Or what if Satoshi deliberately destroyed their key?

The motivations behind Bitcoin were clear.

All the wealthy people I know don’t really do it for the money. The money is the gauge or the metric they use to judge how well they are playing the game but what motivates them is the love of the game and their sense of purpose.

If someone was to truly believe that Bitcoin was going to be a gold/USD/Eurodollar/swift etc. replacement then their metric of success isn’t money if they got in early.