It makes NO sense whatsoever to "transfer" a private key instead of transferring the coins.

You can only _share_ a private key, you cannot transfer it. There is always a possibility that a "previous owner" has a copy, and thus is the current co-owner.

Are you going to tell me that people who developed a system for transferring coins were using utterly broken and non-secure private key "transfers" in 2009? This makes no sense whatsoever.

In 2009 there were no tax consequences or anything like that, so there is absolutely no reason to not do it in a secure way. Especially if you have reasons to transfer said keys.

@killers, your thinking is way too narrow about private keys.

A private key can sign something yet it may be that no one knows the key. And for that reason it can be transferred between different groups of people securely.

That the team had all this figured out and implemented from the beginning in the very clever way they did, is like everything else about Bitcoin's creation, astonishing indeed.