alt Hacker NewsFrom a financial standpoint, this makes no sense.
First, they could just liquidate all their other BTC before moving the Satoshi coins.
Second, even with a significant price impact, the net worth of an additional 1M BTC would surely outweigh any realistic price slippage.
Third, the price probably wouldn't even crash that much. We're talking about a 5% increase in supply... which rationally, should result in a ~5% dip in price. I know the market would overreact, but I doubt it would be by much more than say 20%.
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This 5% increase is actually huge, because the amount of bitcoins in actual free float is very small. The same coins get traded over and over while the vast majority sits in cold storage. A 5% supply sell off would eat up all of the order books, and that's before everyone else starts selling off.
Do note that the selloff would be automatic, huge wallets are monitored 24/7.
If I was Satoshi, I would go a to big bank and sell the private key directly for huge discount. Still a billionaire, no trace.
The volume would involve a crazy increase in the actual float, but the bigger issue is that everyone watching knows this is Satoshi, and any sudden move to sell would be a massive shock to the market because the current presumption is that those coins are off the market for the long term. If they are not, it changes a lot of calculations.
And assuming they have lots of other bitcoin to liquidate first, the reasons to liquidate the early coins are basically gone. If they believe the price will continue to rise, and have enough wealth from later coins, they'd have little reason to rock the boat.