
Status of the first million Bitcoins - mdelias
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175996.0
======
pyre
While the title here[1] is better than the title of the thread[2] it's still
sort of misleading. There is no consensus in that thread about the status of
the first million Bitcoins.

Though there are some interesting comments:

    
    
      > But what is true is that anybody running Bitcoin
      > that year with a consumer Core 2 would make about
      > 2000 BTC a day. 
      >
      > [Bounty] 201600 BTC for a time machine, I only need
      > a few hours...
    

If someone decided to go 'all out' and threw significant computing power
behind Bitcoin in the early stages, how would this have affected the outcome.
Would it have encouraged others to join in (i.e. "look what he's doing, there
must be something to this thing")? Would it have effectively pushed everyone
else out of the space (i.e. "I can't match his resources, and he seems to be
mining significant amounts of Bitcoins; may as well give up on this Bitcoin
thing")?

    
    
      > I think the likeliest scenario is that hundreds of
      > people downloaded and ran the client then, got a
      > bunch of blocks that were at the time useless because
      > they were valueless, then deleted their clients.
    

It seems disappointing (?) that significant chunks of the finite amount of
possible Bitcoins might be lost 'forever.'

[1] "Status of the first million Bitcoins ever created" as of this writing.

[2] "Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD"

~~~
seanalltogether
"It seems disappointing (?) that significant chunks of the finite amount of
possible Bitcoins might be lost 'forever.'"

So I'm kinda curious, as the power of the collective network grows, how
difficult would it be to turn the incredible hashing rate toward discovering
the the private keys of wallets lost long ago?

~~~
teraflop
Hashing doesn't help you crack private keys. Bitcoin uses ECDSA to sign
transactions, which means you need to be able to solve the discrete logarithm
problem over an elliptic curve. In any case, even the combined computational
resources of the entire planet probably aren't enough to break a 256-bit ECDSA
key in a reasonable amount of time.

~~~
oleganza
Most one-time pubkeys are wrapped in RIPEMD-160 and SHA256, so you have to
crack those first before you even get to cracking ECDSA. This also offers
temporary protection against sudden appearance of quantum computer. QC can
break ECDSA, but cannot break hashes fast enough. So people would have time to
switch to another algorithm or at least agree on the last valid blockchain
state and stop all transactions.

------
saosebastiao
If someone wants to go dumpster diving in Cleveland, there is a Samsung 80 gig
hard drive with about 120 Bitcoins on it. I won them from a tor gambling site
after betting a single bitcoin that was given to me. They were selling for
less than $.20 at the time so I didn't care enough to do anything with them
when I scrapped my hard drive.

I obviously didn't foresee Cypress.

~~~
dfc
What is Cypress?

~~~
saosebastiao
An alternative spelling to Cyprus, Ciprus, Chipre, Cipris, etc. It is one of
two anglicized versions that I know of, and I can never remember which version
is more accepted.

Anyway...[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%932013_Cypriot_fina...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012%E2%80%932013_Cypriot_financial_crisis)

~~~
StavrosK
What's the other anglicized version? "Cyprus" is the only correct spelling, as
far as I know, and I'm Greek. Or are you referring to the transliteration,
"Kypros"? That's pretty much never used (same with "Hellas" for Greece).

------
snowwrestler
Regardless of the cash value, I think it's interesting that so many people
continue to accept that "Satoshi" was in fact a single real person, who
created bitcoin out of an ideological desire.

Given the famous quality of its cryptographic design, it seems at least
plausible to me that bitcoin is in fact a research project out of academia or
a national government, with the Satoshi mythology a brilliant marketing
wrapper.

~~~
damian2000
There's a comment by Hal Finney on another bitcointalk thread on this

 _Today, Satoshi's true identity has become a mystery. But at the time, I
thought I was dealing with a young man of Japanese ancestry who was very smart
and sincere. I've had the good fortune to know many brilliant people over the
course of my life, so I recognize the signs._ [1]

Remember too that at the time noone could have foreseen the popularity and
success of Bitcoin.

[1]
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833)

------
buro9
I can't be the only one here to have lost some.

Somewhere in my house, or perhaps at my old workplace, there is a USB stick
with approx 250 bitcoins on it, the gains from early mining and experimenting.
I'd backed them up before I rebuilt my main machine, and then didn't restore
them immediately (mining was approaching diminishing returns and I gave up).

I'm pretty sure I haven't over-written them, but I also have no idea where
they are. A few weeks ago I looked again, fruitlessly. I'm sure they'll turn
up some day.

~~~
bdcravens
A $25,000 USD USB stick. (as much as $70,000 at one point) Pretty sure I'd
search a bit harder :-)

~~~
buro9
I have searched harder! I can't find _any_ of my USB sticks. I'm assuming
they're all together and I tidied them up. I don't feel like I've lost them
(hence no panic), just that I don't know where they are.

Though I really didn't comprehend they were worth so much. The last time I
looked they were GBP 750. Am now leaving the keyboard to look again.

~~~
epaga
I love these stories. Please update if/when you find them. :)

~~~
buro9
I've found a few old SD cards, a hard drive I'd forgotten about, a Garmin for
my bike I'd assumed I'd lent out, and a watch I'd mislaid years ago.

But no USB sticks.

They're here somewhere. May be time for a weekend of spring cleaning.

------
jes5199
Satoshi's motivations are interesting to me. What was he/she/they actually
trying to accomplish by creating bitcoin? Were they really hoping to
anonymously buy things? Or were they trying to get rich? Or were they trying
to get geeks to commit to a pseudonymous-but-public cryptocurrency to prevent
a zerocoin-style really-anonymous currency from being developed? Or were they
trying to get a distributed computing project going to really test the
strength of sha256? Or were they trying to sabotage Folding@home and
distributed.net?

~~~
jhales
"Nakamoto’s work appears to be politically motivated, as quoted: “Yes, [we
will not find a solution to political problems in cryptography,] but we can
win a major battle in the arms race and gain a new territory of freedom for
several years. Governments are good at cutting off the heads of a centrally
controlled networks like Napster, but pure P2P networks like Gnutella and Tor
seem to be holding their own.” – Satoshi Nakamoto “[Bitcoin is] very
attractive to the libertarian viewpoint if we can explain it properly. I’m
better with code than with words though.” – Satoshi Nakamoto In the Bitcoin
network’s transaction database, the original entry has a note by Nakamoto that
reads as: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for
banks” Some claim this quote implies Nakamoto had great concern or contempt
for the current central banking system."

<http://bitcoinreport.com/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto/>

~~~
jes5199
But isn't that also exactly how someone would talk if they wanted to
manipulate technolibertarians into joining a project?

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
Isn't the simpler explanation more likely?

~~~
jes5199
Maybe! But by that metric, it would be impossible to catch scams - isn't it
always simpler to assume that everyone is telling the truth?

------
Permit
If this is true and any individual holds 1M BTC, it must take an incredible
amount of self restraint not to dump those coins. That means the book value of
his coins would have fluctuated between approximately $250M and $100M this
week.

You'd also have to keep in mind that he would have been through the previous
crash in which his coins varied in worth between $29 M before falling back
down to $2M.

It would take a special someone not to sell those coins before they hit the
prices we've seen these past few weeks.

~~~
jacquesm
Trying to liquidate that much would simply cause the market to collapse.

~~~
pdog
Do you have any idea what the size of the order book is?

~~~
jacquesm
<http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/>

[http://bitcoin-otc.com/vieworderbook.php?type=SELL&nick=...](http://bitcoin-
otc.com/vieworderbook.php?type=SELL&nick=&thing=&otherthing=&eitherthing=&notes=)

------
ryandvm
Fascinating, but I certainly don't hold it against him. 100 MM seems like a
pretty modest take for a guy that invents a revolutionary currency.

There are certainly easier ways to make 100 million dollars.

~~~
joshmlewis
Like what?

~~~
rkuykendall-com
There are a lot of people and companies worth over 100 million dollars. I only
know of one revolutionary crypto-currency.

~~~
rmc
Selection bias. You only know of one _popular_ revolutionary cypto-currency.
There are loads of companies worth $0 (or much less than $100M)

~~~
cheapsteak
Popularity is essential to 'revolutionary'-ness. It's not revolutionary if no
one uses it

------
ZeroCoin
The same question/comment was posted to r/bitcoin a few days ago:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c48u0/how_did_bitc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c48u0/how_did_bitcoins_difficulty_stay_at_exactly_1_for/)

This comment on that post seems to calculate the number of people mining
bitcoins for the first year:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c48u0/how_did_bitc...](http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c48u0/how_did_bitcoins_difficulty_stay_at_exactly_1_for/c9cwqn2)

If satoshi was indeed just testing the network... why not use "testnet" or
simply re-set the blockchain once you were satisfied with the results of your
work and release it to individuals?

Oh, wait... because you wouldn't hold 7.8% of all the Bitcoins that will ever
exist then if you did that.

Just because almost half of those first 1.8M bitcoins mined were
"transferred", doesn't mean that they ever transferred ownership.

~~~
dustcoin
Bitcoin was announced on a cryptography mailing list and released to the
public at most a week after the blockchain was created, as proven by the
headline in the genesis block. The Bitcoin whitepaper was released months
earlier. Anyone had an opportunity to mine early on.

------
incision
Tilting at windmills.

More accurately, asking the most ardent followers of bitcoin to help launch an
investigation into their prime diety.

This discussion and variations of it has been going on for years now. Each new
attempt has/will be dismissed by the faithful with some combination of the
following:

A) You're wrong.

B) He deserves it.

C) That's just like everything else.

D) You're just envious.

------
treelovinhippie
Greatest pyramid scheme ever.

~~~
efnx
Can you explain why?

~~~
antiscam
I'll give it a go. The early distribution of bitcoins seems to have been
enough to motivate lots of relatively early adopters to promote it
aggressively, maybe out of ideology or maybe just out of greed. Their claims,
which fueled the recent speculative frenzy, have always been that Bitcoin
would have a continuous, exponential growth against all other currencies. "It
always goes up." "Get in before it's too late."

I can see how relatively small amounts of money could be invested into
Bitcoins as speculation or just play. Several tens of millions of dollars have
presumably been transferred to Bitcoin holders so far, in the aggregate. But
many people are investing on claims that a single bitcoin will eventually be
worth $10,000, $100,000, or $1 million. For that to happen, the world would
have to transfer massive wealth to the early adopters, as this early adopter
explains:

[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175833.msg1830933#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175833.msg1830933#msg1830933)

Why would anyone do that rather than setting up an alternative? Massive
delusions are possible, but it seems far more likely that the claim that a
bitcoin will be worth $10,000 will start to seem ludicrous to everyone, as it
obviously is.

After that, why would anyone buy a bitcoin for $100, or even $30 or $10?
There's little practical use for them other than drugs or illegal gambling.
And they're hardly worth speculatively buying at $100 just so that they could
be sold at $120 or $150.

It's got to die eventually, unless everyone decide that they don't mind
depreciating the value of everything else just so that the early adopters of
this scheme can have untold wealth dumped into their laps. It's a fascinating
technology, but that doesn't mean the speculative delusion will last forever.

Pyramid scheme? Just so. Of course, to some degree so is gold -- but gold has
a much wider existing distribution (compared to Bitcoin), a much deeper
history, and backers far more significant, both intellectually and
financially, than the childish ideologues of bitcointalk.org.

~~~
shredfvz
I'm sorry, but your comment seems blinded a bit by ... I'm not sure what the
right word is? angst, self-hatred, jealousy? There's a lot of negativity in
general coming from the HN crowd towards BTC, I'm guessing because everyone
here was more than capable of installing the original Satoshi client and
mining early on, but chose not to or didn't hear about it. With BTC now on the
rise, of course it all seems so obvious, and oh so unfair.

Everyone had the chance to mine in the earliest of days, that's certainly true
for me and I sometimes kick myself about it. Hindsight is 20/20.

~~~
antiscam
Well, rather than armchair psychology, you could consider the points I made
themselves. Do you think there is a good reason for the world to transfer
massive wealth to those who currently own bitcoins, rather than setting up an
alternative (assuming that the fascinating technology of Bitcoin solves a
problem that anyone except ideologues have in the first place)?

~~~
shredfvz
I considered your points. You pretend as if the claims of early adopters are
to blame for fueling the recent "frenzy". Really? Are you really saying a
group of early adopters are entirely to blame for a market appraising a
formerly unknown asset?

If you lacked the vision, the luck, the timeliness, etc. of an early adopter,
fair's fair. Pay them their respects. I still kick myself for not having my
wits about me when I first heard about Bitcoin.

As for your alternative, I don't see why not. You could create a clone of
Bitcoin today, why not do it yourself? They did that with Litecoin, too. In
fact the author of Litecoin created it because he felt "wronged" the same way
you do now. He felt as if too many people missed the boat with Bitcoin, and
clearly people should have a second chance of early adopting such a
revolutionary concept.

I don't feel the same way.

~~~
antiscam
As you'll see from my comment history, I was playing with significant money in
Bitcoin early on. I have at least paper gains that are quite satisfying.
Nothing I'm saying is personal or is based on any kind of jealousy. It's weird
of you to assume that it is.

~~~
jnbiche
I call BS here absent a Bitcoin signature proving your supposed ownership of
"significant" Bitcoins. If anything is weird, it's that someone who was
supposedly interested enough in Bitcoin to buy or mine a significant amount
"early on" has spent the vast majority of your past umpteen comments bashing
Bitcoin. I think it's sour grapes, and it surprises me that so many on HN, who
cheer on every Instagram knock-off that's sold for millions of dollars, are so
bitter toward the person or persons who invented and built a truly
revolutionary technology that has the potential to vastly change the way we do
business.

~~~
antiscam
I'm not "bitter" at Satoshi Nakamoto, or really at anyone. I'm trying to do
what I can, as I have from the beginning, to prevent people from falling for a
scam. I'm not alone in doing this, and many other good analysts are doing the
same thing. Is it worthwhile to try to apply arbitrary, amateur, and frankly
embarrassingly bad psychology to all of them?

I sign onto most of what is written here:
[http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_ch...](http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_chicago/2013/04/bitcoin_is_a_ponzi_scheme_the_internet_currency_will_collapse.html)

~~~
Andrew_Quentin
It is unfair of jnbiche to close discussion by simply saying sour grape, but
you seem to be too determined - maybe even evangelical looking at your nick -
perhaps its something to do with leftist ideology?

In any event, the article raises two points.

1 - the currency is deflationary.

I'd argue that it is an inherently stable currency no different than gold.
Many economists may say that a hard currency is not a good basis for an
economy, but many economists say it is. That includes Hayek who won a Nobel
for his theory of how best to allocate resources.

So to say that bitcoin will fail because it is deflationary is at best an
opinion. You're free to hold it but that hardly makes bitcoins a scam.

2\. Something better may come along.

That is basically saying bitcoins may fail, therefore it is a scam. In that
case, most of the companies YC funds are a scam. They too disproportionately
reward the founder and the first employees. You may say but they create a hard
product of value or offer a service. Firstly, I'd say bitcoins is a product.
It is not tangible, it is only 0s and 1s, but it is a product created out of
applied mathematical theories and formulas and computational power. I'd also
say it is a service for obvious reasons.

Even assuming you disagree with the latter points, lets go back to the YC
funded company. Lets say they create something like google - a service -
facebook - a service - wordpress - a product. Lots of people invest in these -
making the founder and first employees rich beyond means - then something
better comes along. Are you suggesting google is a scam? Oh but google has
value. Say who? It provides a service - so does bitcoin.

------
rayj
For all we know about satashi he/she/it could be working with in-q-tel or any
other politically motivated entity.

What really matters though is that whoever owns 7.8% of existing bitcoins has
the ability to manipulate the market, due to their 'I got there first with my
old gpu farm' advantage. Want to crash the market? Go for it... Of course they
don't have the control that the Federal Reserve has, but they also don't have
anywhere near the flak. Treat bitcoin like you treat going to the casino,
except Mt. Gox doesn't give out free drinks.

Take my advice with a grain of salt, but I would put my faith in currencies
that are backed by strong operational second-strike nuclear capability and a
developed economy. This leaves USA/FR/UK as the winners, with
India/Russia/China as runners up, since they are not developed nations yet.
CHF is also a good reserve, but everyone especially the Europeans have been
fleeing to it, and the Swiss caved to the USA so their 'banking secrecy' is
not what it is advertized to be.

------
ZeroCoin
The "yes men"/cult mentality on bitcointalk.org is infuriating.

Namely comments like this:
[https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175996.msg1834237#ms...](https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=175996.msg1834237#msg1834237)

It's obvious what's going on. They own a lot of bitcoins, but can't be made to
look stupid by admitting to this travesty of a pre-mine that they all
overlooked.

~~~
ewillbefull
There was no pre-mine. The genesis block contains a headline:

> The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

He made bitcoin public exactly after this. He even announced it on a mailing
list months before. Unless he had a time machine it's impossible for there to
be foul play.

------
Tichy
Could be a challenge to anonymously sell those first bitcoins.

~~~
chii
why does it need to be anonymously sold?

~~~
Tichy
Because so far Satoshi has kept his real identity a secret.

