How many bitcoins does Satoshi have? BTC Creator Wallet Address

By Live 

binance.com

4 min

View Original

The story of Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is one of the most fascinating mysteries of recent decades . Despite the fact that Satoshi invented a technology that had a great impact on the world and mined billions of dollars of Bitcoin, he remains completely anonymous and does not touch his wealth.

* Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym of the person or group of people who developed the bitcoin cryptocurrency protocol and created the first version of the software

The reason why we can say that Satoshi did not spend his bitcoins is that researchers were able to identify addresses that most likely belonged to him.

In this article we will look at the most interesting facts about Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallets and addresses.

Satoshi Nakamoto wallets:

Satoshi used a huge number of addresses; some estimates suggest he may have had over 20,000 different addresses. He used a separate address to receive each block reward, and since he was the most famous miner in the early days of Bitcoin, he received a large number of block rewards.

Most of Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin wallets are not particularly interesting, except for the fact that they belong to the creator of Bitcoin. Most of them simply received the 50 BTC per block reward and remained inactive.

However, there are several Satoshi Nakamoto wallet addresses that have interesting stories.

Address "Hal Finney"

One of the more interesting addresses controlled by Satoshi is the address he used to send 10 BTC to Hal Finney. This was the first Bitcoin transaction between two users, as all previous transactions were simply miners (mostly Satoshi) receiving block rewards from the Bitcoin protocol.

This address currently holds 18.43 BTC, which at the current price is around $482,000. The balance of this address is slowly growing over time as it receives BTC transactions from time to time, most likely from people paying tribute to Satoshi for his revolutionary invention .

The last time this address sent an outgoing transaction was January 12, 2009, just three days after Bitcoin launched.

Bitcoin creation address

The most famous of Satoshi's addresses is the Bitcoin creation address. This is the address that mined the first block in the Bitcoin blockchain. Satoshi Nakamoto's wallet balance is 72.6 BTC, which at current prices is approximately $2 million. Similar to the address discussed earlier, the Bitcoin creation address receives BTC as tribute from users from time to time.

An interesting fact about the Bitcoin creation address is that the 50 BTC received as a reward for mining the genesis block cannot be spent. According to the explanation provided by Charles Hoskinson, these BTC cannot be spent because Satoshi did not add the coinbase genesis block transaction to the global transaction database that Bitcoin nodes use. Hoskinson added that he is not sure whether this was an intentional move by Satoshi or just a mistake.

However, the remaining BTC on addresses controlled by Satoshi Nakamoto can be spent as usual. So far, Satoshi has not spent his Bitcoins, which is why many people are speculating that he may be dead.

Because Satoshi wanted to remain in the shadows, it is impossible to confirm with 100% certainty that the addresses that likely belong to Satoshi Nakamoto actually belong to him. However, blockchain researchers have put a lot of effort and time into figuring out the addresses most likely belonging to Satoshi.

For example, researcher Sergio Damian Lerner estimated that Satoshi Nakamoto mined about 1.1 million BTC. Lerner came to this estimate by identifying a pattern in the way Bitcoin blocks were mined during the period when Satoshi was active. This "Patoshi" pattern allowed him to distinguish with great confidence blocks likely mined by Satoshi from blocks likely mined by others.

BitMEX Research said in 2018 that an estimate in the range of 600,000 to 700,000 BTC is more likely than Lerner's estimate of 1.1 million BTC. Even if we use BitMEX Research's more conservative estimate of 600,000 BTC, Satoshi still owns $15.7 billion worth of Bitcoin.

There are probably many experienced traders in the cryptocurrency market tracking addresses that likely belong to Satoshi Nakamoto. If Satoshi were to suddenly activate one or more of his dormant wallets, it would likely be a huge event in the cryptocurrency market.

There have already been cases where Satoshi-era bitcoins began to move, but these transactions did not originate from addresses that are believed to belong to Satoshi.

Bottom line - Satoshi Nakamoto has thousands of Bitcoin addresses

Regardless of which estimate we use, it is clear that Satoshi Nakamoto has thousands of different Bitcoin addresses.

Most of his wallets are not very prominent, as they were simply used to obtain block rewards and remained inactive. However, if we ever see transactions from wallets that are believed to belong to Satoshi, we may see some distinctive pattern that will help us verify their authenticity.