Is merit really that important to people? Who cares about forum merit that much?

An anecdotal conversation that may be nothing, but regarding the 10k wallets: I consulted on a project roughly 9-10 years ago with someone who had worked for a three letter that was investigating tying wallet owners to real life identities (they were scarily accurate in doing so back then, which I assume is no surprise to anyone here). The person said while they were on the team that they were in control of a thumb drive containing exactly 10,000 btc. We joked that they could retire then, but that they would probably never get to enjoy anything if they tried to run off with it.

I forgot about this conversation until these recent posts. I'm curious if this is a way to shift a lot of coins from a specific group's ownership to something more.... open/acceptable than "them" owning it or having to talk about where they got it.