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I'm honestly surprised that all of the alleged satoshis haven't been kid napped by armed gangs trying to get the billions locked up in the first mined blocks.

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These 11 peope were kidnapped for their bitcoin.

https://www.wired.com/story/crypto-home-invasion-crime-ring/

Ditto. Even if the probability is 1/100, assuming they have at least $1bn net worth, that's a $10m expected payoff.

Expected value doesn't really work for rare events. A 1% chance of $50M and a 1% chance of $2B are barely different to a person.

For a person it doesn't matter. But the context here is gangs, and for organizations it could make a difference. $2B can be split many-ways and still have significant money for everyone.

Would be a pretty amusing black comedy. They kidnap the potential Satoshi, who is actually Satoshi but they’re not sure. [hijinx added here]. Then in the process of torturing him, they accidentally kill him before he reveals the password. And then it’s confirmed he’s who they wanted.

"Where is the money, Lebowski!? Or should I say Satoshi!"

At least one of the Satoshi fakes moves around with a big security detail. For them it's presumably just a cost of their faking business and paid for by the people they're defrauding.

But for someone involuntarily accused that's another matter. A security detail is eye wateringly expensive -- particularly one comprehensive enough to stop kidnappers in general.

Most kidnappings seem to involve kidnapping people who do in fact have the resources to pay to some extent.

They don’t seem to occur in a speculative fashion where “maybe this person can pay…”.

Anyone who knows, knows the coins haven’t been touched in a suspiciously long time, and moving Bitcoin is not always anonymous…

> They don’t seem to occur in a speculative fashion where “maybe this person can pay…”.

For potentially tens of billions of dollars, I'm willing to bet that some criminals would make an exception.

They haven’t yet.

How do you know they haven't?

"Alleged Satoshis" are generally public, almost by definition. We would notice if they disappeared. We would also notice if the well-known Satoshi-associated wallets had any activity, which would be an unavoidable signal if any such kidnapping succeeded in finding the real one. Not everything is a deep mystery.

A lot of old timers in this space have been subject to kidnapping and ransom attacks, some real and some merely threatened, as well as more mundane phone porting and SWAT'ing. These don't make the news.

Then there are the other crypto people who have met grisly ends: Bob Lee and Li Chiming, as well as the suspicious deaths of John Forsyth, Tiantian Kullander, Vyacheslav Taran, and Park Mo. Not candidates for Satoshi, but it goes to show that "outing" potential Satoshis is not a safe thing to do.

They made enough news that you know about them, at least. Anyway, I don't disagree with the last part.

I know about them because I'm one of them. (This is a pseudonymous account, but I've been a bitcoin developer since 2010, and subject to multiple personal attacks. Thankfully no kidnapping or ransom... yet.)

Stay safe.

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