> Bear in mind that this is the same sort of analysis that attributed large amounts of the initially mined coins to "Satoshi", when they were in fact core developer Gregory Maxwell's.
Citation or redaction, please.
If Gregory Maxwell owns a life-changing sum of early bitcoins, it is certainly news to me. If he does not, then you are making claims that could endanger the life and well being of someone who has worked very hard in service of the bitcoin community.
Anecdotally, I think I remember that incident, but unfortunately I don't remember precisely where I heard it.
There have been a lot of very-wrong analyses of the blockchain which have gotten people riled up about one thing or another and then turned out to be bogus. The whole process has sometimes shown unsettling parallels with numerology. It's good that nwh is reminding everyone to try to be as skeptical as possible.
It'll be interesting to see whether the evidence turns out to match the story.
The only incident I can think of was a paper by Adi Shamir and Dorit Ron claiming Satoshi had a connection to Silk Road, and the actual owner of the coins (Dustin Trammell) came forward and demonstrated that (a) the coins were his and (b) the transaction was with MtGox not Silk Road. Gregory Maxwell was not involved in any way:
He's mentioned it on the forums directly, though I'm not in a position to dig it up right now. It's fairly easy to infer that he sold a lot at low prices, from his posts it doesn't seem that he is particularly rolling in the stuff. Probably best not to speculate on such things too much though unless he specifically brings it up.
Citation or redaction, please.
If Gregory Maxwell owns a life-changing sum of early bitcoins, it is certainly news to me. If he does not, then you are making claims that could endanger the life and well being of someone who has worked very hard in service of the bitcoin community.