I dislike people who conflate the median with the average ("It’s just not possible for 60 percent of the men in a room to be above-average drivers, unless you’re at a Nascar convention." -- it is certainly possible, its not possible for 60% to be better than the median driver, even if you are at a NASCAR convention.)
Depending on the number of people in the room, it might not be that unlikely for 60% to be above the global median, either. If there are three people, 100% are going to be above the median, 66% are going to be above the median, 66% are going to be below the median, or 100% are going to be below the median... All of those is more "dramatic" an outcome than 60%.
I'd think Bitcoins would be a whole lot easier to trace than dollar bills.
The real reason behind this fear is that some consider Satoshi their hero and icon. Anything, therefore, that he doesn't or wouldn't (if you maintain this isn't the real Satoshi) approve of especially as it relates to himself inspires strong feelings and irrational justifications like "he could be kidnapped and tortured."
Or at least that's the only reason I can imagine this argument keeps coming up. Any other wealthy person could also be kidnapped and tortured. Heck, most wealthy (100m+) people probably have pretty valuable things just laying around their house that are far less traceable than Bitcoins.
Bitcoin is certainly easier to trace than dollar bills - I'm not confident about "a whole lot easier". But few people have the kinds of sums Satoshi purportedly has in BTC sitting around in any liquid asset in their home. I certainly hope Satoshi doesn't, either, but it's significantly more likely that he can move tremendous amounts of value without involving intermediaries (and thus more risk) than it would be for really any other individual.
Of course, in this case, I hope the bitcoin network would resign itself to coloring those coins, if Satoshi was extorted out of his coins.
Sure, but his bitcoins probably aren't just sitting around either. The fear was that he'd be kidnapped/tortured in order to acquire them. If we're allowing for that, it seems like anyone with sufficient wealth would be a target.
It's still easier to un-reversibly steal large $X in BTC than in USD, in most of the ways people store large amounts of the respective currencies. Stealing from your bank acount involves more people and more moving parts and thus more risk (and large transfers are watched).
I agree there's (hopefully) a good chance his BTC are in cold storage in a safety deposit box, or something. People fail to do that with BTC more often than people fail to put millions of USD in the bank, though.
Actually, I've been wondering if he didn't withdraw from BTC because he was embarrassed about having lost the private keys to his early accounts... :-P Not that I really think that likely, either.
Their money might be in various physical assets or a bank. This guy could have keys on seizable hardware and could be coerced into giving up passwords that might quickly lead to tens of millions.
