[Bartweiss]

> But they could have.

This seems sort of unfair. I mean, one of the things that has helped stabilize Bitcoin is that it wasn't controlled by a single entity, and many of the early blocks haven't gone anywhere. Several other cryptos have done poorly because some early consortium got too much control and everyone else backed off.

One advantage of the public transaction log is that it helps people judge whether they're being scammed this way. Nakamoto made a killing, certainly, but I also suspect that a sudden sell-off of the origin block would tank prices.