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>why would you do that if you were rich? Satoshi can't spend any of his bitcoins without tanking bitcoin's price. So Satoshi needs to find some other way to su

by Thorrez 6mo ago

>why would you do that if you were rich? Satoshi can't spend any of his bitcoins without tanking bitcoin's price. So Satoshi needs to find some other way to support himself. Creating bitcoin related companies is one way.

olalonde 6mo ago
He could tank the price to $1000 and still be a billionaire. There's a much more plausible reason for why Satoshi's coins haven't moved.
- Thorrez 6mo ago
  What's the much more plausible reason?
  - FinnKuhn 6mo ago
    That the person is dead would be a pretty convincing one. Or they just lost access.
    - olalonde 6mo ago
      Yep. Dead, lost access or in prison. I'm leaning towards dead.
    - Thorrez 6mo ago
      Why is being dead a convincing idea? How old do you think he is/was, and why would it be likely that he would die? When do you think he died? The idea that he died doesn't explain how he came out of hiding twice. Losing access by intentionally deleting the keys? That agrees with my point that he knows it would cause problems to spend them, and decided not to spend them. Losing access by accidentally deleting the keys? Would Satoshi really be that careless?
  - IMTDb 6mo ago
    He lost access to the wallet either by mistake (never even saved the key) or because he willingly destroyed the key for philosophical reasons. Or he is just dead.
    - Thorrez 6mo ago
      I replied to those options here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711594
- ap99 6mo ago
  Who would realistically not want to cash out? 1. Someone so purely interested in the tech and not money they'd give up the wealth 2. Governments, specifically the ones that don't consider a few billion to be a lot 3. Someone who's dead
  - imron 6mo ago
    4. Someone who wants to keep all their fingers, and not meet some kind of horrifying death.
- vidarh 6mo ago
  It would also seem likely that if he at any point was alive and realised he wouldn't be able to touch his original wallets, he'd still get in early enough to be rich from subsequently crested wallets nobody would suspect.
  - olalonde 6mo ago
    You find it likely that someone would give up their ~$70B fortune just in case it may reveal they are the creator of Bitcoin?
    - vidarh 6mo ago
      I find it likely that someone who realised that if they were to touch that paper fortune the Bitcoin price will totally crater would have made additional billions they could actually access by mining more bitcoin at a point where the difficulty was still ridiculously low. The value of the bitcoins in those early wallets isn't real, because they are the most watched bitcoin wallets in existence, and any movement there would send shockwaves through the crypto space.
      - olalonde 6mo ago
        From a financial standpoint, this makes no sense. First, they could just liquidate all their other BTC before moving the Satoshi coins. Second, even with a significant price impact, the net worth of an additional 1M BTC would surely outweigh any realistic price slippage. Third, the price probably wouldn't even crash that much. We're talking about a 5% increase in supply... which rationally, should result in a ~5% dip in price. I know the market would overreact, but I doubt it would be by much more than say 20%.
        Jean-Papoulos 6mo ago
        This 5% increase is actually huge, because the amount of bitcoins in actual free float is very small. The same coins get traded over and over while the vast majority sits in cold storage. A 5% supply sell off would eat up all of the order books, and that's before everyone else starts selling off. Do note that the selloff would be automatic, huge wallets are monitored 24/7. If I was Satoshi, I would go a to big bank and sell the private key directly for huge discount. Still a billionaire, no trace.
mike_hearn 6mo ago
Nobody knows which coins Satoshi owns, it's just a guess for the very early coins and that guess gets progressively less accurate as time goes by. And this was a long time ago. There was no particular reason to think back then that Satoshi spending his coins would tank the price. Everyone back then was spending Bitcoins because that was the only way to build the economy. The idea that if his coins move everyone would panic is a post-2015 idea when Blockstream killed Bitcoin as a genuine means of exchange and it became all about sitting on them as a speculative "investment". But if he did want to spend he could just start from his last coins backwards.
- Thorrez 6mo ago
  This [1][2][3] seems to have a methodology for identifying Satoshi's coins, mined from 2009 to May 2010. But yes, for coins mined after May 2010, he likely can spend without scrutiny. >The idea that if his coins move everyone would panic is a post-2015 idea Here are 2 people in 2013 expressing that idea: [4][5]. [1] https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-... [2] https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/more-on-block-mining-history-1st-half-of-2010/ https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/more-on-block-mining-history-... [3] https://bitslog.com/2013/04/24/satoshi-s-fortune-a-more-accurate-figure/ https://bitslog.com/2013/04/24/satoshi-s-fortune-a-more-accu... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569077 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569346
  - mike_hearn 6mo ago
    There's ambiguity here. When people talk about crashing the market they mean if he attempted to sell every last coin he owns for dollars all at once. Of course that would be a signal of lost confidence. What I mean is the more likely scenario of spending coins to achieve some specific goal or project.

by Thorrez 6mo ago

olalonde 6mo ago

He could tank the price to $1000 and still be a billionaire. There's a much more plausible reason for why Satoshi's coins haven't moved.

Thorrez 6mo ago
What's the much more plausible reason?
- FinnKuhn 6mo ago
  That the person is dead would be a pretty convincing one. Or they just lost access.
  - olalonde 6mo ago
    Yep. Dead, lost access or in prison. I'm leaning towards dead.
  - Thorrez 6mo ago
    Why is being dead a convincing idea? How old do you think he is/was, and why would it be likely that he would die? When do you think he died? The idea that he died doesn't explain how he came out of hiding twice. Losing access by intentionally deleting the keys? That agrees with my point that he knows it would cause problems to spend them, and decided not to spend them. Losing access by accidentally deleting the keys? Would Satoshi really be that careless?
- IMTDb 6mo ago
  He lost access to the wallet either by mistake (never even saved the key) or because he willingly destroyed the key for philosophical reasons. Or he is just dead.
  - Thorrez 6mo ago
    I replied to those options here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711594 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47711594
ap99 6mo ago
Who would realistically not want to cash out? 1. Someone so purely interested in the tech and not money they'd give up the wealth 2. Governments, specifically the ones that don't consider a few billion to be a lot 3. Someone who's dead
- imron 6mo ago
  4. Someone who wants to keep all their fingers, and not meet some kind of horrifying death.
vidarh 6mo ago
It would also seem likely that if he at any point was alive and realised he wouldn't be able to touch his original wallets, he'd still get in early enough to be rich from subsequently crested wallets nobody would suspect.
- olalonde 6mo ago
  You find it likely that someone would give up their ~$70B fortune just in case it may reveal they are the creator of Bitcoin?
  - vidarh 6mo ago
    I find it likely that someone who realised that if they were to touch that paper fortune the Bitcoin price will totally crater would have made additional billions they could actually access by mining more bitcoin at a point where the difficulty was still ridiculously low. The value of the bitcoins in those early wallets isn't real, because they are the most watched bitcoin wallets in existence, and any movement there would send shockwaves through the crypto space.
    - olalonde 6mo ago
      From a financial standpoint, this makes no sense. First, they could just liquidate all their other BTC before moving the Satoshi coins. Second, even with a significant price impact, the net worth of an additional 1M BTC would surely outweigh any realistic price slippage. Third, the price probably wouldn't even crash that much. We're talking about a 5% increase in supply... which rationally, should result in a ~5% dip in price. I know the market would overreact, but I doubt it would be by much more than say 20%.
      - Jean-Papoulos 6mo ago
        This 5% increase is actually huge, because the amount of bitcoins in actual free float is very small. The same coins get traded over and over while the vast majority sits in cold storage. A 5% supply sell off would eat up all of the order books, and that's before everyone else starts selling off. Do note that the selloff would be automatic, huge wallets are monitored 24/7. If I was Satoshi, I would go a to big bank and sell the private key directly for huge discount. Still a billionaire, no trace.

mike_hearn 6mo ago

Nobody knows which coins Satoshi owns, it's just a guess for the very early coins and that guess gets progressively less accurate as time goes by. And this was a long time ago. There was no particular reason to think back then that Satoshi spending his coins would tank the price. Everyone back then was spending Bitcoins because that was the only way to build the economy. The idea that if his coins move everyone would panic is a post-2015 idea when Blockstream killed Bitcoin as a genuine means of exchange and it became all about sitting on them as a speculative "investment". But if he did want to spend he could just start from his last coins backwards.

Thorrez 6mo ago
This [1][2][3] seems to have a methodology for identifying Satoshi's coins, mined from 2009 to May 2010. But yes, for coins mined after May 2010, he likely can spend without scrutiny. >The idea that if his coins move everyone would panic is a post-2015 idea Here are 2 people in 2013 expressing that idea: [4][5]. [1] https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-... [2] https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/more-on-block-mining-history-1st-half-of-2010/ https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/more-on-block-mining-history-... [3] https://bitslog.com/2013/04/24/satoshi-s-fortune-a-more-accurate-figure/ https://bitslog.com/2013/04/24/satoshi-s-fortune-a-more-accu... [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569077 [5] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569346 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5569346
- mike_hearn 6mo ago
  There's ambiguity here. When people talk about crashing the market they mean if he attempted to sell every last coin he owns for dollars all at once. Of course that would be a signal of lost confidence. What I mean is the more likely scenario of spending coins to achieve some specific goal or project.