My pet theory is that he's just one of the myriad of early developers who made hundreds of millions from crypto and keep relatively private. At that point he'd have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by revealing himself.

Basically contribution laundering, by blending in with the first 10 or so contributors and killing off his old persona he would get most of the benefits but still not get targeted as the inventor of bitcoin.

Exactly. It's consistent with the personalities of the early contributors that I've met. Private individuals who enjoy their wealth but don't seem like they really need any more.

Satoshi owns a huge hoard of bitcoin that has never moved. He has a lot to gain (and a lot to lose) by making use of that money.

If you have maybe 300MM from early investments, and are a private person who doesn't want fame, then what does Satoshi's hoard actually buy you?

His unsold hoard is currently worth about 20 billion dollars.

Assuming he had some later money (in the Blockchain) that's maybe "just" a few dozen / hundred million worth.

That's plenty money for one person without the liability and the publicity. You can live a life in pure luxury and fulfill all your material wishes.

Maybe he lost the keys or threw away the machine after a year or two. There's nothing to be gained from going public in this case but a massive threat to your life.

Selling this may ruin the story and crash the price. It would probably go against his values and mission. He could easily have other early wallets and have $B's. Most likely explanation though is that it was Hal Finney who passed shortly after Satoshi disappeared.

> It would probably go against his values and mission

He could have sent his BTC to zero address.

It's not. Trying to sell it would crash the market.

Still worth a lot, obviously.

Can he just pay off some kind of smart contract with it that ignores the provenance of the Bitcoin?

Like, get a loan for $20b in a stablecoin with the payback being $21b in btc in a year?

If any of the BTC founder's blocks suddenly became active it would crash the price because most people would suspect someone found an exploit in the contract/hash or the keys were stolen.

That’s fine when you’ve already locked the price into something else that’s not-btc.

While you could sign a message with your key, you would still need something that accepts the proof but isn’t public, which might be possible with a properly structured/constructed smart contract, maybe?

The issue is finding someone willing to loan you $20B for your bitcoin without doing the research of how that would tank the price of bitcoin.

It would be a great deal for Satoshi, but no other party would accept.

It's not just about the provenance. I don't think the bitcoin market can stomach a 20 billion sell-off, no matter who does it.

That doesn't really answer my question. If you're a modest private person, what can you buy with 20 billion that you actually want, that you can't buy with 300 million?

myriad?

> The only explanation is that he is dead.

He might be dead but someone has control of his keys & logins as they used his accounts to defend Dorian Nakamoto.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/03/06/bitcoin-...

And to advertise NFTs on December 24, 2021.

http://p2pfoundation.ning.com/forum/topics/bitcoin-open-sour...

Looks like that account on that website has been hacked.

That message was sent about 6 months before Hal Finney died. (Who, incidentally, lived a couple blocks away from Dorian Nakamoto.) Personally my money is that Satoshi Nakamoto = Hal Finney, and he's cryopreserved and likely to come back in a couple centuries to sit on top of a few quadrillion-dollar Bitcoin hoard.

I donated to Dorian's BTC address back in 2014 when he was falsely accused.

https://blockchain.info/address/1Dorian4RoXcnBv9hnQ4Y2C1an6N...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1ztjmg/andreas_im_...

Some people have alleged that Paul Leroux, who is sitting in prison right now, is Satoshi. That would explain why Satoshi hasn't moved any coins or sought fame.

I invested a lot of time on his identity, not for anything just because I was bored and curious. I highly suspect it’s Adam Back and he currently sits in a tax haven, Malta.

Very unlikely. Hal Finney is the more likely candidate.

Adam is/was not a good programmer like Satoshi was. Satoshi was in favor of alt coins in Adam is notoriously against them. "Adam put enough effort into proclaiming that Bitcoin was based on the concept of HashCash that, if he was Satoshi, Satoshi would have given HashCash more credit." - Another HN User. Satoshi had a positive attitude and Adam is notoriously unpleasant.

Hal is a great programmer, worked for Phil Zimmerman on PGP. Hal is the first person Satoshi contacted, first person to mine outside Satoshi (op sec). Hal was aware of all the prior works that failed, b-money, bit gold, hashcash, etc. Linguistic analysis of the Bitcoin whitepaper and Satoshi's forum posts most closely match Hal's writings. Hal lived in the same town for 10 years as did Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. Hal died of ALS shortly after Satoshi disappeared (he knew it was coming and that he couldn't continue).

I also think living somewhere he could have seen Dorian Nakamoto's name is a very, very strong pointer towards Finney.

It may seem like a dumb opsec mistake to pick a name from your town, but lets remember, at that point we're talking about launching a cool experiment about digital money worth $0, not about picking a pseudonym as the figurehead of a project worth a trillion dollars.

After reading an article about it, I do wonder about Len Sassaman, who apparently fits Satoshi's timezone and "accent" better. It could even have been both of them collaborating...

This blog post about Len Sassaman being Satoshi is very compelling. https://evanhatch.medium.com/len-sassaman-and-satoshi-e483c8...

However, there are some valid counter arguments in this thread, such as Satoshi coming out of retirement in March 2014 to state that he was not Dorian Nakamoto, in the wake of a Newsweek article that falsely fingered the latter as Satoshi.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28814469

The Len Sassaman theory really does it for me. It's been a while since I read up on it, but the similarity of Bitcoin and his remailer tech was the main thing that I found pretty convincing. Plus of course the timeline of his death.

That would be highly interesting. Not like you can get easy access to the internet inside a prison so he would have to either convince a guard to bring him a phone to access it or possible use his lawyer. Anyone who visits they would likely record his conversation with the exception of his lawyer. But what good will the money do him, he isn't set to be out until he is like 72 years old and looking at him he is not in prime shape and may not even last that long. Maybe he could wait until enough is at stake like other countries adopting bitcoin as a currency and when the time is right find a way to put all his coins on the table causing a crash in price. I can't imagine what end game he would choose if he truly is the creator and how he has had so much will power he has had up until now to not move any of his coins. One thing is for sure I really do hope I come to HN one day and see the top story with 2000 plus points saying Satoshi's coins have just been moved.

For anyone interested, his bio is a fascinating read in itself. I will admit that for me he is likely the top contender.

Or that he has lost the private keys.

Although Bitcoin is resistant to the "charismatic leader" problem, his second coming would give him incredible fame, following but also personal danger.

Yet I do not think any human would resist a moment in the spotlight, if not to renounce its child and its current direction.

Of course. Various people have claimed to be Satoshi over the years, but failed to provide any sort of proof. Satoshi could either actually be one of those people, or realize that without proof he would be subject to the same fate.

I think someone who believes that it will bring certain death could resist.

It wouldn't surprise me if he destroyed his private keys to prevent himself from ever succumbing to the temptation.

Those coins are of little value when using any of them would kick off a race to track you down and kidnap you with the intention of rubber-hosing the key out of you before going short on bitcoin. Having a secret in your head that can be converted into billions of dollars is not a good position to be in if you are not already a highly powerful individual with tons of people looking out for you.

You are overestimating the odds of that happening.

Vitalik Buterin is widely known, travels all the time to many countries, and although he might not be as rich as satoshi, still owns like a billion in crypto.

Yet he hasn't been kidnapped.

World Economic Forum = plot armour?

He must have lost the keys very early, when Bitcoin was just a fun experiment, and that would still be dubious: how did he imagine his creation would be so big as to prompt destroying his keys right there and then? The common human response at that idealistic stage would be greed.

And even if he had the foresight, it's probably harder to just stay silent for 15 years. I imagine one would just come out, say they've lost all their BTC, that the original project was a failure but they have an even better idea now, and starting a new cryptocurrency with his name attached. Overnight billionaire once again.

I think it's likely when they started Bitcoin they used a "genesis" account which they never intended to keep the keys of

They probably also had other keys that they mined early coins on that they did keep, this would be consistent with Satoshi being Hal Finney or Nick Szabo

> I imagine one would just come out, say they've lost all their BTC, that the original project was a failure but they have an even better idea now, and starting a new cryptocurrency with his name attached. Overnight billionaire once again.

1. They probably made enough off BTC to retire rich already, why go through any trouble to make even more money (not everyone has the drive to accumulate billions when they already have millions)

2. If they've destroyed/lost the original keys there is no way to prove they are Satoshi and nobody would believe them, like Craig Wright who claims to be Satoshi and started a BTC fork which picked up very little traction

You don't need 15yr of foresight. I can see someone keeping their mouth shut for the first X years on the basis of "things are going well, my project is being adopted, I had better not F with it by increasing the number of coins in play lest there be unintended consequences" and then at some point deciding that things have gotten out of hand, the stakes are too high, pulling the hard drive off the shelf, drilling it and tossing it in the bay.

I can't see anybody having that self-control is my point. I can't think of any person in history that has shown this level of restraint, especially about a very valuable and very controversial invention.

Occam's razor says it's easier to assume he's dead than trying to imagine him as the most patient Buddhist monk, with deep economic and cryptographic knowledge, the world has ever seen.

But we could go on with this discussion for years, so let's just agree to disagree and wait and see if his name surfaces again or not. There's bound to be more and more hucksters trying to claim they're Satoshi the longer this legend lives.

> I can't think of any person in history that has shown this level of restraint,

You wouldn't know about them, holy hell haha

Fair enough, but I raise Jesus as a counter argument of very restrained individual that still is pretty famous, among his other "achievements".

i would be able to control myself. After all, if I had enough money to be rich I wouldn't require more.

Why would you mine your digital currency and then just throw it away? That's not something he wanted others to do so why do it yourself?

I'm sure there are plenty of humans who don't care for fame/money/power. You just don't hear about them because... well...

Though in this case Satoshi could have just kept a smaller number of coins not tied to him.

Or he\she\they\it just burnt the keys and forever gave up those early bitcoin when they were worth a few 100 or 1000...

He could also very well have lost his wallet, no?

I doubt that would be the case given his history and method of working

He was a Windows programmer if I'm not mistaken.

Subtle.

But seriously, wouldn't you grab the most off the shelf stuff for your throwaway persona to use?

Not liked the direction and not actually seen the future. It took some time for those coins to be worth something.

The most likely explanation to me is that it was hal finney, who is dead now (presumably).

I think most people in the space have a pretty good idea who it is, quite likely the guy who made the predecessor. The important thing is it's ambiguous and unproven which stops this kind of legal stuff.

Yes! Plus Faketoshi most likely waited until the person/people he knew (or strongly suspected) were Satoshi were dead to launch his scams. Less chance of a forum post saying "I'm not Craig Wright".

It would be rather funny if Satoshi did that. Though having faketoshi out there probably increases the deniability.

Committee? Like as in Satoshi was a team of people? That’s one possibility.

As a side note the Nakamoto Institute website archived all of Satoshi’s emails and ‘his’ IP is Californian. Make of that what you will. For all we know it could’ve been one of Musk’s side projects that caught on and went viral.

Musk’s specialty is selling vaporware and big promises.

Satoshi released working software without prior announcements and did hardly anything to promote it.

I don’t know how anyone really thinks Elon could be Satoshi.

Dude created a company that built a reusable rocket and you accuse him of selling vaporware.

We're talking about someone with inhuman self-control, and GP is talking about someone that just can't keep his mouth shut and loves being in the spotlight.

If the genesis block did contain the image of a trollface (or any other 2008-era meme) instead of "The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on Brink of Second Bailout for Banks", I could entertain this theory.

I often wonder what would happen if Satoshi’s wallet would actively start selling.

Not so much on the price but the principles that underpin Bitcoin

I, for the record, remain a believer.

It's easy to retain self control when you already want for literally nothing.

Well, not for Elon Musk.

Gwynne Shotwell created a company that built a reusable rocket. Elon gave his name and a pile of money to it.

Plenty of people with money in the world. Yet only Elon was willing to finance Shotwell.

And last I checked, the company’s name was SpaceX, not “Elon Musk’s Rocket Company”

Your comment doesn't negate the vaporware comment.

How? I’m no fanboy but delivering working products pretty much negates all accusations of peddling vaporware.

FSD. CyberTruck. Humanoid Robot. Semi.

Also: Neurolink. Boring Company. Twitter Acquisition.

You’re confusing marketing hyperbole for vaporware.

A man jumping around in a suit being sold as a robot isn't hyperbole, it's vaporware.

If there's one person he's not it's Elon Musk. That guy can't shut up... We'd all know.