Do you think Satoshi got rid of his private keys? - page 3.

NotATether

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Quote from: philipma1957 on September 30, 2023, 01:37:28 PM

Or they all get dumped after the 2032 ½ ing crashing and burning btc bigly. This could happen if this is a black ops and not a mad genius creation.

If this was a black ops, that would've been done in 2021 when the fever pitch was high and Satoshi's holdings would've made a billionaire out of him.

To do something like that on a later date would have pretty much the same effect as doing it back then, because that is too much money which is going to overwhelm the market.

Poker Player

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Quote from: digaran on September 30, 2023, 05:08:23 AM

And everyone thinks he stopped mining bitcoin since 2010?

I for one what I said in the OP is that I am sure he has quite a few bitcoins as of today, assuming he is still alive, but that no one can link to the name Satoshi, and that they are different Bitcoins from those mined those first two years.

Quote from: LoyceMobile on September 30, 2023, 05:32:24 AM

His last posts didn't look like someone who was planning to leave.

Well, although we are speculating, this does not mean anything either, since it could be that he saw the need to leave suddenly or that he had planned to do so but was hiding it. Also, what you say doesn't square with this:

Quote from: Lucius on September 30, 2023, 07:43:28 AM

Personally he never existed and is a pseudo name for the inventors of the Blockchain.

What you mean is that it did not exist as a single person, but as a group, I understand. But I would apply the same argument here: I think most likely that group of people got rid of their private keys of the Bitcoins mined the first two years.

Quote from: Apocollapse on September 30, 2023, 10:08:04 AM

Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

I find it hard to believe that someone as careful as he was would lose the keys and not have multiple backups.

There's a possibility, we shouldn't forget one of Bitcoin developer's hardware wallet got hacked few months ago.

Good point but I think the likelihood is small.

Bananington

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The name Satoshi as I have come to understand is just a false name that gets the recognition for the genius behind Bitcoin or cryptocurrency idea.
I won't think also that the creator of BTC would have an issue accessing his crypto even if he loses or forgets his private keys.

Findingnemo

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Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

3. He got rid of them on purpose,

This is what I have in my mind as to why he didn't try to use the money he created and it kind of makes sense too because if he actually moved the funds then there may a speculation be ignited all over the world that Bitcoin is just another kind of rug pull or something but what if he never touches even though the value of those assets are astonishingly high at current market value.

But after all these years no one knows what happened to Satoshi, or if he is even a real single person and nothing and he Just wanted to be another case like D.B. Copper and remain an unsolved mystery forever.

Sophokles

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Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

Quote

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.

After reading your post another question popped into my mind. What if satoshi still has access to that wallet and is waiting for the bitcoin to reach a certain milestone before moving it around. How will the overall market react if suddenly bitcoin starts moving from Satoshi's wallet? We can only imagine a hypocritical scenario in this case. It's for sure that the market will take a negative turn due to the size of the total bitcoin that wallet holds.

To be honest it is hard to predict what will happen as investors have mixed sentiments about satoshi. Some believe he is dead so suddenly raising up a ghost and dumping his BTC on the market will lower their confidence level. But those who believe satoshi is still alive can take it positively and think that Satoshi is still working on the development of the bitcoin network.

philipma1957

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Quote from: NotATether on September 30, 2023, 07:47:07 AM

Quote from: Odohu on September 30, 2023, 04:56:21 AM

As for his private keys being lost, the chances of that being true is also very slim unless perhaps, he intentionally decided to donate those Bitcoin to the community.

He already did. He's not dumping his coins onto the Coinbases and Binances of the world for whales to collect, which would've almost certainly doom the project had he collected his due in its early days, and even today it is enough to put us in an "ice age" bear market for several years, if not decades (and make Bitcoin like other altcoin projects in the process).

Or they all get dumped after the 2032 ½ ing crashing and burning btc bigly. This could happen if this is a black ops and not a mad genius creation.

Ale88

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Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

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:

Quote

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.

Option 3 would be the the case scenario for all of us, especially for him (them?) because it means he's still alive, and I really wish he can see where bitcoin is today and how much it has grown over the years, nowadays almost everybody knows what bitcoin is, 6-7 years ago the situation was way different!
Anyway we must hope those bitcoins will never move otherwise it could really be a big problem...

Apocollapse

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Anything is possible, but to be honest I don't want to see Satoshi's addresses went active because this has a possibility chaos could occur in the market. Not many people are trust in Bitcoin in terms of real use cases, most of people already think the coins are lost forever too.

Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

I find it hard to believe that someone as careful as he was would lose the keys and not have multiple backups.

There's a possibility, we shouldn't forget one of Bitcoin developer's hardware wallet got hacked few months ago.

BigBos

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I have spent a lot of time just to get rid of my curiosity about Satoshi, who, where, what is his private key, his real name and so on, I have looked for various reading sources, especially local and international articles. But in the end all the wild theories and speculation brought me to the starting point of "not knowing anything about it". That clever person is either still alive by keeping his private key somewhere while surfing the internet, or he has indeed died because he was imprisoned. Our speculation will lead to curiosity that will not be cured. Most importantly he has left a valuable legacy that not everyone can do today.

m2017

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Quote from: stompix on September 30, 2023, 07:56:11 AM

Quote from: m2017 on September 30, 2023, 05:21:15 AM

I want to draw attention to another point. Initially, Satoshi planned 21 million bitcoins. If he has obtained ~1 million, which lies unmovable in his wallet, then this figure of 1 million bitcoin undoubtedly falls out of the general circulation (those same 21 million bitcoin). This is a clear contradiction to the original idea. He chose the figure of 21 million, not 20, right. . If Satoshi could and wanted to make a donation to the BTC-community, he would have sold it cheaply in the early stages or distributed it to the rest of the bitcoin-network participants, rather than deliberately reducing, note, the number of coins by ~5 % (more precisely 4.76%).

If he had planned to release them back then it would have made no sense mining for so long and hoarding them in the first place, right?
Besides he viewed things differently and saw no need for redistribution:

The reason why he mined and saved almost ~1mln.BTC is because at that moment almost no one knew about the existence of bitcoin and Satoshi was the only one who mined btc for a long time (at that period). It so happened that there were no loud announcements about the launch of bitcoin either in the media or anywhere else. Nobody knew about this. Only a few found out after a while. Bitcoin Satoshi obtained is a kind of side effect. He didn't think to deliberately reduce the circulating amount of bitcoin, right.

It’s great that he is not a supporter of redistribution and this can only mean one thing: the ~1mln.BTC that Satoshi mined remains irretrievably lost forever.

Quote from: stompix on September 30, 2023, 07:56:11 AM

Quote from: satoshi on June 21, 2010, 12:48:26 PM

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.

Well, certainly can’t argue with such ironclad arguments as the link to satoshi’s post. This means that this issue has been removed from the agenda.

Btc_1856

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Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

1. He still has the private keys.

I still believe he is still holding his private key because he is the creator of bitcoin and he is the one who has the strongest belief in what he created regardless of what bitcoin will be like in the future. He needs to keep some for himself as a souvenir or to enjoy what he has created. So I don't think he would give up his private key unless he died. But I always hope that he will not die or be captured, he deserves to enjoy the best things that he himself has created.

tbct_mt2

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Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

1. He still has the private keys.

If he (assume Satoshi Nakamoto is a male person) is alive, I believe he still has private keys.

Quote from: satoshi on October 03, 2010, 03:54:07 PM

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case? You should never delete a wallet.

crwth

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Everything we say is just speculation, there's nothing that we can really do and verify no matter what happens unless someone really proves that he can sign using his wallet and private keys.

What do you think will happen if there's an activation or movement of his wallet? Would it be a negative thing or not?

There are just so many things that could be possible but there's no way of verifying it.

franky1

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i think that satoshis best gift to the community ws not just the code, nor the lack of desire to backup keys.. but to have re-used a p2pk key several times thats still funded to this day which proves even the most vulnerable keytype use of bitcoin has to this day 14years later, not been bruted or hacked.. which in of itself is the best proof of security anyone can ask for

stompix

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Quote from: m2017 on September 30, 2023, 05:21:15 AM

I want to draw attention to another point. Initially, Satoshi planned 21 million bitcoins. If he has obtained ~1 million, which lies unmovable in his wallet, then this figure of 1 million bitcoin undoubtedly falls out of the general circulation (those same 21 million bitcoin). This is a clear contradiction to the original idea. He chose the figure of 21 million, not 20, right. . If Satoshi could and wanted to make a donation to the BTC-community, he would have sold it cheaply in the early stages or distributed it to the rest of the bitcoin-network participants, rather than deliberately reducing, note, the number of coins by ~5 % (more precisely 4.76%).

If he had planned to release them back then it would have made no sense mining for so long and hoarding them in the first place, right?
Besides he viewed things differently and saw no need for redistribution:

Quote from: satoshi on June 21, 2010, 12:48:26 PM

Lost coins only make everyone else's coins worth slightly more. Think of it as a donation to everyone.

Dunamisx

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Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

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."

Any conclusion on the exact situation to Satoshi Nakamoto bitcoin he hodl is never a problem to the bitcoin network than to serve as more benefits to the entire network, just as every giant whales are holding their coins and some are releasing theirs and the market remains ever thesame being volatile, for every lost coins, the network receives them back and we see the inference from the market price, since Satoshi Nakamoto himself is anonymous then if his coins remains also unpredictable to the world is never a bad decision, afteral there will always be an opportunity for the market rise and dump each circle we are.

franky1

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logic and common sense is that when developing new versions of bitcoin code he changed wallets.. never intending to keep the coins all along thus he never had need to backup the wallet. thus when he updates a version of bitcoin, bye bye keys

not so much a direct intention to destroy wallets on his departure.. but more of a not concerned with backing up wallet when upgrading his node

NotATether

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Quote from: Odohu on September 30, 2023, 04:56:21 AM

As for his private keys being lost, the chances of that being true is also very slim unless perhaps, he intentionally decided to donate those Bitcoin to the community.

He already did. He's not dumping his coins onto the Coinbases and Binances of the world for whales to collect, which would've almost certainly doom the project had he collected his due in its early days, and even today it is enough to put us in an "ice age" bear market for several years, if not decades (and make Bitcoin like other altcoin projects in the process).

philipma1957

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Quote from: Poker Player on September 30, 2023, 04:33:32 AM

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:

Quote

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.

Personally he never existed and is a pseudo name for the inventors of the Blockchain.

The blockchain was created as a response to the 2008 stock market/real estate crash.

Down the road all those early coins will be released.

Lucius

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Quote from: LoyceMobile on September 30, 2023, 05:32:24 AM

His last posts didn't look like someone who was planning to leave. That makes me think he either got an accident, or is in prison.
Or, my personal favorite: Satoshi is a time traveller who went back in time to create Bitcoin, and is now spending his fortune in his own time.

The posts on this forum cannot be taken into account exclusively when it comes to trying to understand the reason why Satoshi left the forum, and for some time (allegedly more than 1 year) he was in contact with some developers after he wrote the last forum post. In addition, history tells us that some very close associates of Satoshi at one point took a very negative attitude towards him and demanded more "decentralization".

Quote

gavinandresen: I just wish I could convince [Satoshi] to switch to a more collaborative development model.

Tritonio: what do you mean? what is the current development model?

jgarzik: mostly-closed. open source, closed development

gavinandresen: Satoshi is the gatekeeper right now, all code flows through him.

Source

Of course, for all those who want to know the real history, which is very likely the closest to the truth, everything can be found in perhaps the best article written on the subject, which also has direct links to all relevant links. Satoshi logically decided to leave/disappear after everything, because when the majority attacks you and doesn't agree with your decisions, what else is left for you?

Quote

Software version 0.3.19, Satoshi’s last, would arrive the next day on December 13.

Read now like the final public message from Bitcoin’s creator, it seems tactical that he chose to wind down measures taken in the wake of the value overflow exploit, a sign he might have felt his mission to lock down compromises to the code had been realized.

Still, it’s difficult to say if Satoshi’s decision to walk away was his alone. After all, over the year, there had been a dramatic change in tone toward his leadership.

As to whether he intended to leave, however, Satoshi was definite, his sign-off observable when he removed his name from Bitcoin’s copyright statements[X]. Thereafter, he would also update Bitcoin.org, adding the names and emails of other developers – including Andresen, Sirius, Laszlo and Nils Schneider (tcatm) – to its contact page and removing his own[X].

What little we know about the transition was represented by Andresen publicly when he claimed a week later to have received Satoshi’s “blessing” to start “more active project management.”[X]

In the interim, Andresen assumed the trappings of authority, putting out a “help wanted” post and making clear to new volunteers they would now need to move the project forward.

The Last Days of Satoshi: What Happened When Bitcoin’s Creator Disappeared

Topic: Do you think Satoshi got rid of his private keys? - page 3. (Read 746 times)