I think likely Satoshi Nakamoto is dead and his coins are lost forever. Because they were never moved. Think about it. Jeff Bezos or Bill Gates have cashed out some. Surely he would cash out 1% by this point.
You forgot to eliminate other possibilities: 1. The private keys are lost to the early coins. SN is still alive and well, he is just clumsy. 2. The keys are locked up (Tulip Trust) in some kind of legal problem. 3. The entity who is SN keeps them for some kind of further plan. 4. If the project was a government owned one, the coins are government property. 5. The owner of the coins doesn't know he/she has them. (inheritence) etc.etc.
True but my point is really to calculate the float. If those coins will never be sold, in all of those other possibilities, then they do not count. Then the market cap of bitcoin is a lot smaller and thus have a room to grow given the demand as a gold alternative.
Yeah but you have to add all the alternatives. Like silver, copper, bronz, cryptos also exist to suck up investors' money. So the market cap is really infinite.