On July 20, 2020, blockchain tracking firm Whale Alert released a research report offering a fresh estimate of the fortune believed to belong to Bitcoin’s creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. The researchers claim that Nakamoto mined 1,125,150 bitcoins up to block 54,316, which at current exchange rates equates to roughly $10.5 billion.
Background: Previous Estimates
For years, analysts have debated the size of Nakamoto’s holdings. A prominent theory comes from Sergio Demián Lerner, chief scientist at RSK Labs, whose “Patoshi pattern” study tracked extraNonce fields in coinbase transactions. Lerner’s 2019 analysis suggested Nakamoto owned nearly 1 million BTC. In contrast, BitMEX Research’s 2018 study estimated a lower range of 600,000 to 700,000 BTC, worth about $6.5 billion.
Whale Alert’s Methodology and Findings
Whale Alert claims to have made “the most accurate estimate” by refining the Patoshi pattern analysis. They concluded that Nakamoto mined 1,125,150 BTC across blocks up to 54,316, with unspent coins valued at $10.9 billion as of the report date. The researchers uncovered “interesting new details” in Lerner’s dataset, such as missing nonce numbers (e.g., 29) in certain block ranges, suggesting that some mining hardware was defective or turned off during periods of high network activity.
“Between blocks 21,467 and 25,777 the range [0–9] was only used at the start of each Patoshi chain, and the number 39 was only used sporadically. Between blocks 25,811 and 54,316 the number 29 is missing entirely from some chains,” the report notes. These anomalies allowed Whale Alert to exclude non-Satoshi blocks and refine the estimate.
Motivation: Network Protection
The study also aimed to understand why Satoshi mined in such a specific manner. Whale Alert analysts concluded that the Patoshi miner was turned off in May 2010, and that Nakamoto’s primary goal was to defend the nascent network from attacks. The mined coins were “a mere byproduct” and are “unlikely to ever be spent.” However, they concede the possibility that Satoshi may have also run the public mining software for testing, leaving room for other patterns.
“Our findings do not exclude the possibility that Satoshi was also running a miner using the publicly released software, if only for testing purposes,” the report states. The research provides a clearer picture of Bitcoin’s earliest days, even as the ultimate fate of Nakamoto’s fortune remains a mystery.