263
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
263 points (97.1% liked)
Technology
60044 readers
2778 users here now
This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.
Our Rules
- Follow the lemmy.world rules.
- Only tech related content.
- Be excellent to each another!
- Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
- Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
- Politics threads may be removed.
- No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
- Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
- Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed
Approved Bots
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I've often heard about these legitimate fears, though why would revealing Satoshi's real identity destabilise the bitcoin economy/make him a target?
Genuinely unsure.
When the Bitcoin network first started, only Satoshi was mining coins. He released the white paper, he talked about it publicly and encouraged people to try it, but it took a while for other nodes to join up and start mining. He could hold half the coins mined in the first 6 months. (If it were half the coins in the first 6 months, that would be 1.3 million coins, currently worth $129 billion). That is a potentially destabilizing amount of money.
Because there is a huge number of bitcoins in the wallets believed to belong to Satoshi.
A lot of the people in the bitcoin markets just assume that those wallets will remain dormant indefinitely, and if there is any activity on them it might unnerve enough of them to cause a collapse.