New on-chain analysis from Whale Alert says Bitcoin’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto mined an estimated 1,125,150 BTC, now worth an estimated $10.9 billion. In a Medium post, researchers describe how Satoshi continued mining with the same rig until at least May 2010.
- Whale Alert based its findings on Sergio Demian Lerner’s 2013 “extra nonce” technique which claimed Satoshi’s stash to be at some 1 million BTC. (Lerner referred to the possible Satoshi mining as the “Patoshi” pattern).
- Researchers identified a set of nonce patterns more specific to the Patoshi set which helped further isolate possible Satoshi-mined blocks.
- 22,503 of the first 54,316 blocks were mined by Satoshi under the new method, Whale Alert says.
- Satoshi maintained a constant mining scheme while the network was growing to protect it from 51% attacks, researchers suggest.
- The reliability of assuming nonce patterns are specific to certain mining rigs was called into scrutiny by BitMEX Research in 2018. They estimated Satoshi’s haul to be around 700,000 BTC.