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[znort987]

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[Tim Johnson]

2 million Bitcoins get invested into a future economy by Satoshi. Wealth is produced.

God help us all.

...or imagine 2 million Bitcoins being sold into hands that actually want them at prices they are willing to pay over others. Let's try not to think what would happen if the market allocated the resources to better hands at proper prices.

Those 2 million Bitcoins should go to hobos to spend on dirt.

[weex]

Can you tell us the average age of an unspent block reward coin?

[myrkul]

2 million Bitcoins get invested into a future economy by Satoshi. Wealth is produced.

God help us all.

...or imagine 2 million Bitcoins being sold into hands that actually want them at prices they are willing to pay over others. Let's try not to think what would happen if the market allocated the resources to better hands at proper prices.

Those 2 million Bitcoins should go to hobos to spend on dirt.

...Atlas?

[niko]

I just ran a quick analysis on the blockchain.

Out of the 192386 blocks currently mined, very many of them
have a BTC 50 block reward that has never been spent.

To be exact, 41493 blocks have an unspent reward.

That is worth approximately BTC 2'074'650.00 (not counting fees).

That's 2 Million+ pristine coins hoarded, or about 20% of the BTC market cap.

These cannot be mined in pools, right?  Only solo miners can hoard the whole block reward. The "unknown" (presumably the sum of solo operations) typically represents 15%-30% of the hashing power, http://blockchain.info/pools?timespan=4days

From your data sorted by age it appears that in the past year or so only a few percent of blocks ended up unspent.
As we go back in time this goes up to 40-50%.  Seems like the change takes place with the advent of GPU and pooled mining.

Provisional yet shocking conclusion: miners hoard a lot, but your method only reveals hoarding by solo miners.

[weex]

I would be curious to see the same age of unspent blocks data but from a 6 months ago perspective. A year as well. These might show us how recently the older coins first moved and how the recently unspent block percentage is changing.

[bracek]

can you give some estimation for how many wallets or different keys these coins belong to

I mean,
can it be seen if those are in hands of a few owners or many ?

[wabber]

can you give some estimation for how many wallets or different keys these coins belong to

I mean,
can it be seen if those are in hands of a few owners or many ?

They are fresh coins. If they were all mined on fresh adresses (which is likely) it's impossible to link them together.

[rjk]

There is a thread where some folks enumerate their lost coins due to data loss or hdd formatting etc - maybe that would have insight into some of the blocks in this list.

[hazek]

These never been spent coins are often on my mind and I wonder when if ever will they get spent. The potential to cause serious damages is huge if someone decided to foolishly dump all of them but I can't see someone doing that. I sometimes also speculate what the chance might be that the owners of these coins, mainly Satoshi, have deleted their private keys and actually on purpose lost the coins.

[ThePok]

The first Bitcoinusers did think of Bitcoin as an Prototyp. It was a Toy, they didnt save the coins, and i think Satoshi didnt save his first coins too.

In my opinion, at least 1 million coins from those 2 Million are lost.

[n8rwJeTt8TrrLKPa55eU]

The first Bitcoinusers did think of Bitcoin as an Prototyp. It was a Toy, they didnt save the coins, and i think Satoshi didnt save his first coins too.

In my opinion, at least 1 million coins from those 2 Million are lost.

50% is what I'd estimate as well.

But either way, even if you assume all 2 million are usable, the fact that they weren't sold on the run up to $30 or on the current 4-fold move from the last bottom, probably tells you that they are in strong (wise?) hands that are thinking very long-term, and which see Bitcoin as a store of value.  If anything, a high number of slow-moving or non-moving coins is a very positive statistic, in that it validates that Bitcoin is behaving similarly to gold, with a stocks-to-flow ratio higher than just about anything else.

[Etlase2]

The first Bitcoinusers did think of Bitcoin as an Prototyp. It was a Toy, they didnt save the coins, and i think Satoshi didnt save his first coins too.

In my opinion, at least 1 million coins from those 2 Million are lost.

Smart enough to invent a new currency whose production runs out within the creator's lifetime, but too naive to think that they could ever be worth something? Unlikely.

[bg002h]

The first Bitcoinusers did think of Bitcoin as an Prototyp. It was a Toy, they didnt save the coins, and i think Satoshi didnt save his first coins too.

In my opinion, at least 1 million coins from those 2 Million are lost.

Smart enough to invent a new currency whose production runs out within the creator's lifetime, but too naive to think that they could ever be worth something? Unlikely.

I concur. I think people are waiting for the market to mature. I see it as a bullish sign. Why sell now if you can get more later?  Could 2 MBTC be sold?

[bg002h]

According to bitcoincharts...yes, 2 million coins could be sold:

Sell 2000000 BTC for 1987718.05 USD...or about a buck a piece.

[proudhon]

Satoshi's a patient guy.

[molecular]

I would be curious to see the same age of unspent blocks data but from a 6 months ago perspective. A year as well. These might show us how recently the older coins first moved and how the recently unspent block percentage is changing.

I made a "coins not moved" graph last year (for a thread regarding the mystery miner: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37422.msg459385#msg459385):



ThomasV (I guess) has made an interactive graph showing roughly the same (I guess) data (move mouse on chart):

http://ecdsa.org/stats.html

[doobadoo]

Satoshi's a patient guy.

Satoshi's dead.  There is no other explanation.  Why else would he disappear so suddenly, and without saying fair well to the community.   It was a sudden death like being hit by a bus, or drowning, or a heart attack.  If it was cancer or something that takes its time, he would have told us, and he would have transferred his coin to a successor.

RIP Satoshi Nakamoto
??  -   2011

[Drifter]

Satoshi's a patient guy.

Satoshi's dead.  There is no other explanation.  Why else would he disappear so suddenly, and without saying fair well to the community.   It was a sudden death like being hit by a bus, or drowning, or a heart attack.  If it was cancer or something that takes its time, he would have told us, and he would have transferred his coin to a successor.

RIP Satoshi Nakamoto
??  -   2011

There is no way Satoshi was ever just one guy.

The scope, complexity and depth of the bitcoin design and
implementation goes way beyond anything a single person
could have pulled off.

According to Gavin, the primitive code was not neat or professionally put together, it just work, and it was obvious that Satoshi was no coder. Past him inventing the initial code, it was taken over by the current developers and I don't see why it's hard to believe one guy had the initial idea and implementation.

Satoshi likely left in fear of someone finding his identity. People seem to be able to locate his likely origin country by his vocabulary and how he types, though I can't remember which country it is believed to be. To my knowledge he didn't just vanish, he was in private conversations with Gavin. Once he was confident in Gavin taking over the development side of the project, and considering Gavin and/or others were likely better with the code anyway, there wasn't much left for Satoshi to do besides disappear into the background and watch his baby grow.

[bg002h]

Satoshi's a patient guy.

Satoshi's dead.  There is no other explanation.  Why else would he disappear so suddenly, and without saying fair well to the community.   It was a sudden death like being hit by a bus, or drowning, or a heart attack.  If it was cancer or something that takes its time, he would have told us, and he would have transferred his coin to a successor.

RIP Satoshi Nakamoto
??  -   2011

Interesting theory...did no one really know _anything_ about him? Surely someone knew something...if no one really knew anything, then I doubt he's dead...he was always planning to disappear.