[Cryptography] Satoshi's Trump Card

[Phillip Hallam-Baker]

On Sun, Jul 2, 2017 at 3:01 PM, Ray Dillinger <bear at sonic.net> wrote:

> What puzzles me about these discussions is that people assume, with no
> evidence and apparently for no reason, that Satoshi would choose to play
> his (or her, or their) so-called "Trump Card" in some way that agrees
> with their own particular agenda.
>

​There are many problems:

1) Does Satoshi have the coins?

It is assumed that he has the wallets with the coins in. But I suggest that
being a hairshirted ideologue, he thought he should not profit personally
and mined the genesis blocks into the bit bucket.

I am pretty certain this happened because otherwise Satoshi would have
moved the genesis block around precisely to avoid the risk of extortion etc.

2) Is Satoshi alive?

We have not had any evidence of Satoshi being involved in Bitcoin in any
way for years now. The most likely reason is medical.

It seems almost certain that Satoshi was a pseudonym being used by one of
the well known BitCoin developers in the early days when the BlockChain was
still covered by the patents. Maintaining his anonymity would have become
necessary as the value of the genesis block soared and kidnapping became a
real risk.

Given the circumstances, I think it most likely Hal Finney was Satoshi and
he mined the genesis block into the bit bucket. Then when he needed the
money, he didn't have it.

A tragedy.
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