Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to fix water system

Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by schiffern on Friday February 20, 2026 @12:34AM (#47084185)

I realize there's near zero probability, but the mention of mysterious Japanese gold made my mind immediately go to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamashita%27s_gold

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by quote on Friday February 20, 2026 @02:49AM (#47084976)

There‘s also the Awa Maru:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MV_Awa_Maru

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by userbinator on Friday February 20, 2026 @12:58AM (#47084308)

My mind went to the founder of Bitcoin.

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by argee on Friday February 20, 2026 @01:09AM (#47084361)

The actual founder of Bitcoin cannot touch their money without causing a lot of panic in the market. I believe Coinbase's 2021 S-1 prospectus explicitly listed "the identification of Satoshi Nakamoto... or the transfer of Satoshi’s Bitcoins" as a business risk factor.

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by yreg on Friday February 20, 2026 @03:57AM (#47085456)

I would expect Satoshi to make a lot of money on later wallets that are not identified as theirs.

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by bparsons on Friday February 20, 2026 @01:17AM (#47084412)

Not sure why the NSA would pay for a Japanese water system.

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by Hamuko on Friday February 20, 2026 @01:20AM (#47084433)

To keep up the façade.

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by yreg on Friday February 20, 2026 @03:59AM (#47085466)

Then they should have funded some building preservation programmes instead.

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by idontwantthis on Friday February 20, 2026 @01:26AM (#47084467)

I didn’t know the gold in cryptomomicon was inspired by a real thing!

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Re:Mystery donor gives Japanese city $3.6M in gold bars to f... by tmaly on Friday February 20, 2026 @11:15AM (#47089947)

There is a great book on this topic. My in-laws gave me a sword that supposedly had a map to one the gold locations. But today it is quite a bit of myth. I do believe the explorer did find a gold statue as there were pictures. But the rest of the claims of gold I am skeptical about.

Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson does a good fictional take on it.

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