Satoshi Nakamoto is the mysterious inventor of Bitcoin, the revolutionary technology that has changed the world and created a new form of money. Despite his enormous influence and wealth, Satoshi has never revealed his identity and has never spent any of his Bitcoin.
How do we know how much Bitcoin Satoshi has? By analyzing the Bitcoin blockchain, which records every transaction ever made on the network. Researchers have been able to identify some of the addresses that belong to Satoshi, based on clues and patterns in his mining activity and transactions.
Satoshi Nakamotoâs addresses
Satoshi used many different addresses to receive Bitcoin, probably more than 20,000. He created a new address for each block he mined, and since he was the main miner in the early days of Bitcoin, he earned a lot of block rewards.
Most of Satoshi Nakamotoâs addresses are not very special, except for the fact that they are owned by the creator of Bitcoin. They mostly contain 50 BTC each, which is the amount of the block reward at that time, and they have never moved since then.
But there are some Satoshi Nakamoto addresses that have interesting stories behind them.
The âHal Finneyâ address
One of these addresses is the one that Satoshi used to send 10 BTC to Hal Finney. This was the first Bitcoin transaction between two people, as before that, only miners (mostly Satoshi) were getting Bitcoin from the protocol.
This address now has a balance of 18.43 BTC, which is worth about $481,000 at the time of writing. This balance has increased over time, as some people have sent BTC to this address, probably as a way of honoring Satoshi for his amazing invention.
The last time this address made an outgoing transaction was on January 12, 2009, just three days after Bitcoin was launched.
The Bitcoin genesis address
The most famous of Satoshiâs addresses is the Bitcoin genesis address. This is the address that mined the first block on the Bitcoin blockchain. This address has a balance of 72.6 BTC, which is worth about $1.9 million at current prices. Like the previous address, this one also receives BTC from time to time, as a tribute from users.
The Bitcoin genesis address still gets BTC. Image source: Blockchain.com
An interesting fact about the genesis address is that the 50 BTC it got as the reward for mining the first block cannot be spent. According to Charles Hoskinson, this is because Satoshi did not add the coinbase transaction of the genesis block to the global transaction database that Bitcoin nodes use. Hoskinson said he did not know if this was intentional or accidental by Satoshi.
But the rest of the BTC in Satoshi Nakamotoâs addresses can be spent normally. However, Satoshi has never touched any of his Bitcoin, which makes some people think that he might be dead.
Satoshi has a huge amount of Bitcoin
Itâs impossible to know for sure how much Bitcoin Satoshi has, because he wanted to keep his privacy. But blockchain researchers have tried to figure out which addresses are likely to belong to Satoshi.
For example, Sergio Damian Lerner estimates that Satoshi Nakamoto mined around 1.1 million BTC. Lerner found a pattern in how Bitcoin blocks were mined in the period when Satoshi was active. This âPatoshiâ pattern helped him distinguish between blocks probably mined by Satoshi and blocks probably mined by others with high confidence.
Many people agree that Satoshi Nakamoto owns around 1 million BTC
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