alt Hacker NewsMy theory is that Satoshi is a persona created by Adam Back and Hal Finney.
They probably devised something where both needed to agree and sign something for Satoshi to act. This also allowed them to say "I’m not Satoshi Nakamoto".
They also probably ensured that anything that belongs to Satoshi required both of them. The death of Hal Finney ensure that Satoshi died definitely.
But they may have "killed" him before by burning the keys because, when Bitcoin started to become a success, they probably anticipated the need to "kill" satoshi (few remember but Bitcoin passing 1$ was considered as a crazy bubble at the time! Some become millionnaires and exited when BTC did the 30$ bubble. Satoshi’s stack was already closely observed, bright mind of that time would have anticipated the need to kill it). Or it was just that "satoshi" was not needed or they accidentaly deleted some keys.
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This may be the most convincing theory I've heard.
I don't believe any live human being has the wherewithal to not use any of the $100B+ in the Satoshi wallets, which has led me to believe it was Hal Finney. Back and Finney both being in on it would explain some of the email timing as well
I'd like to think that if I'd come up with something like this, I'd have quickly gone "oh shit" and realised it'd be hard to access the earliest coins without raising unwanted attention, and started mining with multiple different keys, and actively moved those coins around. If Satoshi is still around, I'd expect he has more than enough money without the need to risk the upheaval touching those earliest keys would cause.