As I understand it, Satoshi has not posted anything online for many years now. Exactly when the last time was is apparently fuzzy.
Assuming that he didn't die (or was murdered), would he not have made some sort of statement along the lines of:
This is my last message. I will now withdraw forever, putting the Bitcoin revolution in the hands of you all. Please don't disappoint me.
? Did he really just stop posting/discussing one day? It seems like such an odd behaviour if it really was like that.
I'm surprised no-one's mentioned his email to Mike Hearn on the 23rd of April 2011, where he said that he had "moved on to other things". It was a personal email, but it was the closest thing to a farewell he sent to anyone:
From: Satoshi Nakamoto [email protected] Date: Sat, Apr 23, 2011 at 3:40 PM
To: Mike Hearn [email protected]
Subject: Re: Holding coins in an unspendable state for a rolling time windowI had a few other things on my mind (as always). One is, are you planning on rejoining the community at some point (eg for code reviews), or is your plan to permanently step back from the limelight?
I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone.
I do hope your BitcoinJ continues to be developed into an alternative client. It gives Java devs something to work on, and it's easier with a simpler foundation that doesn't have to do everything. It'll get critical mass when impatient new users can get started using it while the other one is still downloading the block chain.
The only other email he sent after this date was one to Gavin Andresen on the 26th of April 2011, the day he is widely regarded to have "disappeared" (note that this email was quoted by Gavin in an interview):
I wish you wouldn’t keep talking about me as a mysterious shadowy figure, the press just turns that into a pirate currency angle. Maybe instead make it about the open source project and give more credit to your dev contributors; it helps motivate them.
Beyond this, there are two heavily disputed communications that may have occurred since 2011: The 2014 P2P foundation post, and the 2015 cryptography mailing list post. While never definitively disproven, these posts are regarded with high scepticism in the Bitcoin community (and rightfully so).
There are no records of Satoshi making a proper goodbye. In 2010, Bitcoin discussion primarily took place in the forum on Bitcoin.org. This has since been transferred to bitcointalk.org, but all of the posts remain. You can see from Satoshi's profile that the last post made was in 2010 and was not a goodbye but a post discussing changes to the software.
Some people claim to have been contacted by Satoshi afterwards, but these cannot be confirmed. I don't think such communications would be considered a goodbye either.
Did Satoshi make any kind of “farewell speech” before leaving?
No
As I understand it, Satoshi has not posted anything online for many years now. Exactly when the last time was is apparently fuzzy. Did he really just stop posting/discussing one day? It seems like such an odd behaviour if it really was like that.
If I check the last posts on Bitcointalk: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=3;sa=showPosts, he/she/they posted something about Wikileaks accepting Bitcoin donations and only one post after this about DoS:
It would have been nice to get this attention in any other context. WikiLeaks has kicked the hornet's nest, and the swarm is headed towards us. -Satoshi (December 11, 2010, 11:39:16 PM)
Maybe he/she/they were not comfortable continuing to post after this event because of privacy, OPSEC etc. We can only speculate and would never know the exact reason for being inactive. Some people also think being inactive after few days was always the plan assuming Satoshi had studied social economics & psychology in late 90s.
