This is one thing I have said in comments in other threads but I think it deserves a thread in itself to comment on, even if we can only speculate. I have searched and I see that it is usually claimed him to have lost them as most likely.
In a quora thread the voted as best answer is:
Statistically speaking, Satoshi Nakamoto is (in order of likelihood) either dead, in prison, incognito or not able to find the keys to his wallet.
My personal opinion is that he is incognito; I see him clearly as someone who lives alone with a dog, doesn't like doing housework, grows zucchinis in the summer, hates shoveling snow, has arthritis in his knees, doesn't own a smartphone, his neighbors think him odd, he loves buying discount books at the flea market on Sundays, he's active on the internet under a plethora of pseudonyms and will likely release some of his coins when bitcoin reaches $1,000,000.
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."
Obviously I am referring to the million Bitcoins or so attributed to him for having mined them at the beginning. If Satoshi is still alive (or if they are still alive) I am sure he has a good amount of Bitcoin but that nobody links with Satoshi's name.
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.
Based up on my own opinion and speculations then he might be still that possess those keys and it is really just that he didnt tend to make any movement out of it.Why? So here's the possible reasons.
1. Once a single movement made by one of known Satoshi wallets then it would really be neither be creating that kind of boost up or fear within the market.
2. He wont really be tending to make a movement and exposing himself or identity specially on touching up those centralized platforms.
3. He do just simply observing and been happy on how far his invention do able to hit or reach about.
Even myself to be Satoshi then there's no way that people could stop or whatever considerations would be in speaking about taking up some
profits on something that you do created. lol
