Hal received the first transaction from Satoshi and tweeted about the project just days release. What are the odds Satoshi reached out to Hal (or vice/versa) first when he could have contacted dozens of other interested cypherpunks?
Additionally, Satoshi's aire became more somber and bleak in the weeks leading up to his disappearance. Coincidentally, Hal passed shortly after from years of battling disease.
It doesn't make too much sense that Satoshi was Hal to be honest. The more you read about what happened in the beginning, the more you realized they were two different people.
If I was a cryptographer with a nym, I'd also be sure to document the story of my involvement from my "true name" just so there's testimony that provides evidence of separation of my identities.
There's precedent for anonymous founders using their alternative accounts to spread awareness of the project. The first username to mention the Silk Road belonged to Ross, for example.
Plenty of nyms are involved in the same company or organization as their true identity.
Just observations. Satoshi is whoever you want him to be. That's the beauty.
My guess is that in 10 years the 1 million sats will slowly be distributed back into the ecosystem with the message "Satoshi has to die so Bitcoin can live" or something like that.
There is no point in distributing his coins, even if he did return. Also, there is no proof Satoshi even had access to 1 million bitcoin. By not returning, and by never moving his coins, it makes everyone else's stack that much more valuable.
Maybe he just doesn't want a big target on his back. I think I would have done the same. And about his coins, he probably was a wealthy man before bitcoin so he doesn't really need to use them and prefers to "burn" them in order to make bitcoin even more scarce
What are the chances that 2 or more people are able to keep their mouth shut? A lot less than one person. Probabilities point to one person using the discoveries of many different people to build the jig saw puzzle that is Bitcoin.
Bitcoin has been developed for over a decade now by a large group of people.
But if you read the original posts and software releases from around 2009, you can see that it was pretty much a single, very talented, developer. This is not too uncommon in the world of open source.
I mean, if you have a look at the original release of the software, it was just three files, and not a huge amount of code:
Think so, But if he damaged his hard drives, or moved on to other stuff, who knows if he even was able to do anything. He would be a fool to make himself known now.