Comment Re:on the one hand (Score 2) 77
Anyone with a brain, having just invented a deliberately anonymous cryptocurrency that starts to take off, would NOT EVER touch the seed coins, especially once it became obvious that everyone was watching their movement.
The second that stuff moves, Bitcoin value tanks AND the ultimate destination of all those coins becomes international news. Hardly anonymous.
No, whoever they were, and for literally whatever reason they started the project, they would have created other additional accounts later on, capitalised on those, had no connection to the original accounts, and still be a billionaire now. But just one of hundreds / thousands of others that are all untraceable and not really being watched.
And when Bitcoin mixing services came out, they'd have been all over it - just to preserve anonymity if nothing else.
We know precisely one thing about Satoshi - and that's that they don't want to identify themselves. Maybe there is $138bn sitting in an account they could in theory get access to. But it would immediately reveal information about themselves that may well work against them - taxation authorities would be all over it, press, public, every penny would be traced to its final destinations, etc.
So even if they only had, say, a couple of million in another account... they'd use that. Not everyone wants to be a stupendous billionaire in the public eye. You have to be a bit of a sociopath to be a billionaire at all. And then think of things like security, press, public scrutiny, etc.
Maybe they've got enough to live a life of luxury, that they've properly declared, never have to work again and, ultimately... still stay absolutely anonymous.
The one thing we know is that they understand anonymity. Why on earth would we ever expect them to do the most stupid thing ever and reveal themselves, rather than just hide amongst a large crowd and enjoy the rest of their life?