As what comes to Satoshi's identity
Somehow I believe that he might be individual who wanted to change the world (and already succeeded in doing so, future will make the judgement on this). I know couple of these kinds of guys and what is remarkable of them is that their principles cant be bought with money.
Other possibility which makes perfect sense is that the debt of USA is so big that I think they will do everything to wiggle out of the situation. Every born american is bonded with over 100 000 dollars of debt. Its their birth right (or weight) at the moment. And situation is just worsening. If I recall average state-loan for average family is something like 500.00 dollars! It's just sick.
If somehow the largest bagholder would be USA and their current debt is in dollars, they would just need to make sure that bitcoin (or some other crypto currency) is to succeed in future and voila, things look wholly different.
Only way to them to repay their debts is to crash the whole dollar system and invaluate the dollar and THEN make the payment. In the meantime dollar should be replaced of course with other currency and here bitcoin comes handy. Basicly they need to do nothing, just push little behind the curtain and it happens all by itself! And at the same time they could blame it on everybody else but them=)
And when somebody has the biggest bag in bitcoin ecosystem he rules the world !
These auctions they are doing might just be theatrical while at the same time accumulating/holding in the background.
What saddens me is that I have started to think the latter option is more reasonable

Whoa, I think I just exceeded myself in the reasoning XD