New research claims Satoshi mined $10.5B worth of Bitcoin. Blockchain tracking firm Whale Alert published a study with a new estimate claiming that the Bitcoin creator mined over $10 billion worth of bitcoin.
The researchers shared “We were able to make the most accurate estimate of the number of blocks mined and bitcoins owned by Satoshi: 1,125,150 bitcoin mined up to block 54,316 with an estimated total value of the unspent bitcoin of at least $10.9 billion USD in today’s market,” Whale Alert wrote on July 20, 2020.
“In addition to the size of his fortune, we were also able to deduce the purpose of the Patoshi miner: to defend the young network from attacks.”
Whale Alert also discussed how Sergio Demián Lerner generated data sets from his blockchain research which tracked the extranonce fields, but they say “some interesting new details” were uncovered.
The report details “Between blocks 21,467 and 25,777 the range [0–9] was only used at the start of each Patoshi chain (each chain being a single run of the miner, and thus a single line in the above graph) 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 analysis also points out that the research was intended to question “why Satoshi was mining in this particular manner.” Whale Alert analysts found some higher blocks with some irregularities, but they think it’s fair to conclude that the Patoshi miner was switched off in May 2010.
This led Whale Alert to conclude that Satoshi only mined the bitcoins to protect the network and the earned coins were “a mere byproduct of these efforts.” Additionally, Whale Alert researchers assume it is “unlikely that the remainder will ever be spent.”
[image: Adnan Khan]
