Huh? Of course he is allowed to do whatever he wants, the nature of Satoshi's prerogatives are not in question here. My point is that there's very little practical difference between pre-mining and early-mining during a time when the currency is basically unknown. It's not as if it's a trivial amount of coins either, Satoshi's stash completely dwarfs the holdings of every bitcoin user that has come after him, so it's hard to just write it off as blockchain finder's fee.