But touch that $1B+ wallet and suddenly nothing is worth anything... so if I had the capability to silently steal money from the bitcoin blockchain, I would go slow, and in discrete places.
All transactions are publicly visible, so everyone would know that it was now possible for someone to take bitcoins from people. Value depends on resale. Why would anyone ever buy a bitcoin or accept payment with them if they can just disappear at any time?
Ah, I read it too fast and missed the theft context regarding Satoshi's wallet. Thanks. Part of me hopes that in the not-too-distant future Satoshi will do a tiny transaction on his wallet just so all the speculation ramps up again and we get another wave of entertainment.
If that's the problem, you just say "this person had lax security" or "their computer was compromised." In the absence of real proof that will be the default expectation anyway.
I think the other factor to consider is that once you try to sell $200B worth of Bitcoin, the value of Bitcoin suddenly drops to near zero (due to supply/demand).
Which is also why all those company market caps you see quoted everywhere are totally ridiculous. A company is not worth the latest price of a small share transaction multiplied by all the outstanding shares.
There's enough depth in the stock market to make company market caps pretty real. If you had a big chunk of a company, you could sell it for close to the trading price. I'd be shocked if you couldn't get half, as a nice round example number.
I would not be shocked if trying to sell $200B in bitcoin gets you far less than half.
