I see a lot of arguments for or against whether the Satoshi era coins are lost or not. It does not matter and it should not matter.
I agree. No one has the right to point fingers and determine these coins are lost but these here aren't.
This subject shall be treated in the least subjective way possible. For that to happen, we have to imagine the blockchain is private for a second.
But it isn't. Pretending it is won't change that.
It is dangerous to introduce a mandatory migration because it is a precedent and it significantly lessens the credibility of Bitcoin and the bit of our community that feels safe with Bitcoin.
How safe would everyone feel knowing that exposing your public Bitcoin key can potentially result in your funds being stolen? People have been told not to reuse addresses for privacy reasons from the start and it still happens a lot. In the future the threat could be to our security, not just privacy. Still, many people would do the easier thing and reuse old addresses rather than generate a new one for every transaction. Yes, I know, it's their fault, but still...
I do not want to move from the stress of my bank freezing my funds for no reason to the stress of my Bitcoin turning to the void when I lack the time to migrate my coins in time.
True, that would be horrible.
Imagine the headlines of all news outlets. They would thrive off this subject, it would keep many people distant from Bitcoin. People who do not understand Bitcoin entirely may get out of it scared that one day they may not have access to their coins any more.
I can also see that fear happening if the headlines said something like,
quantum computers can now break Bitcoin encryption and steal your coins. Since media is nefarious, they will deliberately make it vague like that, without explaining which coins are potentially under a threat.