Topic: satoshi is either dead or in prison - page 2. (Read 4558 times)

My point was: Once a person has finished buying 10% of all bitcoins, they'd be in the same position as satoshi is now.  The attack by a dollar-Billionaire would involve buying today and crashing at some indeterminant future date.

If we're worried about satoshi for his savings, we should also be worried about the potential Hunt Brothers of Bitcoin; wealthy individuals that are considering an attempt to corner the bitcoin market anonymously.  I don't see how satoshi could possibly have designed Bitcoin to prevent this scenario without sacrificing a lot of what makes Bitcoin great.


This is a fair point.  The better we understand the intentions of the larger holders, the less risk there is to holding Bitcoin.  In this sense, knowing who Satoshi is and what he intends to do would be beneficial.  However, any cryptocurrency which indirectly required all large holders to be well-studied public figures would be inferior to Bitcoin on a far more fundamental level.

Note: I'm not accusing you of such a claim.  My primary criticism of jabo38's post was in the summary:

I certainly agree that satoshi not having all this power would reduce risk for bitcoin holders.  However, this is very much not a flaw in the creation of Bitcoin.  Indeed, the freedom to privately acquire and hold 10% of all bitcoins is a design feature*!

*At least: a simple and natural consequence of intentional design features.

Okay, good point. 

I can't understand why so many people on this forum talk bad on Satoshi or even hate him? He created and provided us the revolutionary thing, didn't he?

Well.. rpietila is giving a lower estimate at 4% of all the coins in circulation (that is around BTC500,000). IMO, I think he grossly under-estimated the numbers, but still think that it won't be as high as 3 million.

Yeah I think you're right.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/distribution-of-bitcoin-wealth-by-owner-316297

Could you give me the source for this 3 million figure?

Most of the sources here talk about 6-7%, that is somewhere around the 1 million mark.

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lets-add-up-the-known-lost-bitcoins-7253

LOL, what did he go to prison for? I don't think he's in prison. Didn't he come out and post that he was not Dorian Nakamoto, when that whole thing blew up? (I suppose his account could have been hacked)

Again, so what? If the price hits a penny, I have thousands of USD sidelined that I would -- with all due alacrity -- convert to bitcoin on very favorable terms. At a penny each, 930,000 bitcoins would only be $9,300. Unfortunately, however, I certainly don't think I'd have that buyer's market all to myself.

Again, the bloodbath would be over essentially instantaneously. And the price would shoot right back up to perhaps half the previous value. Then resume it's inevitable climb.

Just because funds aren't currently committed to buy orders does not mean they are not in play.

Incidentally, your calculation of $30M being only 50,000 BTC from a market price of $600 is an incorrect oversimplification. As the selling commenced, the price would drop, which would cause the number of bitcoins in $30M to be vastly higher than 50,000.

that fool chillen in Jamaica with millions..

I think that some 3 million "lost" coins, including "Satoshi's" are already priced into the current market rate.

Well, lets examine the possibilities in case Satoshi's coins are lost for ever (either Satoshi is dead, or he has lost the private keys). That means that out of the 13 million Bitcoins currently in circulation, some 8% are taken out. It will boost the value of the remaining 12 million Bitcoins.

If I were Theymos, I would have already done that. Hahahaha. 

I just hope it was just only Theymos and not the NSA or hackers looking to compromise Satoshi.  Think with heartbleed out easy it would have been to compromise Theymos. 

I think this is an excellent point.  So far I haven't seen anything better than bitcoin and that is why I put a lot of money in it.  Actually bitcoin is by far my biggest investment.  I believe in it that much.  I also don't know a better system to keep a Buffet from owning 10%.  I like bitcoin and I think it is great.  I also want to be honest and real too, it is not perfect.  The Satoshi situation requires huge trust in Satoshi, and this is ironic given it is a "trustless" system. 

There is a night/day difference between buying 10% and selling 10% of bitcoin.  To sell, means the price would crash.  To buy, means the price would shoot up.  I am not sure how high the price would go up if somebody tried to buy 10%, even if somebody could, but it would be well over 100,000 USD per coin. 

Also, we know Bill Gates and we know Warren Buffet.  We know their history, we know their motives, and we can understand their mind and fairly accurately predict what they might do.  Even if they tried to buy 1%, and I think it would be a huge deal, it would be well documented, and would be possible, but wouldn't go unnoticed.  The Winklevii actually do own 1% and it cost them a lot and that was when bitcoin was a joke to the world and was dirt cheap.  But it is okay that Winklevii own it, because we know very well who they are.  And it would be okay if Buffet or Gates bought because we know them and can understand them. 

We don't know Satoshi.  We don't know his/her/they real long term plan.  We don't know for sure why bitcoin was created.  It would be very easy for Satoshi to cash out. 

I'm pretty sure Theymos can come close to finding out a lot about Satoshi. Back in the early days, there were many PM's exchanged between satoshi and Gavin Andresen on this very forum. All Theymos has to do is check logs and IP's of Satoshi's account.

I don't think you have any idea what you are talking about.  Or maybe I don't, but one of us is really wrong.  But I calculated the "buy walls"  of all the exchanges together.  That was including the bots and the fake numbers out of China and we get 30,000,000 USD on a good day.  Bitcoin right now is a 600 USD.  That means he would have to burn through 50,000 coins!  To crash the entire market down to 1 penny.  That would be a pretty impressive "one-time sword of Damocles".  I wonder how much he would have left?  Oh yeah, 950,000 more left.  Him crashing the market wouldn't even but a dent in his wallet.  He wouldn't even know those coins were gone.  He would though be happy with 30,000.000 USD he made though.  And then... if bitcoin decided to rise up again. IIIIIIFFFFF somebody was stupid enough to buy again.  He could let the price rise up to a dollar or two and smash it down again for a fraction of what it cost him to smash it down the first time.  He could do this over and over again. 

Again.  I don't think he will.  But just the fact that this could happens and the fact that he is so shady and mysterious, nobody really knows.  Everyone that is buying bitcoin is taking a big gamble and putting huge trust in Satoshi that he won't walk with the money.  I seriously doubt he will do this, but the fact remains there are a dozen scenarios where it doesn't matter.  What if his keys are hacked?  What if Satoshi is the US government?  What if his children inherit the bitcoins and want to cash out?  What if the US government seizes bitcoin like they did the SilkRoad? 

Investing in bitcoin = having trust in satashi with all you bitcoin

Satoshi has done what they set out to do and release Bitcoin to the world, and see it flourish. That is all. Now they just wish to be left alone.

both are highly unlikely

How many "reforms" have been non-volatile?

+1