Nobody knows what happens next. The most obvious scenario is that once one of the deadlines has passed, the wallets gradually take profits. Or at least, let’s hope “gradually”, because 80,000 BTC dumped on the market would mean a guaranteed crash, and a lasting one.

But you can also imagine a scenario in which nothing happens, and these new wallets become the new sleepers, like those gigantic sums that have been snoozing for more than 10 years, with nobody knowing why they stay silent.

Some of their owners are probably dead. Hal Finney and Len Sassaman, both among the possible Satoshis, died in 2014 and 2011 respectively. As did Dan Kaminsky in 2021. Whether or not they were Satoshi takes nothing away from the fact that they took part in the development very early on, probably held tens of thousands of BTC, and probably died with their keys. Sassaman’s wife has said plainly that she had no access to her late husband’s hard drive. And that she had no wish to.

Because that may be the other reason: not wanting to touch them, out of dogma. Perhaps because if the primitive BTC were sold, it could be read as a loss of confidence, as if Musk dumped his Tesla shares. Perhaps because anarcho-cypherpunks from the underground hacker scenes of the ’90s choke every day watching cryptobros speculate like donkeys on their revolutionary tech (in the most basic sense) and cosy up, out of pure self-interest, to the biggest capitalist fortunes, Blackrock first among them.

I have said it several times before (in French), but I am convinced that Satoshi Nakamoto is Len Sassaman. I have nothing to prove it. It is my conviction. And a bit of a dream, too. Because Sassaman is the perfect Satoshi: romanesque and romantic, a committed cypherpunk, a cryptography genius, and depressive.

The identity of the robber (and probably robbers) will probably remain secret. But what he does once his 90-day deadline runs out will tell us more about him than a first name and a surname.

Perhaps it isn’t even a heist, but a piece of staging, a kind of two fingers up at the whole industry from an early adopter watching it all from afar. Either way, it is probably still the most incredible operation in crypto history, as much for the amount as for the means used, from the little messages to the use of one of finance’s fallen stars.

And what if the best thing were never to know?

My warmest thanks to A. F. for his help with the technical side of things.