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This could possibly have some connection to my involuntary hobby-horse.
Recent leaked emails[1] show that Calvin Ayre-- the billionaire rube that has been funding Craig Wright's litigation-- believes that Wright actually controls early addresses in the blockchain, consistent with Wright's initial claims but contradicting Wright claim in court (that he "stomped the hard drives"). Calvin believes Wright can only win the lawsuit against Bitcoin devs by using these early keys and has been pressuring Wright to do so. I'd agree that at this point it would be his only path to even have a chance of winning.
On December 20th the UK courts increased the security Wright owes the Bitcoin devs for trial to £900k. The remaining amount not already paid was due today. (We won't know for a few days if the payment to the court cleared). At the time of the transfer 26.91679286 was worth about £920k.
Up thread it's noted that the source of the funds has heavy BRC-20 activity and I've been told that Ayre has been significantly funding BRC-20 activity.
I wouldn't expect Wright to make the payment out of funds newly received from Ayre, but rather to make them out of float used to pay his legal representation going forward, and then get a top-up payment from Ayre. Wouldn't it be funny if Ayre paid Satoshi's address as part of an effort to force Wright to use it? It would be clever on his part: If he believes Wright will lose unless he uses the address then the fact that funding him via an address he can't use won't make things worse (and it might save Ayre money if Wright's inability to pay terminates the case early).
Another related explanation is that someone may have set this address as their primary address on a service, either as a joke or because they were LARPing as Satoshi-- and then they either accidentally withdrew to it or got kicked off the platform and automatically had their funds sent there. Who do we know LARPs as Satoshi and may have needed to spend another 26.9-ish Bitcoin today??
History may not repeat but it does rhyme. During the large ATO investigation into Wright, Wright sent some amount of bitcoin equal to his tax-ID *to* some high value address he was (falsely) claiming to own-- so he could then point to his tax ID on the blockexplorer page as evidence that he owned the address. The tax office didn't fall for it, but I could easily see some people falling for it.
All in all it's probably more likely that someone had the genesis address in their clipboard for some reason, but I wouldn't find any of the above too shocking and they are fun to consider.
[1] https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*DmMIH-i2RzAr3kWuG_yXSg.jpeg https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*eQQSk4xXbOupmoL_t1rp_g.jpeg
Recent leaked emails[1] show that Calvin Ayre-- the billionaire rube that has been funding Craig Wright's litigation-- believes that Wright actually controls early addresses in the blockchain, consistent with Wright's initial claims but contradicting Wright claim in court (that he "stomped the hard drives"). Calvin believes Wright can only win the lawsuit against Bitcoin devs by using these early keys and has been pressuring Wright to do so. I'd agree that at this point it would be his only path to even have a chance of winning.
On December 20th the UK courts increased the security Wright owes the Bitcoin devs for trial to £900k. The remaining amount not already paid was due today. (We won't know for a few days if the payment to the court cleared). At the time of the transfer 26.91679286 was worth about £920k.
Up thread it's noted that the source of the funds has heavy BRC-20 activity and I've been told that Ayre has been significantly funding BRC-20 activity.
I wouldn't expect Wright to make the payment out of funds newly received from Ayre, but rather to make them out of float used to pay his legal representation going forward, and then get a top-up payment from Ayre. Wouldn't it be funny if Ayre paid Satoshi's address as part of an effort to force Wright to use it? It would be clever on his part: If he believes Wright will lose unless he uses the address then the fact that funding him via an address he can't use won't make things worse (and it might save Ayre money if Wright's inability to pay terminates the case early).
Another related explanation is that someone may have set this address as their primary address on a service, either as a joke or because they were LARPing as Satoshi-- and then they either accidentally withdrew to it or got kicked off the platform and automatically had their funds sent there. Who do we know LARPs as Satoshi and may have needed to spend another 26.9-ish Bitcoin today??
History may not repeat but it does rhyme. During the large ATO investigation into Wright, Wright sent some amount of bitcoin equal to his tax-ID *to* some high value address he was (falsely) claiming to own-- so he could then point to his tax ID on the blockexplorer page as evidence that he owned the address. The tax office didn't fall for it, but I could easily see some people falling for it.
All in all it's probably more likely that someone had the genesis address in their clipboard for some reason, but I wouldn't find any of the above too shocking and they are fun to consider.
[1] https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:1400/format:webp/1*DmMIH-i2RzAr3kWuG_yXSg.jpeg https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:720/format:webp/1*eQQSk4xXbOupmoL_t1rp_g.jpeg