My pet theory is that he's just one of the myriad of early developers who made hundreds of millions from crypto and keep relatively private. At that point he'd have nothing to gain and a lot to lose by revealing himself.
Basically contribution laundering, by blending in with the first 10 or so contributors and killing off his old persona he would get most of the benefits but still not get targeted as the inventor of bitcoin.
Exactly. It's consistent with the personalities of the early contributors that I've met. Private individuals who enjoy their wealth but don't seem like they really need any more.
Assuming he had some later money (in the Blockchain) that's maybe "just" a few dozen / hundred million worth.
That's plenty money for one person without the liability and the publicity. You can live a life in pure luxury and fulfill all your material wishes.
Maybe he lost the keys or threw away the machine after a year or two. There's nothing to be gained from going public in this case but a massive threat to your life.
Selling this may ruin the story and crash the price. It would probably go against his values and mission. He could easily have other early wallets and have $B's. Most likely explanation though is that it was Hal Finney who passed shortly after Satoshi disappeared.
If any of the BTC founder's blocks suddenly became active it would crash the price because most people would suspect someone found an exploit in the contract/hash or the keys were stolen.
That’s fine when you’ve already locked the price into something else that’s not-btc.
While you could sign a message with your key, you would still need something that accepts the proof but isn’t public, which might be possible with a properly structured/constructed smart contract, maybe?
That doesn't really answer my question. If you're a modest private person, what can you buy with 20 billion that you actually want, that you can't buy with 300 million?
