I'm kind of interested about the dynamics of the early genesis of the block chain...Satoshi could have been the sole miner for a month before he let anyone else know about it and would have a amassed ~216,000 btc ...what would have been the reaction of the second person? I think if it were me, I would have said "Satoshi, that's a really nice bit of code you wrote, but how about we start over with a new block chain."
...Satoshi, realizing there would be two competing block chains and his might lose out would probably have been agreeable. Then what about the third person that joined two weeks later? That person might have said, great idea, but I have 5 people ready to start mining on a new chain, so you two might want to consider restarting your mining activities on it. A fourth person might have advertised among their social network and recruited 25 people to start a new chain. At some point, you get to a critical mass working on a chain where it is not feasible for new miners to overcome and that chain become *the* chain. I know it didn't actually play out like this, but it's interesting to think about.
