> He wasn't trying to line his own pockets at the expense of others. In fact I don't think I've ever encountered someone so completely uninterested in personal wealth. You know the old saw about being able to get a lot done if you don't care who gets the credit? Satoshi doesn't want the credit. Two years later he walked away and left the pseudonym behind. And hard as this may be to believe, it looks like he doesn't even want to be paid for it. As far as we can tell he mined approximately a million Bitcoins and has never sold a single one of them.
That's rank speculation. Satoshi also didn't provably burn those millions of coins by sending them to a bunk address-- i.e. whatever the Bitcoin address equivalent is for "IF-I-HAVE-THE-KEY-TO-THIS-ADDRESS-THEN-THIS-HASHING-ALGORITHM-IS-BROKEN".
Unless Ray is one of the authors of Bitcoin he has no idea whether Satoshi was interested in personal wealth, or died, or was tracked down by a security service, or something else entirely.
Its true, Satoshi could have burned his coins. There are several legitimate reasons not to do so-- one of which is that it might have indicated a belief that bitcoin was a failure, and such a shock in the early days would have been bad.
If satoshi sometime shows up and starts moving his coins, that's fine by me. He deserves to be super rich, because what he created is revolutionary.
Notice he said "it looks like he doesn't even want to be paid for it".
But also realize, there's the satoshi coins, but there's no way to know how many other addresses he mined to, and that its quite possible he has 100k coins that have been moving since he disappeared and nobody knows they are his.
Or he could have started mining after he disappeared or started investing cash to buy them after, and still be very rich.
That's rank speculation. Satoshi also didn't provably burn those millions of coins by sending them to a bunk address-- i.e. whatever the Bitcoin address equivalent is for "IF-I-HAVE-THE-KEY-TO-THIS-ADDRESS-THEN-THIS-HASHING-ALGORITHM-IS-BROKEN".
Unless Ray is one of the authors of Bitcoin he has no idea whether Satoshi was interested in personal wealth, or died, or was tracked down by a security service, or something else entirely.