One thing I think people don't really pay enough attention to within the context of Bitcoin, is the threat that quantum computing poses to the earliest coins on the Bitcoin blockchain. According to Andreas Antonopoulos (video linked below), due to the way that public addresses were first implemented in Bitcoin, all of Satoshi's coins will eventually be hacked.
The reason for this is simple, the public keys of all of Satoshi's 1 million Bitcoin are viewable on the public blockchain. Since these unspent outputs were created under the old system of addressing called p2pk (pay-to-public-key) before the adoption of p2pkh (pay-to-public-key-hash) they are vulnerable to reverse engineering of the private keys by a sufficiently advanced quantum computer. These keys are not protected by the SHA-256 algorithm.
This means they will be able to be hacked and spent to new wallets, likely collapsing the value of Bitcoin for some period of time, potentially years. (Black swan event with an 85% drawdown anyone?)
Essentially, this is an inevitability that it WILL happen in the future, and the only way to avoid it would be to update the protocol and move those old coins to new wallets under a more quantum resistant wallet system, however, the problem is that lost coins such as those of Satoshi, will not be able to be moved because the owner of them is likely not around to do so themselves. We cannot move them for Satoshi as this would undermine the ownership of the entire network.
Quantum computing will need to reach a complexity of about 5,000 qubits in order to compromise the system. The most advanced quantum computer today boasts a complexity of approximately 256 qubits. Since the year 2000 when we first had a quantum computer with 5 qubits we have increased the computing power of quantum computers by approximately 5^3 in 20 years. Another magnitude of 3 increase in 20 years would put us at about 15,600 qubits, more than enough to hack Satoshi's coins. By my estimates we will see these coins, and by extension a larger than usual collapse in the price of Bitcoin, within the next 15 years or so.
Thanks for coming to my Ted Talk.
TLDR: Satoshi's coins will be hacked cuz quantum computing, number go down actually.
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