Topic: Satoshi Nakamoto - 1,5 million Bitcoins - We need answers - page 5. (Read 52462 times)

I actually believe what Satoshi came up with IS brilliant. And that's why I think he may not be one person. It takes someone who is great at math, economics, and computer science to come up with this. And his solution is also very thorough. I'm really surprised to see such a complete solution in a version 1 product. Know what I mean? When someone comes up with something this novel, normally, the first attempt will crash and burn. So I give Satoshi a lot of credit. He deserves every single bitcoin he owns.

That's exactly my point.  I think overall, it's a little better than what we have now.  It's novel, but it still leaves us with many of the larger problems we still have that are the result of any distributive currency.

I disagree that Bitcoin is only for the computer literate. It's true that Today, if you were not computer literate, you may run into issues like losing wallets or mybitcoin fiasco. I believe in the near future, using bitcoins will be as easy as using cash and credit cards. Banks will come up with a safe and easy way for people to store bitcoins. And you will be able to use your smartphone to easily pay merchants and send money to people without needing to know how bitcoins work. For example, right now people use credit cards every day. How many of those understand how Visa charges merchants, how Visa confirms transactions, how chargeback works, or how fraud detection works. And we also use cash every day. How many understand why money is debt, how the Fed can just print money, or even that money can be created by writing a number on a computer without even printing out that money. So people will using bitcoins without having to understand block chains, elliptical cryptography, and hashing.

In my opinion, only simple bartering remains the solution to all currency issues.  It places importance primarily on the process of exchange, not on the products or a currency and thus facilitates healthy person-to-person communication.  I think civilization had it right to begin with and then currency came along and jacked the whole thing up (e.g. paper money is not important to me, but it's important to everyone else, so THEN it becomes important to me and displaces my values.  Bitcoin is no different).

And, it is also my opinion that the theory behind Bitcoin isn't that brilliant.  The brilliance came from putting the pieces together (i.e. taking the theory, creating a mathematical analogue of it, representing that analogue in a computer program, and marketing it) and having the motivation to actually do it without knowing if it would catch on.  I, along with many of you, also have many brilliant ideas but we simply don't try to fulfill them to their ends because we think they might fail.  If they fail, it's a waste of our damn time.  And I have objections to Bitcoin because I think it is weak in theory, but strong enough to 1.) Be better than traditional fiat currencies and 2.) Gain the respect of a significant number of people.  It's a currency for the at-least moderately wealthy and computer literate.  It is not a currency for the poor or the uneducated (I use uneducated in a very general sense here to represent those who will have trouble understanding it and would need to dedicate a very significant amount of time to do so).

Edit:  Any idiot, no matter how dumb, can place their own value on a product they own and place their own value on a product they want.  Thus, any idiot can barter and know whether or not they are happy with the exchange.

1) We are all early adopters.  See the wiki linked above.  The adoption rate is still WELL below 2.5% of the US market alone.

2) Satoshi must maintain his anonymity.  If he reveals any info about himself, he will be easier to track down for robbery, capture, and interrogation.  It would be like announcing in the town newspaper "I have $16 million in a suitcase only I know the location of.  I live at X address", you'd just get robbed.

3) Diamonds market cornered by DeBeers, does that keep you from buying diamonds?  Gold market cornered by secret account holders - sure doesn't seem to slow down the gold market much this decade.  Do you know the names of the 600 princes of Saudi Arabia before you buy stock in Chevron? etc.

List goes on and on, OP started an interesting thread but Satoshi (one person or group of people) is wise to ignore his questions and continue sitting on his 1 mil bitcoins until it is worth 1 billion dollars or more.

and THANKS for the charts and research, MOLECULAR!

 MR. FSM! 

+1

I totally agree. I hope he becomes the richest man on earth. What Satoshi was able to come up with on his own was truly remarkable.

The Egg of Columbus comes to mind. That's why nobody else did it and people that saw it early had all kinds of objections... "An egg of Columbus or Columbus's egg refers to a brilliant idea or discovery that seems simple or easy after the fact." A million bitcoins is the least he deserves. His "invention" is worth more than that if in the end, we have free money.

I don't care who those people are that are going to make me rich.

This, same as me.  Read about it back when I could have mined a million bucks worth but only skimmed the info, didn't really absorb it until the market cap went into the millions.

No, you could've done it if knew how to generate the algorithm from the theory, but you didn't; he did.  And, no one else did before him.  Thus, it's novel.

Going back to your previous posts, I still think he did it to get rich because there are a lot of class and other problems that Bitcoin does not fix and will arguably make worse.  It's far from a perfect currency as far as virtue is concerned.  But, as I am lucky enough to afford a capable graphics card, computer, and internet subscription, and to be educated enough to be able to understand how to operate the necessary software and navigate the forum and exchanges, not to mention have some additional funds to invest, I'm jumping all over Bitcoin.  I do like some other features it offers, however.

If you prefer to stick with dollars, you'll make bankers rich.

Does it sound similar? Oh wait, you'll make them rich continuously, not just once. This is because they keep creating money all the time; new loans are continuously created in order to replace old loans, and they receive the interest on those loans. (see the film "Money as Debt")

This is not the case with Bitcoin. You are an early adopter only once. If you want to use that wealth, you must give up your bitcoins.

This is getting ridiculous.

P.S. I have a maths degree. Damn, I must be an idiot.

The true novelty of Bitcoin lies in the math, not in the programming (as the programming is a reflection and implementation of the math).  That's why the programmers (and you) didn't do it.

Besides yourself you mean....but we shouldnt worry about you, Im sure you are an upstanding citizen. Satoshi is a class act too, kind of looks like James Bond, but Japanese. He's not violent in the least bit, but you'll understand that he drives a sportscar and likes to take it for a spin on curvy mountain roads. Comes from a humble background, smart family....but never used his IQ to berate others...never. Got along with everyone, class president. He's just one of those engimas who comes along where you cant really describe him...like Bruce Lee.

Satoshi is really the devil...or some government's tool, take your pick Unless he is a space alien...ut oh....is he a space alien?

But seriously, I dont think its important. Bitcoin's market is pretty much capped and if he does have that many coins, that's fair payment for the innovation. The OP kinda assumes this bitcoin value is going to go through the roof...maybe, but I doubt it. My 2 cents would be to use the bitcoin for what it can provide now, instead of dreaming of it being worth $1 billion each.

Yes, it's an interesting question. But I don't get what would change if they revealed their names. You only get political when you are in the public eye, it doesn't help the validity of information flow. You can find cleaner information about what kind of people early adopters are from this forum's archives than you can ever find about publicly known wealthy people. Is it enough? Well of course it wouldn't be enough if I wanted to invest in them directly (MyBitcoin anyone?), but the currency has enough use value for me to not have to ponder about it. Investing in Bitcoin has lots of risks in it, and early adopters coming and crushing it down is a minuscule one. Do I care what they will do with the money otherwise? No, not really...


I have programming skills, arguably better than his, and I didn't do it. Neither did millions of other programmers. It's absurd to say that inventing an arbitrary thing successfully can be considered an ordinary purposeful undertaking. Let's invent fusion energy, shall we then? I know a few good physicists.


Yes it is. I used that phrase to compare Bitcoin with Linden dollars. (EDIT: i.e. Linden dollars are novel as well, but there is not much innovation behind it technology-wise.)

To clarify, no I'm not. I'm not saying that all the original miners lost their keys at all, I'm just saying that the potential for lost keys obliterates the "lower bounds" you guys' logic came up with earlier, and that the fact there's no way to prove the keys are lost or to compel someone to prove they still own any coins, there's no way to know for certain.


I have absolutely no idea - I would imagine it's not a huge number of people, but still. I don't think any of this is a show-stopper for the project.

Being novel technology-wise has nothing to do with the plausibility of him wanting to get rich fast.  If you're a programmer, and you're that good at it, chances are you're not also a major league baseball player, or a CEO, or a stock broker, etc.  He utilized his talents to make money, and it's not hard to understand.  That's like saying a musician signed with a major record label but didn't want to be rich; he simply wanted to spread his music around for people to be happy.  How does the fact that it's technologically novel suggest that he didn't want to get rich?  If I had the programming skills, I'd do it.  By the way, the risk of developing the code (if he is that good) would be maybe a couple weeks/months time, if that.  The only hard part was the math (even the theoretical concept isn't that difficult -- just think about what you would want in a currency -- but the math is).  It would have taken the most time to simply find the right algorithmic balance.  Being 'novel' has something to do with it...'technologically' novel is irrelevant.

If the founder(s) had most of their assets in bitcoins (which seems likely unless they were millionaires due to other ventures), it makes sense that they would have sold at least enough of them to still be rich if the price totally collapsed). 

Most people don't put all their money into a single asset - unless that asset has a historical record for stability.

An interesting parallel question: Would you invest in gold or silver if you knew a couple people, who refused to reveal their names, had cornered 20% of the market?

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