling them too. the market reaction would also depend on the situation at that time. In a bull market, strong demand could reduce the effect of the panic. While in a bear market, where selling pressure is very high, the news could create more fear and push the price down further.