How many Bitcoins does Satoshi Nakamoto have? What could happen if he sells them? Is he a threat to the future of the network?
One of the reasons Bitcoin is so highly prized is because of its scarcity. There are 21 million Bitcoins in the world and there can never be moreAs of today, more than 19 million have already been mined and it is estimated that the last one will be mined in 2.140, because it will be increasingly difficult to mine Bitcoin and each block will contain fewer rewards, thanks to the halving and increasing network difficulty.
Does this mean there are 19 million Bitcoin on the market? The answer is no, according to a 20217 Chainalysis report, it is estimated that Between 2,78 and 3,79 million Bitcoin have been lost, which accounts for around 20% of the circulating supply of Bitcoin.
Where are those Bitcoins that have been lost? In some cases they have been left behind blocked in wallets for which the access keys have been lostThere are also Bitcoin locked in lost cold wallets, like James Howell's, containing more than 7.500 BTC, which he accidentally threw away in 2013.
Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin
Among these “off-market” Bitcoin are those of Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, which is considered to be the “Biggest Bitcoin Whale” in the WorldIn fact, not even the Bitcoin community is sure how many BTC the anonymous creator of the network actually owns, so it has become something of a legend, like a treasure buried in the depths of the sea.
Furthermore, no activity has been detected from digital wallet addresses belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto for many years, so it is possible that a single Bitcoin from his holdings will never be spent.
It is for this reason that Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin holdings remain one of the network's great mysteriesHow much Bitcoin does Satoshi Nakamoto have? What implications does this stash have for the future of the network?
The “Patoshi Pattern”
Although there is no exact information on how many BTC Satoshi Nakamoto has, according to a theory spread among the community, it is believed that may have personally mined between 750.000 and 1,1 million Bitcoin during his period of activity at the head of the network.
If this were true, Satoshi Nakamoto would own more Bitcoin than MicroStrategy and Grayscale combined. That is, he would own more coins than the two largest BTC holders in the world, which account for 5% of the network's total supply.
On the other hand, the theory states that Satoshi undermined his holdings in the 13 months after the creation of Bitcoin, between January 2009 and January 2011. That is, between block 1 and 36.288.
It should be remembered that during the early years of the network, Each block contained 50 BTC, so Satoshi Nakamoto and the mining pioneers were able to mine a large portion of the total Bitcoin supply during the first four years of the network, until the primer halving.
This theory comes from Demian Lerner, a cryptocurrency security consultant, who analyzed network data and found that The same computer mined about 22.000 Bitcoin blocks during those dates. Lerner christened this computer “Patoshi”.
Lerner's thesis, known as “Patoshi the Boss”, It is based on the fact that that computer had a distinctive mining pattern unlike any other. When comparing the nonce values of blocks mined by “Patoshi” with those of blocks mined currently, he observed a “clear tendency” for the former to choose higher numbers.
“This implies that Patoshi scanned the numbers downwards when looking for the winning lottery ticket,” Lerner said. “While we don’t know if he started with a high or low number, he always scanned the ticket number downwards until some time passed or he won the Bitcoin block lottery.”
And how do we know that this computer was Satoshi's?
Very simple, one of the blocks included in the Patoshi pattern is 0, that is, the Bitcoin Genesis Block, One unspendable block mined before the first Bitcoin implementation was made public.
In this way, Lerner assumes that Patoshi was Satoshi's computer. Furthermore, this similar pattern is repeated in the “nonce” of the blocks mined in the following two weeks, after the start of the chain.
In short, the “Patoshi Pattern” has become widely accepted evidence for knowing How much Bitcoin does Satoshi Nakamoto have?The answer, as we have seen, would be that Satoshi has more than 1 million Bitcoin in his addresses.
Of course, This is not an absolute test, as it is entirely possible that the first Bitcoin was not mined by Satoshi or even that Satoshi never mined a single Bitcoin. In fact, block 1, which was mined 24 hours after Bitcoin was launched, could have been solved by someone else.
How could Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin holdings affect the network?
One of the big questions in the community is, What if Satoshi owns more than 1 million Bitcoin? What if this Bitcoin is released on the network? Is it a threat to its value?
There is not much concern about this issue in the community, mainly for two reasons:
Satoshi is a cypherpunk
Firstly, Satoshi Nakamoto is a cypherpunk, that is, a person who advocates the use of technologies that improve privacyIn fact, the creator of Bitcoin uses a pseudonym and it has never been possible to find his real identity.
Moreover, Satoshi disappeared in 2011 and has never been heard from again., therefore, it seems unlikely that it will make any movement of its cryptocurrencies.
Moreover, Every cryptocurrency transaction or movement on the Bitcoin network is recorded and traceable., this means that if any Bitcoin suspected of belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto were to move, blockchain analysis firms would be aware of and report on this movement.
Furthermore, if Satoshi wanted to sell his holdings, he would need Go to an exchange with sufficient liquidityEven worse, centralized exchanges are required to report such transactions and Satoshi would have to agree to KYC and AML regulations, meaning he would have to give up his anonymity.
All of this means that Satoshi should reveal his identity, which would go against his own interest and his philosophy.
Satoshi was never interested in profits
On the other hand, from his behavior, we could say that Satoshi was more concerned about the success of his invention than the simple profit he could obtain from it. A proof of their philosophy is that the genesis block cannot be spent.
In fact, it is possible that Satoshi Bitcoin mining during the first years only for Improve Bitcoin's difficulty algorithm during the early days, when the network was much more vulnerable.
This would explain why Satoshi Nakamoto has not sold a single Bitcoin to date. If he mined for profit, it is most likely that would have sold their holdings in 2013, when BTC hit $100 for the first time.
Is Satoshi a threat to Bitcoin?
The truth is no. Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin holdings may be huge, however, most of the community views these wallet addresses as “burned addresses”. This is because there is very little chance that any will be sold.
According to data from Lerner's study, Satoshi Nakamoto's addresses only recorded 16 payment transactions in its entire history, with a total spend of 800 BTC.
In fact, Satoshi's holdings only increase the price of Bitcoin as they reduce the maximum supply, making the remaining BTC more valuable.
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