Re: Satoshi ..Private key lost?

- He is afraid of beeing found when he spends one satoshi
- He forgot his wallet passwords
- The harddisk with the wallets crashed
- He is dead

(Most likely in that order)

I think he would have more than one harddisk with the wallets. He's either dead or not deleted the keys, if he was going to spend the coins he would have already.

it would have made sense to give Gavin a backup? lol .. who knows Wink

That would have been a horrible idea. At the time that Satoshi left he really did not know Gavin that well and he had really not yet shown himself to be as trustworthy as he has shown himself to be today.

Also it is never a good idea to give someone your private keys unless you intend for them to take/spend the bitcoin that the private key controls

Satoshi must have planned for a scenario where his account access would transfer to someone trusted after his death. Like transferring a Gmail account where private keys are stored in 'Draft' folder.

You can setup your Google account to be accessible to someone else in case you don't login for a specified period.