Speaking for myself only, some of us just lost or discarded them because they had no value, and mining them was more of an act of altruism, so while it was fun seeing the numbers go up, it was easy to lose track of a wallet. I don't think electrum seed phrases were around yet at that time, either, or I had no knowledge of them if they were.
But to think this through, maybe there would be three components to the dynamics of such a theory.
1) Bitcoin will continue to vanish as holders die, forget about their bitcoin, or lose access to their wallets.
2) Up until a certain point, this will cause the value of Bitcoin to increase, as reduction of the Bitcoin supply is deflationary. Those who recognize that this deflation is occurring will hang on to their Bitcoin, because of the expectation that their holdings will appreciate in value.
3) After a certain point, people will realize that much of the total Bitcoin capitalization has been lost/forgotten, and they will be in a hurry to use Bitcoin (sell it for goods) before their holdings become too large in proportion to the total non-lost capitalization still in circulation. Proportionally large holdings are worthless if they cannot be liquidated or used. (Similarly, imagine a currency with two holders, half each; neither is incentivized to accept large transactions because if one sells out, the other is left owning the entire currency by himself.)
I predict that people will realize that Bitcoin is incapable of robustly facilitating a global amount of transactions without centralization in banks/hubs/wallets/exchanges, thus defeating its stated advantage of immediacy and anonymity, far faster than individual coins fall out of use.
The value of BTC is part scarcity and part network effect. In a rational world (what we usually get in the long term) disappearing BTC would have an impact on the network effect. Interestingly, Gresham's Law suggests it would be a positive effect. A likelihood that wealth will be destroyed at death-- I would think that would deter adoption.
The psychology of loss is powerful indeed
Banks/(3rd party) Wallets/(3rd party) exchanges is centralisation.
Lightning network hubs for example are not -and could scale much better, with less friction, than any transaction systems that we currently have. But plenty of things are going on, if it's not that it will be something else, it's only a matter of time.
At the current bitcoin price of $14591, a satoshi is worth $0.0001459190.
The maximimum amount of minable bitcoins is 21 million.
Current global gold supply is ~ $7 trillion
If bitcoin completely replaces gold, bitcoins will be trading for about $333,333.33, so a satoshi would be worth ~$0.0033.
People use quarters for mostly everything now, so this is again quite reasonable.
[0] https://www.credit-suisse.com/corporate/en/research/research...
But that's not necessarily impossible to attain. If BTC wins and the world switches, the resulting bubble might be that big.
These 'whale' entities either ran mining operations early enough, or (more likely) took a huge bet on the direction this was going and decided to accumulate - like the Winklevoss twins did - by buying as many as they could from miners.
The media always tells the story this way: Joe Person traded eg 10,000 bitcoins for some pizza, in what is believed to be the first commercial transaction.
You know what they always miss in the story? Joe Person did that same deal several times, which you can see by reading the forum thread that still exists. Joe Person missed out on a billion dollars in Bitcoin value in exchange for maybe a dozen pizzas.
How did Joe Person get tens of thousands of bitcoins? That's how easy it was to mine back then.
I'm pretty sure Alpaca socks were sold before that famous pizza.
https://priceonomics.com/when-the-great-alpaca-bubble-burst/
(1) The asset not the product is the thing being marketed (i.e. live alpacas, not fiber)
(2) investors have unrealistic expectations (alpaca fiber would replace wool, despite the lack of infrastructure; and besides the fact that people don’t really wear that much wool)
(3) information is controlled through industry sources (most of the information the researchers were able to dig up was put out by breeding associations)
Satoshi did not pre-mine, I believe. So, if you read his announcement, and started mining right away, you'd be as rich as him.
So all some of them had to do is keep them around. Others just bought them later on. Winklevoss twins put $100 million in Bitcoin years ago. I imagine many rich Chinese people wanting to evade money transferring rules in China did, too.
Satoshi has a million Bitcoins.
It's definitely conceivable that he/she would not be so greedy as to touch the origin coins. It's enough to cash out couple millions from later wallets, buy some nice house near beach and live very comfortably.
Of course, I still think much more likely scenario is that Satoshi is dead or lost his/her private key.
So uh, not anymore dammit,
Wow. Didn't know that. So if he/she tried to cash out, then the identity would be out right, since he/she would be attempting to deposit the cash equivalent ( FIAT ?) into a real bank account?
I've seen this statement over and over again for the last few months in various news outlets and blogs, but I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around this statement.
I understand these 1000 people are what are popularly known as the "Bitcoin Whales" but how did most of them come in possession of a vast majority of bitcoins?
Traditional FIAT currency, like USD for example first comes into circulation when the US Government prints it, and then slowly makes it was into the hands of individuals via contract payments, salary payments etc etc.
With Bitcoin, who was/is that central entity that distributed the original coins? And in exchange for what? How much does this anonymous 'Satoshi' individual own? Did he only write the specs and the blockchain stuff for bitcoins, or did he also create said bitcoins and then grant himself a bulk of the coins like how Charles Lee did with Litecoins?
I couldn't find an explanation for this -- i.e. how did the BitCoin Whales come to posses 40% of the Bitcoins between themselves - anywhere, no matter how much I google it. Anyone?