~snip~
I'm wondering who else could have been mining coins back then aside from Satoshi and Hal. I'm sure there was a handful of other individuals.
I don't know how credible it is, but James Howells (the guy with the most expensive HDD) claims he was one of the first to mine with Satoshi. However, as far as we know, he still hasn't found his HDD, and considering that he claims that the disk has encryption, we can assume that it is not his coins.
...When asked what he will talk about, he goes on to explain that he’s been involved with Bitcoin since December 2008, which is when he first downloaded the whitepaper and software. James says he was one of the first six people to run and mine Bitcoin. He mined with his machine connected with the creator of Bitcoin – ‘Satoshi Nakamoto’...The lost hard drive also contains “the real IP address of satoshi as well as the wallet file,” adding: “not that I would dox satoshi ?”.