Open Letter to Satoshi ✉️
About the fate of his vulnerable fortune
Hello,
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Dear Satoshi,
It's been 15 years since you vanished into the digital ether, leaving behind the greatest mystery in finance: Hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin, maybe over a million, untouched and unspent.
Worth a fortune. What many believe to be the world's largest unclaimed digital inheritance.
But I'm not writing to ask who you are or where you went. I'm writing because your coins are about to become the ultimate test case for digital resurrection, and you might not like how it ends.
Neighbours in the Digital Graveyard
Satoshi, you're not alone in cryptocurrency's afterlife. Conservative estimates put 3-4 million Bitcoin in permanent digital graves. Forgotten keys, crashed hard drives, and deceased owners who took their secrets to actual graves.
James Howells has spent a decade digging through 110,000 tonnes of Welsh garbage for his 8,000 Bitcoin. Stefan Thomas has two password attempts left before losing access to 7,002 coins forever.
Read: What Happens to Lost Bitcoin? 🥺
Then there are the hardware graveyards. Hard drives crash, USB sticks get lost, computers get thrown away. The Parity wallet hack of 2017 accidentally froze over 500,000 ETH, demonstrating how software bugs can create instant digital mausoleums. Mt. Gox creditors are still fighting over 850,000 Bitcoin lost in history's most famous exchange collapse.
But your ~1 million Bitcoin dwarfs them all. The ultimate digital mausoleum, frozen since Bitcoin's earliest days.
While others lost their coins through carelessness or catastrophe, you chose dormancy. Every day you don't move them, the world debates whether you're dead, detained, or simply watching your creation from the shadows.
The quantum grave robbers are coming
Satoshi, I need to tell you something that might make you uncomfortable? your Bitcoins are sitting ducks.
Quantum computers could crack them within years, maybe sooner. Experts estimate 25% of all Bitcoin — over 4 million coins — sit in quantum-vulnerable addresses. Yours are among the most exposed.
The creator of Bitcoin could become one of quantum computing's most high-profile cryptocurrency victims.
While you've remained silent, the Bitcoin development community is racing to build quantum defenses. BIP-360 introduces quantum-resistant addresses. Teams are exploring OP_CAT reactivation and STARK integration. They're building the armour your creation needs. Although No formal BIP for quantum-resistant addresses is widely adopted as of June 2025.
If quantum computers crack your addresses, there's nothing the Bitcoin community can do to stop it, as you know already. No emergency buttons, no admin keys, no way to freeze or burn coins. Your Bitcoin will be quantum-vulnerable until either you move them to safety or quantum computers move them for you.
Modern inheritance technology could have prevented most Bitcoin losses, but it can't resurrect existing digital corpses. Platforms like Sarcophagus offer "dead man's switches" that release wallet information to beneficiaries. Casa provides multi-signature inheritance planning.
But these solutions require advance planning. They can't retroactively recover Bitcoin that's already lost. For the millions of coins already in digital graves, inheritance technology offers no salvation.
Your situation is unique. Your coins aren't technically lost, just dormant. You could move them anytime, if you're still alive and have access. This uncertainty makes your Bitcoin the most psychologically significant in existence.
The legal excavation attempts?
Courts have proven largely helpless against cryptographic finality. James Howells lost his £600 million claim against Newport City Council. Stefan Thomas can't compel anyone to break his IronKey encryption.
The law recognises Bitcoin as property, but property without keys is property without access. Courts can order many things, but they can't order mathematics to surrender.
However, your case would be different. If someone successfully claimed to be you or your heir, they'd need to prove it cryptographically, by moving your coins. The ultimate identity verification.
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I’m talking about the economic earthquake.
Satoshi, your dormant Bitcoin represents more than digital archaeology.
Lost Bitcoin creates artificial scarcity. Your ~1 million coins, plus millions of others permanently lost, effectively reduce Bitcoin's supply below 21 million. This scarcity supports higher prices for remaining coins.
If your Bitcoin suddenly returned to circulation — through quantum recovery, legal proceedings, or your own return — the supply shock would be massive.
Yes, adding your Bitcoin to active trading wouldn't technically increase supply, they already exist on the ledger. But moving coins that have been dormant for 15 years would create massive psychological and market disruption.
Bitcoin's scarcity narrative depends partly on the assumption that lost coins stay lost. Your resurrection would fundamentally alter how investors think about Bitcoin's long-term value.
Despite all these resurrection pathways, the most probable outcome is that your Bitcoin will remain exactly where they are: visible on the blockchain but forever unmoved.
Whether by choice, death, or lost access, your coins have become Bitcoin's most powerful symbol. They represent the permanence of cryptographic commitment and the mystery of digital identity.
Moving them would answer questions the community might not want answered. Keeping them dormant preserves the mythology that makes Bitcoin more than just another payment system.
Your move, Satoshi
So here's my question: What are you going to do about it?
If you're alive and watching, you have maybe five years before quantum computers become practical threats. You could move your coins to quantum-resistant addresses, proving you're still active without revealing your identity.
If you're gone, your coins face an uncertain fate. Quantum thieves, community burning, or eternal dormancy — none of which you chose.
If you never existed as a single person, if "Satoshi Nakamoto" was always a collective or institution, then perhaps those coins were meant to be permanently unreachable — the ultimate demonstration of Bitcoin's deflationary properties.
The bitcoin community debates burning your coins or protecting them, but they can't decide without knowing your intent. Are you a person with rights to digital property, or a pseudonym whose assets have become public goods?
Your coins represent Bitcoin's greatest governance test. Not because they're quantum-vulnerable, that's fixable. Because your mysterious absence forces the community to decide what Bitcoin owes to absent creators and whether true decentralisation means letting mathematics take its course, even with your fortune.
Quantum computers are coming. The grave robbers are preparing. The community is watching.
After 15 years of silence, maybe it's time to say something.
Sincerely, Thejaswini - a curious observer of your digital creation.
Week That Was 📆
Saturday: Fixing Web3’s Ads with Attribution 📺
Thursday: The GENIUS Stablecoin Play 💸
Wednesday: Stablecoins Go Corporate? 🏢
Tuesday: Crypto’s Courting Wall Street 🔔
Monday: BTC Shrugs Geopolitics
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