Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD(DEBATE GOING ON, DO NOT TWEET!)

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

I've estimated a lower bound of current Satoshi's fortune. My estimation is that he owns more than 1M BTC, or 100M USD at current change.

It is impressive, isn't it?
That's a good reason to stay anonymous!

I've used the data from the blockchain in bootstrap.dat, so my estimation does not take into account the last 6 months.

I've assumed:

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength
(Mhash/s) that was constant at 7 Mhash/s for this period of time. (check in https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en&key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc&hl=en&gid=0)
If Satoshi mined alone the first 14 days, then he mined almost alone for the rest of the year.

2. I assume that boostrap.dat contains only the best chain (not orphan blocks)

3. I only take into account coinbase transactions.

4. I've assumed that if a coinbase output is spent, then none of the spent coins went back to Satoshi.

5. From the 1814400 BTC awarded, 1148800 BTC has never been spent (63%)

6. The BTC/USD exchange rate is 100 USB per BTC

If someone wants to check my computations, is welcomed because I used a special block chain parser made by myself.

Best regards, Sergio.

 

[1686203572]

1686203572

[1686203572]

1686203572

[human]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

[Operatr]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

Satoshi him/themselves mined the first block themselves which is the Genesis Block, it was never "pre-mined" or started off with Bitcoin in the system already. Obviously at the very start of Bitcoin only a couple people were mining to begin with, and nothing to really do with the coins they generated until now.

[ElectricMucus]

How do you think you can tell it was satoshi only? What you have to know is that difficulty 1 is the minimum, it cannot go below that.
So if the network power was derived by the difficulty it would seem to be constant.

[human]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

Satoshi him/themselves mined the first block themselves which is the Genesis Block, it was never "pre-mined" or started off with Bitcoin in the system already. You have no clue what you're talking about friend

I said "if true". Can you please answer my question if you have a clue? How can I find out whether a significant amounth of coins of the first blocks where touched in front of major crashes?

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

Satoshi him/themselves mined the first block themselves which is the Genesis Block, it was never "pre-mined" or started off with Bitcoin in the system already. You have no clue what you're talking about friend

I said "if true". Can you please answer my question if you have a clue? How can I find out whether a significant amounth of coins of the first blocks where touched in front of major crashes?

That is the next thing I was planing to do. But I´ll do it on monday....

[notig]

satoshi was so smart he had the forward thinking to generate a new private key address for each block he mined. Hence the reason there are 40+ thousand addresses with just 50 bitcoins in them. (Conjecture)

[k]

I've assumed:

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength
(Mhash/s) that was constant at 7 Mhash/s for this period of time. (check in https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en&key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc&hl=en&gid=0)
If Satoshi mined alone the first 14 days, then he mined almost alone for the rest of the year.

This assumption is at least partly wrong based on what Hal Finney says in this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833

When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test.

I assume Satoshi has many coins but I don't begrudge him any of them. He deserves them but I suspect he is not some one whose main motivation was to become rich.

Also my understanding is that the first block is un-spendable. I think I've read that Satoshi did this as he was the only person who could mine this block so it would be unfair if he could spend it but subsequent blocks were up for grabs by anyone who was mining (admittedly in practice probably only Satoshi and maybe Hal and some other very early adopters).

[Elwar]

The bottom feeders are going to come out of the woodwork to chastise the rich. How dare he create a revolutionary new currency and benefit from it.

How dare he combine risk, work and thought for reward. Such a thing is unheard of. He should have earned it through favor and force.

[Elwar]

or by war and destruction like American bastards in Iraq, and not only there.

Like I said...force.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Some flaws with the analysis.

1) Difficulty couldn't go below 1 & the "network" has no idea what the hashing power is.  We can only guesstimate the hashing power based on the time between blocks.  If you look at the period of time between blocks in the first year you will notice there is variance.  Variance can either be natural variance from the mining process or changes in hashing power.    It is simply a false statement to claim the hashrate was a constant 7 MH/s.  There is no way to prove that is true and it arguably never was.  The spreadsheet is merely a guesstimate at an aproximate hashrate based on the average time between blocks of the preceding period and is subject to error like any hashrate estimate (i.e the times between blocks was X and since the AVERAGE block requires 4.2 billion hashes the hashrate would need to be ~y to solve block at this rate ON AVERAGE).

2) There is no evidence that Satoshi mined alone the entire time.  Hal Finney reports mining early (in the first 100 or so blocks) and there are other reports of people mining on and off during the early mailing list days.

When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. They tend to have a knee jerk reaction.

I was more positive. I had long been interested in cryptographic payment schemes. Plus I was lucky enough to meet and extensively correspond with both Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, generally acknowledged to have created ideas that would be realized with Bitcoin. I had made an attempt to create my own proof of work based currency, called RPOW. So I found Bitcoin facinating.

When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.

3) The early client "mined" automatically in the background when running.  For Satoshi to have mined all the blocks for the first year that would mean nobody, not a single person ever downloaded the client which is simply false.

On edit:
4) The first 2016 block interval took 28 days and the next 7 took on average 17 days (with a deviation of only +/- 1 day).  This strongly suggests interest significantly increased after the first week.  One could conclude that the first week was Satoshi alone but I don't think that is likely either.  By May hashing power had fallen significantly  with the 2016 timeframe rising from ~17 days to 28 and then up to a peak of 42.  While there is some variance due to the nature of difficulty to think that Satoshi was the sole miner one would have to think that when the network was at its slowest Satoshi intentionally reduced his own hashing power to roughly half of that in the earlier weeks.   

[deepceleron]

I've assumed:

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength

That is an incorrect assumption, remember the default behaviour of Bitcoin was to generate coins with just one checkbox in the options menu. You will find there are many people trying out Bitcoin, and before this forum opened, there was about six months of (lost) chit chat on a sourceforge forum too, so it's hard to examine records of people trying it out (or leaving it running):

2009-06-13 06:41

The new Bitcoin website/portal is up at bitcoin.sourceforge.net.  
Forums and a wiki are included, so you're welcome to join discussion  
and wiki documentation.

Martti Malmi
Bitcoin Web Developer


From here...

We had our first automatic adjustment of the proof-of-work difficulty on 30 Dec 2009.  

I have noticed some slowdown since the adjustment, but I still generate a lot of coins.

When Generating, the user will gain 50 coins after creating 120 blocks. Why..

I haven't really been able to tell if coins generate slower or not with less connections...

My first transaction completed resulting in +50 Coins. Yay!!

But what is true is that anybody running Bitcoin that year with a consumer Core 2 would make about 2000 BTC a day.
[Bounty] 201600 BTC for a time machine, I only need a few hours...

[deepceleron]

Mining was not constant either during 2009, it's up to you to figure out how much is Satoshi:

[DeathAndTaxes]

To assist in deepceleron chart.   

To find a block at difficulty 1 requires an average of 2^32 hashes.  So 50 blocks per day = ( 50 * 2^32) / (60 * 60 * 24 * 1000^2) = 2.485 MH/s

 50 blocks per day = ~2.5 MH/s
100 blocks per day = ~5.0 MH/s
144 blocks per day = ~7.2 MH/s
150 blocks per day = ~7.5 MH/s
200 blocks per day = ~9.9 MH/s

[tacotime]

One thing to note about the blocks from genesis to 30,000 or so is that
a) They, for the most part, all appear to have different coinbase transactions.
b) They are also almost completely unspent.

I think the likeliest scenario is that hundreds of people downloaded and ran the client then, got a bunch of blocks that were at the time useless because they were valueless, then deleted their clients.  Recall that in May 2010, bitcoins were only trading for 0.0025 USD each.  It's my personal guess that these coins are just lost to the chain forever.

[wolverine.ks]

would you pay extra for one of the very first btc's ever mined?

[Bitobsessed]

would you pay extra for one of the very first btc's ever mined?

I would pay BTC1 for BTC1 from the genesis block.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Some flaws with the analysis.

1) Difficulty couldn't go below 1 & the "network" has no idea what the hashing power is.  We can only guesstimate the hashing power based on the time between blocks.  If you look at the period of time between blocks in the first year you will notice there is variance.  Variance can either be natural variance from the mining process or changes in hashing power.    It is simply a false statement to claim the hashrate was a constant 7 MH/s.  There is no way to prove that is true and it arguably never was.  The spreadsheet is merely a guesstimate at an aproximate hashrate based on the average time between blocks of the preceding period and is subject to error like any hashrate estimate (i.e the times between blocks was X and since the AVERAGE block requires 4.2 billion hashes the hashrate would need to be ~y to solve block at this rate ON AVERAGE).

But a single computer in 2009 could do 2^32 hashes in 10 minutes. So if we assume that Satoshi PC was all time powered on mining, then we MUST accept that almost all the coins were generated by him. Why would Satoshi turn off his PC if he foresaw the future?
The average number of zeros in block hashes in that range is 33, not more. The average number of zeros in the first 30 blocks is 32.8.
We must accept that during the first two hours he was mining alone!

Therefore there was, at average, a single or maybe two PC  mining (but rarely) until block 36288.

So your argument is flawed

Please try to refute this argument!

2) There is no evidence that Satoshi mined alone the entire time.  Hal Finney reports mining early (in the first 100 or so blocks) and there are other reports of people mining on and off during the early mailing list days.

My prior argument says exactly that: IF he was continuously mining, then he was mining almost alone.

When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography....I mined block 70-something...

Everybody read that Hal mined the block 70-something, which means that he mined very little, as most of the people in that time interval.

3) The early client "mined" automatically in the background when running.  For Satoshi to have mined all the blocks for the first year that would mean nobody, not a single person ever downloaded the client which is simply false.

People downloaded the software, mined a few blocks, and dumped it. Almost everybody except for Satoshi.

So again, IF he was mining continuously in that interval, then he has at least 500k BTC now, with independence if somebody else was mining or not.

[noedaRDH]

And what if Satoshi started passing out free BTC's to people? There was some dude doing that on redit a few days ago. Could be Satoshi (or the group known as Satoshi).

[gmaxwell]

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288).

He did not. I mined during that time— so did many other people I've talked to. As you're probably aware the original software mined _very_ slowly, and contemporary hardware was slow. Heck even a fairly current machine with state of the art software can just barely do enough hashrate for difficulty 1. (and god, before more handout requests come: Bitcoin was worthless then, the software was annoying windows-gui only— I ran it in wine+vncserver, and I didn't keep my original wallet)

Its nice when bad arguments are so easily falsified.

I would pay BTC1 for BTC1 from the genesis block.

The coins created by the genesis block are forever unspendable.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

And what if Satoshi started passing out free BTC's to people? There was some dude doing that on redit a few days ago. Could be Satoshi (or the group known as Satoshi).

If you want to promote Bitcoin, you don't pass bitcoins by sending private keys, you encourage people to download the client application and send them using the transaction system!

Also, if you send private keys, the receiver must re-send them to himself to be sure he owns them.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288).

He did not. I mined during that time— so did many other people I've talked to. As you're probably aware the original software mined _very_ slowly, and contemporary hardware was slow. Heck even a fairly current machine with state of the art software can just barely do enough hashrate for difficulty 1. (and god, before more handout requests come: Bitcoin was worthless then, the software was annoying windows-gui only— I ran it in wine+vncserver, and I didn't keep my original wallet)

Can we safely assume Satoshi mined blocks 1 and 2 ?

Both blocks have 32 leading zeros, very similar to the following  32K blocks!!!

So I can tell you with confidence that you mined very few blocks (e.g. 10 blocks)  during that time and you're not millonaire, or you are part of the Satoshi group, period.
 

I have some evidence, from a comment in Bitcoin 0.1 source code, that Satoshi miner took "a few seconds" to do 2^18 hashes. That "fact" contradicts the hypothesis that Satoshi PC mined block 1.

That can ONLY MEAN that Satoshi (the person or the group) had 16 computers
OR the  comment in the source code is too old to be taken seriously...

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Its nice when bad arguments are so easily falsified.

LOL!  Ja ja ja

Tell me how come block 1 has 32 leading zero bits ?

[CasinoBit]

I can't help but wonder how hard it must be to stay anonymous with that money, probably not that hard for an individual primarily motivated by ideologies.

[theymos]

So I can tell you with confidence that you mined very few blocks (e.g. 10 blocks)  during that time and you're not millonaire, or you are part of the Satoshi group, period.

Do I get to be Satoshi too? I was off by only a few days... https://i.imgur.com/w57rtbs.png

I know first-hand that there were several different people who mined before January 2010. It's kind of funny that history I've lived through is being questioned...

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Isn't it strange that Hal Finney mined a block number 70 or so, only 20 hours after the first public mineable block ?

Blocks in the 70-80 range are the ones with lowest work in the whole block chain history.

So either:

1. Many people started mining right from the start: Satoshi is a group of people. Hal PC mining did not affect the overall hashing power by much.

2. Hal is lying.

3. I'm mistaken. How?



 

[theymos]

I believe that Satoshi foresaw this very issue, and so avoided mining at all until well after the public announcement (if ever). Blocks 1-100+ were, I suspect, not mined by Satoshi.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Do I get to be Satoshi too? I was off by only a few days... https://i.imgur.com/w57rtbs.png

Right. Good for you! But let's focus on the first 100 blocks. Or even the first 1000.

In those blocks and their PoWs is hidden all the story of Bitcoin creation. We just have to decode it.
Is strange nobody ever studied those blocks in depth.
 

[tacotime]

So I can tell you with confidence that you mined very few blocks (e.g. 10 blocks)  during that time and you're not millonaire, or you are part of the Satoshi group, period.

Do I get to be Satoshi too? I was off by only a few days... https://i.imgur.com/w57rtbs.png

I know first-hand that there were several different people who mined before January 2010. It's kind of funny that history I've lived through is being questioned...

Get used to it, there always seem to be wild rumours about Litecoin flying on the alt chains forum.  I have solo'd blocks from immediately after release of that chain too, and people are always saying any manner of crazy artforz or coblee premine accusations.

[darkmule]

"Satoshi" is pretty obviously a group of people.  I doubt anyone seriously thinks it is a mysterious Japanese coder who somehow speaks excellent colloquial English but has yet to demonstrate any grasp of Japanese, who created this shit and then just suddenly disappeared.

So if someone or a group of someones out there somehow did mine a bunch of the early blocks and is waiting to cash out, all I can say is well played, sir!

[DeathAndTaxes]

Why do you believe a single computer could have mined 2^32 hashes in 10 minutes?  If that were true as soon as two nodes began mining simultaneously difficulty would have increased to 2+.  The fact that it didn't for almost a year combined with the fact that the system took on average 18.5 minutes per block during the difficulty 1 period would also indicate you just made this fact up.  You can't compared the modern miners (which include four years of near continual optimization) to the very "crude" (relatively speaking) miner built into the original client.  It was horribly slow.

The variability in hash power, the long difficulty 1 period, the numerous personal accounts of mining, the historical mailing list records all refute your "facts".  The reality is you have absolutely no fact to back up your lower bound except a grand conspiracy theory.  Stick with math your work there is much better.  This is just sad.

[jl2012]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

BS. Bitcoin was published with no pre-mine (except the genesis block which the reward is unspendable). Hal Finney is one of the earliest miners: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.0

[gmaxwell]

3. I'm mistaken. How?

The original software is far slower than you give it credit for... I benchmarked old openssl code on a contemporary P3 a while back and got about 47KH/s as I vaguely recall. Why don't you go test it instead of making guesses from comments.

I would also not assume that the timestamps on the pre-public blocks are accurate— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009. Rounding that down to 7 days suggests a lower bound hashrate of 14 KH/s.  Even if Satoshi had more computing power he might have simply been borrowing it for testing.

The guesswork that more work was done on the initial block is not supported by the low extranonce— you can't just say "more zeros == more work", for example:  http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d   has an "apparent" difficulty comparable to the total work ever done on the blockchain.  Sometimes low values happen.

LOL!  Ja ja ja
Tell me how come block 1 has 32 leading zero bits ?

Because its required to have at least that much, the difficulty cannot go below 1.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

I believe that Satoshi foresaw this very issue, and so avoided mining at all until well after the public announcement (if ever). Blocks 1-100+ were, I suspect, not mined by Satoshi.

Well, at least you agree that facts regarding the PoW of the first 100 blocks have a story to tell.


So, Satoshi announced Bitcoin, and waited without mining until people started mining...

But that does not agree with the fact that the INTERVALS between the first 20 blocks are spaced in time quite good. So network hashing power was stable.
People randomly starting and stopping mining would generate a completely different pattern of inter-block time intervals.

[nebulus]

I think the likeliest scenario is that hundreds of people downloaded and ran the client then, got a bunch of blocks that were at the time useless because they were valueless, then deleted their client.

+ 1

[jjiimm_64]

I believe that Satoshi foresaw this very issue, and so avoided mining at all until well after the public announcement (if ever). Blocks 1-100+ were, I suspect, not mined by Satoshi.

Well, at least you agree that facts regarding the PoW of the first 100 blocks have a story to tell.


So, Satoshi announced Bitcoin, and waited without mining until people started mining...

But that does not agree with the fact that the INTERVALS between the first 20 blocks are spaced in time quite good. So network hashing power was stable.
People randomly starting and stopping mining would generate a completely different pattern of inter-block time intervals.

Dude, you just dont get it.. look at the times.. blocks where slow back then.. I think I read somewhere that it took satashi a couple of days to get the first block!!!

all these math arguments aside.

Satashi deserves every penny for inventing bitcoin.  

PS>  I think almost all of those original blocks are unspent coins.  If he/them were in it for the money, they would have cashed out by now!!

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

 The reality is you have absolutely no fact to back up your lower bound except a grand conspiracy theory.  Stick with math your work there is much better.  This is just sad.

Why you qualify with your emotions, such as "sad" something that has nothing to do with that ?

I'm doing archaeology. I'm trying to collect facts, as accurate as possible, from people and the block chain.

If I make mistakes, I correct them and keep going.


And until now, I cannot solve the puzzle of how the first 100 blocks were mined. Some pieces are missing, and I'll keep searching!

The best explanation I've been given by DeathAndTaxes and that is Satoshi did not mined block 1 (but he did mined block 0).
(and that explanation has some very strong problems, such as why the PC performance, extrapolated from PoW the block 0 hash and the block 1 hash agree with such good precision, suggesting a link)

So maybe Satoshi is now very poor, and he's singing songs with his guitar in the subway to pay the rent.

PS: I worship Satoshi, so I will never be against him!

Satoshi deserves every penny for inventing Bitcoin. If he is rich, then great.
If his is poor, then we might start a donation campaign to buy him cloths and meals...
I openly offer him to stay in my house if he has no place to live...  

[DeathAndTaxes]

You claim to be searching with facts but you open with a FUD headline as if it is proven fact.  You have absolutely no facts to support your claim that Satoshi (single person or group) mined all blocks for first year.  Your OP lacks even incorrect facts to support that claim.  The thread is full of numerous ACTUAL facts which contradict that claim ... however your goal now is to look for facts to support the claim you have already made and ignore the ones which contradict it.

I mean I showed you how your hashrate analysis was inaccurate and it took all of about 5 minutes ... 5 minutes of actually looking at the data not coming up with a bogus headline and then trying to shoehorn some facts to fit it.

Its fud, and crap science.  Searching for facts is one thing.  Search for facts AND THEN come up with a conclusion.   You jumped to a bogus, senasational headline and now are scrambling to back it.  I stand by my assertion ... it is sad.  It is sad because you obviously have significant intellect.  You know it is stupid and you know if a peer handed you the "proof" of the OP and passed it off as fact you would smack them just as hard.

PS I never suggested Satoshi didn't mine block 1.  Personally I think he probably did maybe even a significant fraction of the first 2016 as hashing power during that period of time was much lower then subsequent blocks.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

I mean I showed you how your hashrate analysis was inaccurate and it took all of about 5 minutes ... 5 minutes of actually looking at the data not coming up with a bogus headline and then trying to shoehorn some facts to fit it.

I will read again at your post. Maybe I skipped a key part.

Now I ask you: Can you tell me how many PCs were mining while block 1 as mined ?

Do you have an estimation?

[jubalix]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

Satoshi him/themselves mined the first block themselves which is the Genesis Block, it was never "pre-mined" or started off with Bitcoin in the system already. Obviously at the very start of Bitcoin only a couple people were mining to begin with, and nothing to really do with the coins they generated until now.

I think satoshi could have tried to get everyone to mine, but no one would have believed him, if you look at the initial reaction in the posts in his cryto group a lot of them said nah don't think so

so it was not really a premine in that sense just no one knew or wanted to mine!!!

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

PS I never suggested Satoshi didn't mine block 1.  Personally I think he probably did maybe even a significant fraction of the first 2016 as hashing power during that period of time was much lower then subsequent blocks.

I have strong evidence the same computer AND JUST ONE  mined blocks 1-10
(edit: or a group of computers turned on exactly at the same time)

Just look at the extra nonce in the coinbase field of the coinbase transaction.

The counter is monotonically incrementing at a constant pace.

Also this can be used to find how many computers/threads where mining at  some  time (until they get powered-off). Each thread has another monotonically incrementing ExtraNonce variable.

So from that we can infer Satoshi PC Resources. Those resources allowed him to mine a block with 32 leading zeros every 6 minutes.

[gmaxwell]

So from that we can infer Satoshi PC Resources. Those resources allowed him to mine a block with 32 leading zeros every 6 minutes.

The behavior of the chain proves that that much computing power was not being applied to mining in the first year, otherwise the difficulty would have become 1.66 when it couldn't actually sustain 1. I continue to be impressed at how much you insist on the hysterical speculations and conclusions rather that just going and measuring the speed of the old openssl sha256 as I had.

[oakpacific]

So from that we can infer Satoshi PC Resources. Those resources allowed him to mine a block with 32 leading zeros every 6 minutes.

The behavior of the chain proves that that much computing power was not being applied to mining in the first year, otherwise the difficulty would have become 1.66 when it couldn't actually sustain 1. I continue to be impressed at how much you insist on the hysterical speculations and conclusions rather that just going and measuring the speed of the old openssl sha256 as I had.

Seems that he didn't even dare to respond to your previous comment.

[MarKusRomanus]

And if bitcoin had failed, like most people thought it would.. none of this would even matter.

[beckspace]

I think satoshi could have tried to get everyone to mine, but no one would have believed him, if you look at the initial reaction in the posts in his cryto group a lot of them said nah don't think so

so it was not really a premine in that sense just no one knew or wanted to mine!!!

Bitcoin is such an alien design that even in the crypto group it was initially bashed?

I mean, how to introduce a new concept in the world (cryptocurrencies) if even between your own peers it is not well promptly understood?

Releasing 50 coins every 10 minutes doesn't sound like just a good idea, but also the only idea that would work.

And if bitcoin had failed, like most people thought it would.. none of this would even matter.

True.

[mrb]

I've assumed:
1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288).

A user, maria2.0, has proven she owns the private key of block 9455 (mined on 2009-04-01) by signing a message: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=164569.0

And she claims to own "3.5 million coins between satoshi and her" (although that is probably false or an exxageration IMHO).

[Etlase2]

I believe that Satoshi foresaw this very issue, and so avoided mining at all until well after the public announcement (if ever). Blocks 1-100+ were, I suspect, not mined by Satoshi.

el oh el

[deepceleron]

I have strong evidence the same computer AND JUST ONE  mined blocks 1-10

Just look at the extra nonce in the coinbase field of the coinbase transaction.

The counter is monotonically incrementing at a constant pace.

Also this can be used to find how many computers/threads where mining at  some  time (until they get powered-off). Each thread has another monotonically incrementing ExtraNonce variable.

So from that we can infer Satoshi PC Resources. Those resources allowed him to mine a block with 32 leading zeros every 6 minutes.

It is strong evidence that one entity mined those blocks. Mining timestamps start three hours after the announcement email dropped in the inbox of every crypto mailing list subscriber.

It would be cool if coinbase scriptsig + nonce could act as a counter of exactly how many hashes an individual miner has been doing, but analysis doesn't allow perfect inference of the hashrate. The bnExtraNonce (which is an OpenSSL bn BigNum being written in hex) starts at 1 every instantiation and is incremented whenever the miner loop is restarted which is:

-if the miner thread is restarted (through UI, restart),
-after every 262144 hashes:

• if new transactions have been seen and miner has ran for more than 60 seconds,
• if there is a new network block or a block is found
• if the nonce has wrapped to 0

One still could dump nonce+extra and attempt to assemble a tree of likely continuous miner runs, although analysis code might get confused pretty quickly.

One interesting thing in my reading of 0.1.0 is that mining won't start if Bitcoin is not connected to other nodes, so there had to be at least two Bitcoin machines on. This is probably to prevent naive forking, from miners reconnecting with a longer chain. In fact, I found that bitcoin would crash if it can't get to IRC. It also determines external IP addresses using two web services by static IPs that are dead, only one of which is still alive by DNS, so this makes testnetting harder since you have to emulate these. On the plus side, it writes the genesis block itself if blk0001 doesn't exist (which I find out after manually dumping and importing block 0 into another Bitcoin).

Also it looks like a good CPU would be lucky to get ~0.5MHash - the miner is single-threaded, and it calls the Crypto++ library to do SHA256 and byte juggling twice for every hash.

BTW all this crap about 32 hash bits etc is irrelevant. When did Sergio go batshit?

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Ok, I give up.  

I like deepceleron response, at least it´s based on facts about the code rather than on people remembrances.

But still, what people say contradicts the blockchain:

The first release of Satoshi client v0.1 was on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:05:49 -0800

(http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html)


That was AFTER block 1 to 10 were mined. So, that´s another evidence that he mined blocks 1-10 himself, which means he HAD the computer power or he was extremely lucky.
(unless I made a mistake with converting time zones, but I don´t think so)

[ElectricMucus]

Ok, I give up. 

I like deepceleron response, at least it´s based on facts about the code rather than on people remembrances.

But still, what people say contradicts the blockchain:

The first release of Satoshi client v0.1 was on Fri, 09 Jan 2009 17:05:49 -0800

(http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html)


That was AFTER block 1 to 10 were mined. So, that´s another evidence that he mined blocks 1-10 himself, which means he HAD to computer power or he was extremely lucky.
(unless I made a mistake with converting time zones, but I don´t think so)

Don't give up, just make more coherent arguments and write that up in a blog post or write a paper on it.
The whole thing in forum posts is very difficult to follow.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Please, I´m not saying that all the people could mine at 8 Mhashes/sec (32-bits/10 minutes).
If that were the case, then the difficulty would have increased when other people started mining, as someone pointed out.

I´m saying that SATOSHI had the resources to do it. Maybe he borrowed them, or he used the network of someone else. Or he had a simple GPU miner.
Or SATOSHI is a group of 16 people, each one with his own computer, all mining right from the start.

Thank you ElectricMucus by your support.

[deepceleron]

Date from the raw email @ mailing list:

From satoshi at vistomail.com  Thu Jan  8 14:27:40 2009
From: satoshi at vistomail.com (Satoshi Nakamoto)
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:27:40 +0800
Subject: Bitcoin v0.1 released
Message-ID: <CHILKAT-MID-3d087dc8-b531-1fd3-bebb-15dcffb225ce@server123>

Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash
system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending.
It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.

Note that the Jan 09 time above is UTC +8, it's Satoshi (pretending to be) in Asia or Western Australia.

Block 1 timestamp: 1231469665 Fri: 09 Jan 2009 02:54:25 GMT

At block 73, someone's miner gets a restart or a new player starts mining for several blocks

coinbase":"04ffff001d0101"
Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:31:28 GMT

[zemario]

Gee... people get high on the word "Satoshi". Picking a japanese alias was pure geniality. Just imagine the amount of mysticism and absurd esoteric conspiracy theories that would be doomed if the guy would pick "Joe Average" instead of "Satoshi nakamoto".

The genesis block was public from day one, yet these conspiracy theories about Satoshi pre-mining keep popping up.
It's quite entertaining to see this kind of discussion now that bitcoin is getting really big. Why didn't you rush to mine back then? I tell you what, pay a couple of hundred bucks to some mediocre developer and have him fork the bitcoin client and change the genesis hash. Then you can have your own crypto currency and per-mine all you want. Then go figure why nobody really gives a sh*t about it.

Satoshi used to post on this forum, go and read his posts, they are mostly about technical issues with bitcoin protocol and client. Satoshi is clearly a brilliant developer/engineer if his main goal was to become a millionaire he would already be one long before bitcoin.

Sadly many people in this forum cannot understand any motivation beyond getting rich. I both despise and pity you.
But hey, this is just a rant of mine, you're always free to discuss whatever matter you find relevant of course. Can be 'a bit' pointless though.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Date from the raw email @ mailing list:

From satoshi at vistomail.com  Thu Jan  8 14:27:40 2009
From: satoshi at vistomail.com (Satoshi Nakamoto)
Date: Fri, 09 Jan 2009 03:27:40 +0800
Subject: Bitcoin v0.1 released
Message-ID: <CHILKAT-MID-3d087dc8-b531-1fd3-bebb-15dcffb225ce@server123>

Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash
system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending.
It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.

Note that the Jan 09 time above is UTC +8, it's Satoshi (pretending to be) in Asia or Western Australia.

Block 1 timestamp: 1231469665 Fri: 09 Jan 2009 02:54:25 GMT

At block 73, someone's miner gets a restart or a new player starts mining for several blocks

coinbase":"04ffff001d0101"
Sat, 10 Jan 2009 23:31:28 GMT

Does that mean that the message was sent before Block 1 was mined?

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Sadly many people in this forum cannot understand any motivation beyond getting rich. I both despise and pity you.

Gmaxwell and DeathAndTaxes have many BTC. They are here from long ago.

They may don't like that the idea that Satoshi is rich because that news threatens the arrival of new Bitcoin owners, which in turn increases the monetary value of the Bitcoin.

The idea of a poor hero is stronger than a multi-millionarie hero, and helps diluting  the idea of the evil: a giant Ponci scheme! 

Maybe most people here in the forums (like GMax and Death), without saying sit, would prefer Satoshi not to be a millionarie.

I think everybody wants to be rich. Even to do exactly what you do, but without bothering on getting paid. I think there is nothing morally wrong on being rich.

So I understand why Gmaxwell and DeathAndTaxes and now zemario responded so emotionally to this thread.

But since I have not a single BTC, nor any other virtual coin, I have nothing to loose, nor anything to win.

Everything I do here, I do it because I like to. Not because of money, not to become rich.

Satoshi is a genius, but I seek the true story of him..
 

[Peter Todd]

BTW all this crap about 32 hash bits etc is irrelevant. When did Sergio go batshit?

Ran out of security holes to find I guess.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

BTW all this crap about 32 hash bits etc is irrelevant. When did Sergio go batshit?

Ran out of security holes to find I guess.

LOL, yes. I now only monitor and audit code changes, not the full code.

[Zomdifros]

You know what would be the coolest thing on earth?

This is from the Bitcoin 2013 conference:

Friday, May 17: Schedule
4:00pm - 7:00pm: Mark Edge and Ian Freeman from Free Talk Live will be broadcasting live from the convention center.  Come early and watch their broadcast!
7:00pm: Registration will officially open
7:00pm - 9:00pm: Exhibits will be open   
8:00pm: Introductions and keynote speaker (TBA)

What if that keynote speaker happened to be non other than...

Ah forget, I'm just dreaming 

[AlphaWolf]

3. I'm mistaken. How?

The original software is far slower than you give it credit for... I benchmarked old openssl code on a contemporary P3 a while back and got about 47KH/s as I vaguely recall. Why don't you go test it instead of making guesses from comments.

I would also not assume that the timestamps on the pre-public blocks are accurate— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009. Rounding that down to 7 days suggests a lower bound hashrate of 14 KH/s.  Even if Satoshi had more computing power he might have simply been borrowing it for testing.

I'm with you that the OP is off on his assessment... but in what way was a P3 "contemporary" to any period of Bitcoin's history?  I have a stock 3.2 GHz P4 purchased from Dell in 2005.  Prescott core, so a "later" model P4.  It can do > 1000KH/s, and it was already obsolete by the time Bitcoin came around four years later.  Hell, the Core 2 Quad Q9550 came out in Q1 of 2008, and it easily gets well over 10 MH/s.  I'll grant you that the old client was poorly optimized, etc...  But P3's were long obsolete even by 2009 standards, so it's rather misleading to claim those results as "contemporary".

[Etlase2]

I'm with you that the OP is off on his assessment... but in what way was a P3 "contemporary" to any period of Bitcoin's history?  I have a stock 3.2 GHz P4 purchased from Dell in 2005.  Prescott core, so a "later" model P4.  It can do > 1000KH/s, and it was already obsolete by the time Bitcoin came around four years later.  Hell, the Core 2 Quad Q9550 came out in Q1 of 2008, and it easily gets well over 10 MH/s.  I'll grant you that the old client was poorly optimized, etc...  But P3's were long obsolete even by 2009 standards, so it's rather misleading to claim those results as "contemporary".

Sergio's post at the end of page 3 hit the nail on the head. Gmax and D&T have a massive horse in this race and are in no way objective about this. He (gmaxwell) is using the same argument he used with me some 2 years ago in IRC. "ohh but the but the processors were so slow in 2009 there's no way it was just satoshi" even though the facts pretty much fly in the face of this. It's not like that crypto mailing list is very active. The bitcoin release had what, 15-20 replies from about 5 different people? Difficulty of 1 is 7MH/s and the average power between blocks 1-32k was less than 7MH/s because the avg. block time was 13 minutes or so. The block time is fairly consistent from the beginning of that period to the end, indicating that about the same number of people who mined bitcoin from the start were the same group mining until a few more started coming on in around blocks 32-36k.

Arguing that satoshi had a lower bound hashrate of 14kh/s in 2009 based on the first two or three blocks? Incredibly naive for someone who has a deep understanding of bitcoin. I'd argue the intent of that post is entirely to deceive.

[infested999]

Even if Satoshi has all those Bitcoins, we don't really have to worry about him selling them off all at once and crashing the price. He is probably trying to live off of it and only cashes out what he needs to live a luxurious lifestyle, and if he cashes out any more he will just lower the value of his own coins.

[Littleshop]

Even if Satoshi has all those Bitcoins, we don't really have to worry about him selling them off all at once and crashing the price. He is probably trying to live off of it and only cashes out what he needs to live a luxurious lifestyle, and if he cashes out any more he will just lower the value of his own coins.

The blockchain is public.  We would see early coins being moved.

[Herodes]

If Sathoshi is a single individual and his worth is 100M USD - then it's all okay with me.

But I have seen no conclusive proof in regards to that.

[Etlase2]

Even if Satoshi has all those Bitcoins, we don't really have to worry about him selling them off all at once and crashing the price.

Why don't we have to worry? Because you think you know what Satoshi is going to do? Sorry, that should not fly for anyone looking to invest in bitcoins.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Gmaxwell and DeathAndTaxes have many BTC. They are here from long ago.
They may don't like that the idea that Satoshi is rich because that news threatens the arrival of new Bitcoin owners, which in turn increases the monetary value of the Bitcoin.

OK can we stop paying bullshit detective for a second.

1) I have far less Bitcoins than you think.   Whatever number you think, cut it in half and then drop a zero and you likely are closer.  Starting Tangible Cryptography was capital intensive.  Fiat funds are pathetically slow it takes a massive amount of working capital to get anything done.  Hell our company even Borrows Bitcoins because it makes sense to borrow then to keep the kind of capital we need locked up in BTC. I kept a small holding as a hedge in case my company fails and Bitcoin succeeds but I am no early adopter just someone who sees real value in Bitcoin and put the relatively modest amount of coins I mined to work as capital to expand the Bitcoin "ecosystem".  

2) I got no problem with RESEARCHING the early history of Bitcoin but honestly that is not what you are doing it. Posting "Satoshi has 1M BTC" written as a statement of fact and then looking for items which support it, is intellectually dishonest. Do some real research and then propose the findings.  The "fact" in your OP is obviously wrong.  Multiple people have shown they mined the first year ... Period.  So even if Satoshi "only" has 900K BTC (which I doubt) you OP is still blatantly false.  The fact that you keep the headline in light of the increasing absurdity of it shows how dedicated to the "truth" you really are.

3) I never said that Satoshi was poor so can we put away the strawmen and red herrings.  Please?   I indicated multiple times that is it is highly likely "he" mined the entire year and contributed some significant fraction of the hashing power (just not 100% of it).  Using the v0.1 client a high end PC in 2009 would be about 80KH/s.  The average hashrate for the first year was roughly 4.402 MH/s (34272*2^32) / (387*24*60*60) = 4.402 MH/s so that puts the number of PC at ~50.  Of course the earlier part of the year was significantly lower and there were significant variations in block rate.

4) Now maybe Satoshi did have 100 PCs and adjusted the number running to make the hashrate appear dynamic and hide his true involvement in this purely academical (at the time) project for almost a year, but even that can't explain away the first hand reports of early non Satoshi miners (inducing Hal Finney who is the earliest known solver of a block beyond the genesis block and receiver of the first non mining transaction).

5) As many have pointed out it is unlike Satoshi was a single person.  So the idea there is a single $100M winner is dubious.  When you remove the effect of other Satoshi miners the "satoshi share" is much smaller.  If you then divide that among multiple participants it is likely the initial adopters have tens of thousands of coins and could sell them for millions.  Say "Satoshi" mined half the coins, and Satoshi is 10 people, and a third of them have been sold.  Oh noes each creator has ~80,000 BTC.  BTC which is worthless unless the economy continue to expand.  I don't lay awake fearing what the creators will do with their wealth.  If they wanted to dump it they had plenty of opportunity especially last week.  Note: before this gets misquoted I am not saying each creator has 80,000 BTC but it is just as plausible as the $100M headline number.

6) Why hasn't a large portion of those first year coins sold?  The most likely answer is many saw it as an academic project and the coins were lost forever.  With multiple bubbles and bust and recent media attention it is highly likely that any miner from the difficulty 1 period has been reminded of Bitcoin and exactly how much their small hoard is worth.  The fact that despite the bubbles there has been no move would indicate either they are true believers (these coins will be worth $B someday) or they just don't have access to the keys anymore.  It happens.

How many blocks did Satoshi solve?  I don't know.  The sad thing is someone doing some genuine research would actually be pretty interesting.  I do know your claim that Satoshi solved all blocks for the first year is blatantly false.  The fact that you cling to it despite facts to the contrary shows you aren't the one which will do genuine research anymore than the Enquirer is looking to genuine reporting.

[deepceleron]

I just put in a virtual order to liquidate 1M BTC if that's the OP's hypothesis (and yes, you could sell them, there are currently book orders to buy twice as many BTC as will ever exist) - :

Sell 1000000 BTC for 14239194.29 USD

I would love to see all the coins dumped. That would end this FUD and the temporary crash would only bounce up as people realize there is no more mystery coin.

The "early adopters are rich" is played out; besides Satoshi (who may never move coins or may not have early wallets - Bitcoin implementation may have been merely a proof of concept in his head), other mined coins have been lost or changed hands for things like pizzas and early investors have sold many times over. There are just a few, like casascius, who are strong willed enough to never spend their Bitcoins. I'd be relatively well off if I still had every BTC that's ever been in my wallet or knew the magic time to exchange them, but I spent them.

[BTC Books]

I don't even understand why any of this can possibly matter to anyone, frankly.

Whatever the hell the entity Satoshi did, it worked.  And nobody would be here if it hadn't.  If you take all the variables that go into bitcoin - especially those which have the greatest impact on the very beginnings of it - and start playing around with them, it's pretty easy to see what an incredibly narrow range of possibilities there are for this thing to have worked at all:  let alone to have worked as well as it did.

Every single proposal I've ever seen, in all the years I've been reading this board, involves changing some variable that would certainly have doomed bitcoin to the obscurity such proposals would have richly deserved.  And every one of those proposals is deeply rooted in envy, ego and undeserving greed.

It's so fucking easy to produce conspiracy theories, and so goddamn hard to do anything productive in this world...

There is no doubt in my mind that Satoshi was a human geek(s), and no doubt that Occam's Razor applies to geeks as well as to the rest of us mortals.  'He' didn't take any care at all with the bitcoin he mined - nobody at the time did.  My personal and unquenchable belief is that damn near every one of the bitcoins from 2009 that will ever surface, will be shown mostly to have survived out of pure, dumb luck.  I can't conceive that for someone who could create this thing, the insanely long odds of it ever actually working weren't obvious.  And I doubt that anywhere near as many of those first coins still survive, as the conspiracy theorists endlessly 'prove'.

Jesus - read the old postings.  Try to understand what people thought in 2009.  Forget about all the weird, unlikely, and self-serving interpretations of a bunch of numbers that were never either created for or intended to be used as any kind of history:  especially not a history of the people involved.  Bitcoin was a cool little geek toy that attracted D&D card collectors for fuck's sake.  Some basement-dwelling early adopter (bless his heart...) paid 10k for a couple of pizzas.

It is far more interesting to me what bitcoin has done to those first people who were involved with it, than who's got what.

It works.  That's all that matters.  And you've got whatever you've got and you'll earn whatever you earn - just like everything else in life.

[darkmule]

Indeed.  If anyone is now wealthy for having invented Bitcoin, there is a reason for that.

They deserve to be wealthy.  I fail to get how there is anything whatsoever wrong about someone being rewarded for doing something successful that has improved the world.  People who improve the world should be rewarded, as this creates an incentive for future innovation.

[Mjbmonetarymetals]

He' didn't take any care at all with the bitcoin he mined ........... (quote from post above) ....... Was he already taking precautions in regard to his anonymity at the point he first mined?

[Etlase2]

They deserve to be wealthy.  I fail to get how there is anything whatsoever wrong about someone being rewarded for doing something successful that has improved the world.  People who improve the world should be rewarded, as this creates an incentive for future innovation.

I don't think anyone would have misgivings about Satoshi becoming fairly wealthy because of bitcoin. However, the type of wealth that satoshi is likely to possess is more than just "fairly wealthy" if bitcoin were to supplant a significant amount of the world's wealth store. He would be put right in the place of the bankers on Wall Street. Massive amounts of control over the liquidity of the currency. Able to bend political will to suit his own interests. No one can say for sure what those interests are or how this will play out. But to pretend this is only about jealousy that somebody got rich is a child's game. For the well-respected members of this forum to consistently reply in carefully crafted answers refined over time to downplay the significance of this is unsurprising due to the fact that they are also likely to benefit significantly if this becomes the case, regardless of what they say.

He' didn't take any care at all with the bitcoin he mined ........... (quote from post above) ....... Was he already taking precautions in regard to his anonymity at the point he first mined?

Bitcoin was never once publicly discussed prior to its release.* You can be damn sure he knew quite well how this could play out and that every coin he ever mined is absolutely secure. We're talking about genius here, but it is so easy argue that he was so smart up until it came to keeping track of his money.  

* This is wrong, it was discussed several months prior, quite late in the process of designing an entirely new currency.

[BTC Books]

He' didn't take any care at all with the bitcoin he mined ........... (quote from post above) ....... Was he already taking precautions in regard to his anonymity at the point he first mined?

Of course.  That's obvious, well-documented in 'his' own words, and trivial.

It is also, however, an entirely different thing than taking care with the bitcoin.

[Stunna]

I'd imagine he cashed out a fair amount when they hit a dollar or less even.

[BTC Books]

I'd imagine he cashed out a fair amount when they hit a dollar or less even.

* sigh *

Learn to read the blockchain.  Those early coins haven't moved, for the most part.

[DeathAndTaxes]

I'd imagine he cashed out a fair amount when they hit a dollar or less even.

* sigh *

Learn to read the blockchain.  Those early coins haven't moved, for the most part.

Well roughly 1/3rd of them have.  Maybe not at $1 but the portion moved would be worth a significant amount at $10, or ~$32 (prior peak), or $266 (recent peak).

[mobile4ever]

This assumption is at least partly wrong based on what Hal Finney says in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833

When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test.

I noticed the above as well. Hal Finney seems to have been in things very early.

[BTC Books]

I'd imagine he cashed out a fair amount when they hit a dollar or less even.

* sigh *

Learn to read the blockchain.  Those early coins haven't moved, for the most part.

Well roughly 1/3rd of them have.  Maybe not at $1 but the portion moved would be worth a significant amount at $10, or ~$32 (prior peak), or $266 (recent peak).

A third?  I thought it was more like a bit under a quarter.  Eh.

And of those which haven't moved, D&T - got a guess as to how many are lost essentially (yes, quantum...) forever?

[DeathAndTaxes]

I'd imagine he cashed out a fair amount when they hit a dollar or less even.

* sigh *

Learn to read the blockchain.  Those early coins haven't moved, for the most part.

Well roughly 1/3rd of them have.  Maybe not at $1 but the portion moved would be worth a significant amount at $10, or ~$32 (prior peak), or $266 (recent peak).

A third?  I thought it was more like a bit under a quarter.  Eh.

And of those which haven't moved, D&T - got a guess as to how many are lost essentially (yes, quantum...) forever?

No idea.  It really depends on how distributed and casual mining was early on.  If the people who downloaded the client, solved a dozen blocks, and then turned it off and forgot about it is large then the lost coins probably are large also.  If I had to guess I would say 20% to 50% of those early (i.e. difficulty 1 period) coins are lost.

[deepceleron]

Bitcoin was never once publicly discussed prior to its release.

Wrong: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/thread.html

[DeathAndTaxes]

Bitcoin was never once publicly discussed prior to its release.

Wrong: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/thread.html

Wow didn't even notice that FUD. 

Here is another post about the whitepaper (2008-10-31):
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.general/12588/

[hobbes]

Why does Satoshi not slow down / stabilize the price rise...  mid term the Bitcoin price would then rise faster.

[deepceleron]

Bitcoin was never once publicly discussed prior to its release.

Wrong: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/thread.html

Wow didn't even notice that FUD.  

Here is another post about the whitepaper (2008-10-31):
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.encryption.general/12588/

A more accessible view of discussion in that archive (which is a metzdowd mirror):
http://pl.it-usenet.org/group/11834/2008/11/
http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/thrd10.html

And interesting posts, Satoshi had been working a while on it:

I appreciate your questions. I actually did this kind of backwards. I had to write all the code before I could convince myself that I could solve every problem, then I wrote the paper. I think I will be able to release the code sooner than I could write a detailed spec.

and about inflation or deflation from coin creation rate:

The fact that new coins are produced means the money supply increases by a planned amount, but this does not necessarily result in inflation.  If the supply of money increases at the same rate that the number of people using it increases, prices remain stable.  If it does not increase as fast as demand, there will be deflation and early holders of money will see its value increase.

Coins have to get initially distributed somehow, and a constant rate seems like the best formula.

Satoshi Nakamoto

Almost 4000 BTC a day is still getting printed ($4M USD worth), and it hardly debases the currency.

[Etlase2]

Bitcoin was never once publicly discussed prior to its release.

Wrong: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2008-November/thread.html

I'm sorry, that was a brain-dead mistake. It has been awhile since I've bothered discussing the satoshi drama. But the point remains that he indeed was anonymous and clearly spent lots of time and attention to detail in everything he did, so to somehow conclude after knowing this that he was careless when it came to his bitcoins is an asinine assumption. It doesn't matter what the exact amount is, whatever satoshi controls exists and is significant unless you want to put your head in the sand. There are other players like mtgox and slush and pirate and knight that may have as many or more. It is as easy to imagine 10-15% of all the bitcoins to ever be mined being in the hands of half a dozen people as it is to imagine that a vast portion of early coins have been lost. Just because an argument can be made for the latter does not mean that the former is not a distinct and realistic possibility.

The argument will continuously boil down to "you can't prove it, pseudononymous lol", with terrible evidence from both sides. However...

I have strong evidence the same computer AND JUST ONE  mined blocks 1-10
(edit: or a group of computers turned on exactly at the same time)

Just look at the extra nonce in the coinbase field of the coinbase transaction.

The counter is monotonically incrementing at a constant pace.

Also this can be used to find how many computers/threads where mining at  some  time (until they get powered-off). Each thread has another monotonically incrementing ExtraNonce variable.

So from that we can infer Satoshi PC Resources. Those resources allowed him to mine a block with 32 leading zeros every 6 minutes.

While Sergio has had a couple bad arguments in this thread, if this is true--I can't verify it because blockchain.info does not display the extra nonce and I don't see a raw copy link anymore--this would certainly have strong implications that satoshi indeed had the resources to mine 50BTC/~13min throughout the difficulty 1 period. 70 minutes passed between blocks 1-10. lol @ 14kh/s between blocks 0 and 1, that's obviously satoshi trying his hardest to mine for a week rather than him waiting for public release before mining.

[deepceleron]

lol @ 14kh/s between blocks 0 and 1, that's obviously satoshi trying his hardest to mine for a week rather than him waiting for public release before mining.

Wrong. (you should stop posting now...)

The genesis block, Sat, 03 Jan 2009 18:15:05 GMT, had to be included in the c++ code before it was compiled. Then the code had to be tested and packaged before it was released. Bitcoin probably was "premined" before release by some testing, but any blockchain testing was discarded.  Satoshi appears to have had working near-Bitcoin code for quite a while (see quote above).

Since the genesis block also has an extranonce of "4" like the first block does, it is likely generated with the same Bitcoin mining code as in the client, and took no more effort to find than the first block (3-4 nonce cycles).

The freenode #bitcoin channel (now used for discussion) is where Bitcoin originally connected to find peers. It would be interesting if there are any logs of how early this channel first appeared to see pre-release testing activity.

[Etlase2]

lol @ 14kh/s between blocks 0 and 1, that's obviously satoshi trying his hardest to mine for a week rather than him waiting for public release before mining.

Wrong. (you should stop posting now...)

The genesis block had to be included in the c++ code before it was compiled. Then the code had to be tested and packaged before it was released. Bitcoin probably was "premined" before release, but any blockchain testing was discarded. Satoshi appears to have had working near-Bitcoin code for quite a while (see quote above).

Since the genesis block also has an extranonce of "4" like the first block does, it is likely generated with the same Bitcoin mining code as in the client, and took no more effort to find than the first block.

Your argument for me being wrong does not follow.

I would also not assume that the timestamps on the pre-public blocks are accurate— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009. Rounding that down to 7 days suggests a lower bound hashrate of 14 KH/s.  Even if Satoshi had more computing power he might have simply been borrowing it for testing.

gmaxwell, a respected and very highly knowledgeable member of the bitcoin community, just made the argument for Satoshi's initial hashing power being in the order of 14kh/s because of the length of time between blocks 0 and 1. As if he created the genesis block then immediately started mining, waited until he had the first block 6 days later, and then released it and immediately there was enough hashpower to mine the next 9 blocks very close to 10min/block. That is one dopey argument.

[danyy]

so.. if i had mined just one week during the first two years, i were rich now.

[DeathAndTaxes]

so.. if i had mined just one week during the first two years, i were rich now.

Well no.

If you had mined during the first week, and properly safeguarded your wallet.dat, had managed not to lose them to hackers or scammers over the next 4 years,  AND seeing the price go from $0.05 to $1 (a 2000% gain) hadn't sold a single coin, and then after watching 90% of your wealth be destroyed in the last major crash had held strong THEN today you would likely be "rich" assuming that you can liquidate (either to other currency or hard assets).  Of course if you had done all that I would say ... great job you deserve it.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

lol @ 14kh/s between blocks 0 and 1, that's obviously satoshi trying his hardest to mine for a week rather than him waiting for public release before mining.

Wrong. (you should stop posting now...)

The genesis block had to be included in the c++ code before it was compiled. Then the code had to be tested and packaged before it was released. Bitcoin probably was "premined" before release, but any blockchain testing was discarded. Satoshi appears to have had working near-Bitcoin code for quite a while (see quote above).

Since the genesis block also has an extranonce of "4" like the first block does, it is likely generated with the same Bitcoin mining code as in the client, and took no more effort to find than the first block.

Your argument for me being wrong does not follow.

I would also not assume that the timestamps on the pre-public blocks are accurate— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009. Rounding that down to 7 days suggests a lower bound hashrate of 14 KH/s.  Even if Satoshi had more computing power he might have simply been borrowing it for testing.

gmaxwell, a respected and very highly knowledgeable member of the bitcoin community, just made the argument for Satoshi's initial hashing power being in the order of 14kh/s because of the length of time between blocks 0 and 1. As if he created the genesis block then immediately started mining, waited until he had the first block 6 days later, and then released it and immediately there was enough hashpower to mine the next 9 blocks very close to 10min/block. That is one dopey argument.

I've already explained in another thread (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=172009.0) that the 6 days of work in block 0 matches the PoW of the genesis block (I think it was 43 zero bits). That does not is irrefutable proof, but it's a good indicator of Satoshi PoW: 2^23 hashes/second.

[moni3z]

Hal Finney kept all his early coins. Satoshi for all we know has zero bitcoins he could've just walked away from the project and given them all to Hal, or deleted the keys so he wouldn't be tempted to spend them and risk being tracked down.

[BitcoinFX]

No mention here yet of the 'block lock' ? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=437.0 hehe

"We know its true, because we made it up ourselves!" 

You can never really know anything, unless they want you to know.

"The Color Blue's frangibility is a necessity"

[DeathAndTaxes]

No mention here yet of the 'block lock' ? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=437.0 hehe

"We know its true, because we made it up ourselves!" 

You can never really know anything, unless they want you to know.

"The Color Blue's frangibility is a necessity"

the block lockin is just another word for the checkpoints.  Multiple checkpoints have since been aded to the QT client (and many other clients).

The last one is at block 225430.  Even with 100% of hashing power it not possible to modify the blockchain prior to block 225431.

Code:

    static MapCheckpoints mapCheckpoints =
        boost::assign::map_list_of
        ( 11111, uint256("0x0000000069e244f73d78e8fd29ba2fd2ed618bd6fa2ee92559f542fdb26e7c1d"))
        ( 33333, uint256("0x000000002dd5588a74784eaa7ab0507a18ad16a236e7b1ce69f00d7ddfb5d0a6"))
        ( 74000, uint256("0x0000000000573993a3c9e41ce34471c079dcf5f52a0e824a81e7f953b8661a20"))
        (105000, uint256("0x00000000000291ce28027faea320c8d2b054b2e0fe44a773f3eefb151d6bdc97"))
        (134444, uint256("0x00000000000005b12ffd4cd315cd34ffd4a594f430ac814c91184a0d42d2b0fe"))
        (168000, uint256("0x000000000000099e61ea72015e79632f216fe6cb33d7899acb35b75c8303b763"))
        (193000, uint256("0x000000000000059f452a5f7340de6682a977387c17010ff6e6c3bd83ca8b1317"))
        (210000, uint256("0x000000000000048b95347e83192f69cf0366076336c639f9b7228e9ba171342e"))
        (216116, uint256("0x00000000000001b4f4b433e81ee46494af945cf96014816a4e2370f11b23df4e"))
        (225430, uint256("0x00000000000001c108384350f74090433e7fcf79a606b8e797f065b130575932"))
        ;

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/checkpoints.cpp

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

While Sergio has had a couple bad arguments in this thread, if this is true--I can't verify it because blockchain.info does not display the extra nonce and I don't see a raw copy link anymore--this would certainly have strong implications that satoshi indeed had the resources to mine 50BTC/~13min throughout the difficulty 1 period. 70 minutes passed between blocks 1-10. lol @ 14kh/s between blocks 0 and 1, that's obviously satoshi trying his hardest to mine for a week rather than him waiting for public release before mining.

Use blockexplorer.com. It shows the coinbase script. The last bytes are the extranonce:

e.g. :  "coinbase":"04ffff001d0104"

then the extra-nonce is 04.

Regarding the speed of a computer in 2009, my computer was almost as fast as Satoshi's. A Core 2 Duo. And because it has two cores, it can run two mining threads.

Why does gmaxwell says such an erroneous fact about hashing rate in 2009 ? Maybe he had a Commodore 64 back in 2009.

See http://www.cryptopp.com/benchmarks.html. At the bottom of the page says it was last edited on 2009.
The CPU is a Intel Core 2 1.83 GHz. The performance is 3.4 MHash/sec (111 MiB/sec)

So who's making FUD ?

[Peter Todd]

So who's making FUD ?

The sheer intensity of this thread puzzles me.

Lets assume you're right, Satoshi really does have 1 million coins all to himself. Currently there are 11 million coins in circulation, and that number is growing by 1.3 million per year. (~12% inflation)

So he dumps every last coin, all at once. That's 9% of the market cap, maybe 18% if you assume half the coins mined to date have been lost. In a rational economy I'd expect that to make the price drop by 18% Lets triple that for good measure, giving us 60% In the past week Bitcoin has gone from a high of $265 to a low of $55, an 80% drop, and Bitcoin is still going strong. I dunno about you guys, but I have a double-digit % of my wealth tied up in Bitcoins, and I spent the past week thinking "Cool!" and having a good laugh at Gavin's twitter comment about speculators and squirrels - if you can't afford to lose 100% of your high-risk investments, you shouldn't have them. I know I could walk away from every bit of time and money I've invested in Bitcoin thinking it was fun while it lasted. But my other hobbies include cave exploration and rock climbing; activities with a very real possibility of losing your life give you some perspective about the meaning of risk. That perspective might explain why in my experience caving, unlike Bitcoin, is dominated by average middle-aged men and women (nearly 50:50) with average jobs who take a sober, calculated approach to taking risks.

In any case, Satoshi selling every single one of his supposed 1 million BTC hoard just won't affect the economy all that much in the grand scheme of things. If anything, I think it would be a positive development removing a lot of uncertainty: he can only do it once!

[DeathAndTaxes]

See http://www.cryptopp.com/benchmarks.html. At the bottom of the page says it was last edited on 2009.
The CPU is a Intel Core 2 1.83 GHz. The performance is 3.4 MHash/sec (111 MiB/sec)

So who's making FUD ?

How do you get 3.4 MH/s from 111 MiB/sec.   The SHA-256 digest is 512 bytes.  Thus 1 hash per second would be 512 bps. However bitcoin does a double SHA-256 hash so 111 MiB/sec * 8 / 1024 = 0.867 MH/s = 867 KH/s.  The miner in v0.1 was very crude it lacked acceleration using SSE2 making it significantly slower, that came later with the first dedicated CPU miners.

On edit: fixed bits vs bytes error.  DOH.  Thanks mrb.

[gmaxwell]

gmaxwell, a respected and very highly knowledgeable member of the bitcoin community, just made the argument for Satoshi's initial hashing power being in the order of 14kh/s because of the length of time between blocks 0 and 1. As if he created the genesis block

I was actually taking Sergio's dopey argument and substituting in the data we actually had, I never said it was a good argument.  I also said _lower bound_, which you deceptively omitted in your repetition there.  I also gave a much higher number which was my measurement with contemporary hardware in software, which you've helpfully omitted.

Why does gmaxwell says such an erroneous fact about hashing rate in 2009 ? Maybe he had a Commodore 64 back in 2009.
See http://www.cryptopp.com/benchmarks.html. At the bottom of the page says it was last edited on 2009.
The CPU is a Intel Core 2 1.83 GHz. The performance is 3.4 MHash/sec (111 MiB/sec)
So who's making FUD ?

Because I actually tested the openssl code in the reference software on a PIII that I had been using at the time and got somewhere around ~47KH/s. I'd offer to run it again but I've since moved across the country and no longer have any old computers. But heck, you won't even try the actual software— you keep _miscalculating_ (SHA256 processes 512 bytes at a time, 111 MiB/sec ~= 113KH/s of SHA256^2) based on unrelated software (and even then, it doesn't sound too inconsistent with my figures)! What the heck!  Are you allergic to actually using a computer?

That does not is irrefutable proof, but it's a good indicator of Satoshi PoW: 2^23 hashes/second.

By your own MIB/s numbers you're arguing that satoshi was had roughly <s>73</s>9 of your reference machines worth of computing power. (corrected per posts below)

[Etlase2]

I was actually taking Sergio's dopey argument and substituting in the data we actually had, I never said it was a good argument.  I also said _lower bound_, which you deceptively omitted in your repetition there.

  I didn't omit it the first time in the post you didn't reply to. Let's go over your propaganda post in a little more detail, because there are quite a few subtleties.

I would also not assume that the timestamps on the pre-public blocks are accurate

What are the pre-public blocks? For what reason should we question the timestamps? If we look at just 1-10, the timestamps are minutes apart. Would Satoshi purposely fudge the clock just to make it look like he had more hashing power? Is that what you're suggesting?

— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009.

That's all we know for sure? We don't know that the next blocks were all minutes apart and there was hashing power at the very dawn of the network to maintain something close to 50BTC/10min? And your argument for completely ignoring this is "the timestamps may not be accurate"?

Rounding that down to 7 days suggests a lower bound hashrate of 14 KH/s.

Rounding that down clearly shows that Satoshi was not mining from the time he created the genesis block to the approximate time he released the software to the public. I am not sure how the timestamps align between the block chain and the message board, that might be something worth investigating. If processors were so slow, as you claim, then some 30-40 processors (estimating 100kh/s) were connected and mining at the dawn of bitcoin (block one). From a message board post that had responses from about 4 people? And this pace went on relatively uninterrupted for 30k+ blocks?

Even if Satoshi had more computing power he might have simply been borrowing it for testing.

What does this even mean? Are you conceding that maybe he did have most of the power, but he was only borrowing it? As if this somehow makes the problem go away?


Your post was horrific, and everyone should feel dumber for reading it. There was not one cogent sentence. Just a bunch of buzz-word ramblings trying to sound like you know what you're talking about for the newbie-folk who will just eat it up as gospel.

edit: and I know that you are damn well smarter than that post, which led me to the conclusion of you being outwardly deceptive

[mrb]

111 MiB/sec / 1024 = 0.1084 MH/s = 108 KH/s.

Wrong.

(SHA256 processes 512 bytes at a time, 111 MiB/sec ~= 113KH/s of SHA256^2)

Wrong.

SHA256 processes 512 bits, not bytes, per block. A double-SHA256 is 1024 bits. So:

111 MiB/sec * 8 (bits/bytes) / 1024 ~= 870 khash/sec.

[gmaxwell]

— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009.

That's all we know for sure? We don't know that the next blocks were all minutes apart and there was hashing power at the very dawn of the network to maintain something close to 50BTC/10min? And your argument for completely ignoring this is "the timestamps may not be accurate"?

Ignoring??? I'm drawing what I'm saying precisely from there.  The dates in my post are from the headline in the genesis block and from the public announcement.  We don't actually know which blocks were when, because god knows how things were moved around and restructured while testing or in preparation for release.

[gmaxwell]

SHA256 processes 512 bits, not bytes, per block. A double-SHA256 is 1024 bits. So:
111 MiB/sec * 8 (bits/bytes) / 1024 ~= 870 khash/sec.

Indeed. And I've said this about a zillion times on IRC whenever someone asks about using commercial crypto accelerators for mining. ... But in all those times I'm talking about megabits not megabytes. Doh. It's easy to make doofus mistakes when they agree with the values you expect. Still doesn't get within a factor of factor of four of the numbers I was disputing, and it's still a measurement on unrelated software.  Thank you for the correction.

[Etlase2]

— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009.

That's all we know for sure? We don't know that the next blocks were all minutes apart and there was hashing power at the very dawn of the network to maintain something close to 50BTC/10min? And your argument for completely ignoring this is "the timestamps may not be accurate"?

Ignoring??? I'm drawing what I'm saying precisely from there.  The dates in my post are from the headline in the genesis block and from the public announcement.  We don't actually know which blocks were when, because god knows how things were moved around and restructured while testing or in preparation for release.

You are drawing what you're saying from the time differential between blocks 0, a block that comes with the software, and block 1, the first block to presumably be mined either in anticipation of immediate release, or just after release. From block 1 on, there is hashing power to maintain a near 50btc/10min, yet you continue to argue about the haziest of hazy possibilities other than occam's razor. And more technical gobbledygook "moved around and restructured while testing or in preparation". Maybe people's brain will fall asleep while reading that and assume that you're making sense.


PS - the announcement and the first blocks mined "in the wild" were on the 9th, not the 11th of January. But of course that ever devious satoshi cooked up a plan to make it look like he had enough hashing power for a difficulty of 1 on his own, and then to hide his tracks and make people not realize this, he manipulated the timestamps to make it look exactly like he had what he was trying to hide. BRILLIANT!

Still doesn't get within a factor of factor of four of the numbers I was disputing, and it's still a measurement on unrelated software.

It sure does bring the total hashing power of the network well within one person or a small group for the first 30k+ blocks, though.

[gmaxwell]

You are drawing what you're saying from the time differential between blocks 0, a block that comes with the software, and block 1, the first block to presumably be mined either in anticipation of immediate release, or just after release. From block 1 on, there is hashing power to maintain a near 50btc/10min,

I'm ignoring the timestamps in the blockchain, as I said.

PS - the announcement and the first blocks mined "in the wild" were on the 9th,

You might want to update the wiki.

But of course that ever devious satoshi cooked up a plan to make it look like he had enough hashing power for a difficulty of 1 on his own, and then to hide his tracks and make people not realize this, he manipulated the timestamps to make it look exactly like he had what he was trying to hide. BRILLIANT!

I dunno who you're arguing with there, cause that all sounds just as nuts as Sergio's claim that he had some multiple of the hashpower required for diff 1 and but mystically the network stayed at diff 1 because??? If anything that crazy argument suggests, perhaps, that Satoshi didn't mine full time. (not that I believe it— but it's the logical conclusion of the argument that he had more hashpower than was observed in the network)

It sure does bring the total hashing power of the network well within one person or a small group for the first 30k+ blocks, though.

Sure, even if it was 100 machines worth that would have been true regardless— even if it took a sold 100 machines to get there.. And?

[Etlase2]

I'm ignoring the timestamps in the blockchain, as I said.

No, you're making up reasons for why they are not reliable because they do not facilitate your argument.

I dunno who you're arguing with there,

I have a tendency to be facetious in the face of excessively poor arguments.

Sergio's claim that he had some multiple of the hashpower required for diff 1 and but mystically the network stayed at diff 1 because???

That was not Sergio's claim, his claim was that Satoshi mined the majority of the bitcoins from blocks 1 to 36k. He did make a big mistake in misunderstanding the difficulty though. It does not, however, discredit some of the other arguments made that I've been making since 2011.

Sure, even if it was 100 machines worth that would have been true regardless— even if it took a sold 100 machines to get there.. And?

And you've spent a lot of time arguing that CPUs were so unbelievably slow "back in the day", even using anecdotal arguments that are likely unprovable to lend weight to your claims.

But we know this propaganda works well, don't we?

your awful post

4 posts later

Dude, you just dont get it.. look at the times.. blocks where slow back then.. I think I read somewhere that it took satashi a couple of days to get the first block!!!

[gmaxwell]

Gmaxwell and DeathAndTaxes have many BTC. They are here from long ago.
[...]
So I understand why Gmaxwell and DeathAndTaxes and now zemario responded so emotionally to this thread.

I can't speak for DeathAndTaxes, but it's not true for me.

In fact, I don't currently own a single coin that was created prior to the date you registered on the forum (June 16, 2011) what little I'd mined before then and hadn't lost I've long since sold.

In general I'm unimpressed by your ad hominem, but I suppose I must reply to it before it gets repeated as fact in some future thread. I responded here because your posts don't make sense and because they don't fit the history as I and many others experienced it. Not because I don't want people to think Satoshi made a pretty penny— I sure hope he did: Bitcoin is a beautiful invention.

But since I have not a single BTC, nor any other virtual coin, I have nothing to loose, nor anything to win.
Everything I do here, I do it because I like to. Not because of money, not to become rich.

You certainly don't shy away from promoting your name or your company, or shy from making sweeping claims that might get you press... Even in this thread— I don't see a quest for knowledge. You didn't ask a question, you didn't seek people's experiences. You made a bunch of easily falsifiable assumptions (which you didn't bother to try to falsify) in order to justify a headline grabbing assertion.  I could speculate about your motivations, but I don't need to— your conclusions here are incorrect no matter what motivated you to draw them.

[gmaxwell]

No, you're making up reasons for why they are not reliable because they do not facilitate your argument.

I am? Can you cite one of those reasons?  As far as I can tell I simply asserted it— it's obvious enough. We can't tell if the timestamps are reliable or not. That's part of the purpose of having the headline in the genesis block.  For all any of us know someone forked and replaced the first 50 blocks, or any of a zillion other things. Who knows. You've totally missed the point, but I can't figure out why. We don't know who created blocks past the first one or two. I suggested ignoring them because it gets us squarely in the realm of what we know for sure... But don't— if you like. if it suits your particular obsessions.  There weren't any conclusions being drawn from it.

And you've spent a lot of time arguing that CPUs were so unbelievably slow "back in the day", even using anecdotal arguments that are likely unprovable to lend weight to your claims.

And they were, compared to current software on current hardware Sergio spent a lot of time here arguing about numbers like 7.5MH/s on a single desktop. It's _laughable_.

[Etlase2]

We can't tell if the timestamps are reliable or not.

Over what range would you feel comfortable assessing the hashing power of the network? 100 blocks? 1,000? From blocks 1-1,000, there was a duration of 10 days, 3 hours, 40 minutes, and 18 seconds. 14,620 minutes. That's 14.62 minutes per block, or an equivalent of 4-5Mh/s.

You know what, forget it. Sergio derailed this thread from the start with the sensationalist headline and a poorly spoken OP. The pseudonymity of bitcoin allows you guys to counter virtually everything in regards to how much limited cryptocurrency is in the hands of a very small group of people and encourage everyone to rush headlong into this wonderful new system.

And they were, compared to current software on current hardware Sergio spent a lot of time here arguing about numbers like 7.5MH/s on a single desktop. It's _laughable_.

Again with the sleight of words. He did not ever argue 7.5Mh/s on a single desktop. It is not unfathomable for the person or group that is satoshi to have multiple and likely high-end machines. Plus it would make sense to have several locations operating for better network boostrapping. This is common sense. If bitcoin was mined at a rate of approximately 4 contemporary PCs, occam's razor would suggest that satoshi was running it mostly by himself, unless you want to argue that the creator may just well have abandoned mining.

The distinction here is you are trying encourage the thinking of perhaps 40-50 PCs mining, oh so decentralized, when the reality was more likely 4-5 PCs. Hard to prove though! Especially with your 47kh/s anecdote.

[mrb]

And they were, compared to current software on current hardware Sergio spent a lot of time here arguing about numbers like 7.5MH/s on a single desktop. It's _laughable_.

Time to end this debate with cold hard facts.

I just benchmarked bitcoin 0.3.24 (where the CPU mining code is identical to bitcoin 0.1.0, as both are based on crypto++), and a measly entry-level 2-core 2.5 GHz Athlon X2 4850 (released in March 2008) can reach 2.40 Mhash/s.

Therefore a 4-core 2.4 GHz Phenom X4 9750 (released in March 2008, about $200, way less than many other much more expensive desktop processors which went up to $1000) can do almost 5.0 Mhash/s (it scales linearly with the number of cores).

Finally, the overall hashrate of the network throughout 2009 was 5 Mhash/s, so it is not unreasonable that a single PC with a quad-core CPU such as the Phenom X4 9750 could have accounted for the majority of the network hashrate.

[Etlase2]

(where the CPU mining code is identical to bitcoin 0.1.0, as both are based on crypto++),

Do you have solid proof that this is the case? That nothing was tweaked to improve the speed of CPU generation? No one should be in the habit of taking someone's word for it.

[mrb]

Do you have solid proof that this is the case? That nothing was tweaked to improve the speed of CPU generation? No one should be in the habit of taking someone's word for it.

Yes. Bitcoin 0.1.0 does the double hash here:

Code: (bitcoin-0.1.0/main.cpp)

       loop
        {
            BlockSHA256(&tmp.block, nBlocks0, &tmp.hash1);
            BlockSHA256(&tmp.hash1, nBlocks1, &hash);
            if (hash <= hashTarget)

And BlockSHA256 converts to the correct endianness, and calls the crypto++ routine CryptoPP::SHA256::Transform.

As to Bitcoin 0.3.24 the double hash is:

Code: (bitcoin-0.3.24/main.cpp)

   for (;;)
    {
        // Crypto++ SHA-256
        // Hash pdata using pmidstate as the starting state into
        // preformatted buffer phash1, then hash phash1 into phash
        nNonce++;
        SHA256Transform(phash1, pdata, pmidstate);
        SHA256Transform(phash, phash1, pSHA256InitState);

        // Return the nonce if the hash has at least some zero bits,
        // caller will check if it has enough to reach the target
        if (((unsigned short*)phash)[14] == 0)
            return nNonce;

And SHA256Transform merely calls memcpy to init the state, and calls the same crypto++ routine: CryptoPP::SHA256::Transform. Because it is the same, I do not expect any significant performance difference between 0.1.0 and 0.3.24. I have a mirror of the 0.1.0 code if you want to try compiling it: http://www.zorinaq.com/pub/

[AlphaWolf]

gmaxwell, a respected and very highly knowledgeable member of the bitcoin community, just made the argument for Satoshi's initial hashing power being in the order of 14kh/s because of the length of time between blocks 0 and 1. As if he created the genesis block

I was actually taking Sergio's dopey argument and substituting in the data we actually had, I never said it was a good argument.  I also said _lower bound_, which you deceptively omitted in your repetition there.  I also gave a much higher number which was my measurement with contemporary hardware in software, which you've helpfully omitted.

Why does gmaxwell says such an erroneous fact about hashing rate in 2009 ? Maybe he had a Commodore 64 back in 2009.
See http://www.cryptopp.com/benchmarks.html. At the bottom of the page says it was last edited on 2009.
The CPU is a Intel Core 2 1.83 GHz. The performance is 3.4 MHash/sec (111 MiB/sec)
So who's making FUD ?

Because I actually tested the openssl code in the reference software on a PIII that I had been using at the time and got somewhere around ~47KH/s. I'd offer to run it again but I've since moved across the country and no longer have any old computers. But heck, you won't even try the actual software— you keep _miscalculating_ (SHA256 processes 512 bytes at a time, 111 MiB/sec ~= 113KH/s of SHA256^2) based on unrelated software (and even then, it doesn't sound too inconsistent with my figures)! What the heck!  Are you allergic to actually using a computer?

I'll ask again since it went ignored:

I'm with you that the OP is off on his assessment... but in what way was a P3 "contemporary" to any period of Bitcoin's history?  I have a stock 3.2 GHz P4 purchased from Dell in 2005.  Prescott core, so a "later" model P4.  It can do > 1000KH/s, and it was already obsolete by the time Bitcoin came around four years later.  Hell, the Core 2 Quad Q9550 came out in Q1 of 2008, and it easily gets well over 10 MH/s.  I'll grant you that the old client was poorly optimized, etc...  But P3's were long obsolete even by 2009 standards, so it's rather misleading to claim those results as "contemporary".

To expound upon that... the last PIII was made in 2003.  P4's started shipping in November 2000, and were beginning to be replaced by Pentium D's in 2005, of which the last was shipped in August 2008.  The "Core 2" family started shipping in 2006, and the first Core i7 shipped in November 2008.  So I ask again... in what way was your 4x obsolete PIII in any way "contemporary" to any period of Bitcoin's history?  "I used it" doesn't count.  I still use my 8 year old P4 as bitcoind node (which is how I could test its hashrate)... but I don't think anyone would argue it is "contemporary".

[deepceleron]

I do not expect any significant performance difference between 0.1.0 and 0.3.24. I have a mirror of the 0.1.0 code if you want to try compiling it: http://www.zorinaq.com/pub/

Please don't expect. Run bitcoin-0.1.0 on a private network. You don't need to compile it, run bitcoin.exe. You need two bitcoin machines with different IP addresses, and an IRC server that pretends to be freenode. See how much of your quad core it uses. See how long it takes to mine 10 blocks. It won't prove or debunk any argument, because the argument itself is ludicrous, but then you will know.

While we are posting code, net.cpp:

//// todo: start one thread per processor, use getenv("NUMBER_OF_PROCESSORS")
void ThreadBitcoinMiner(void* parg)
{
    vfThreadRunning[3] = true;
    CheckForShutdown(3);
    try
    {
        bool fRet = BitcoinMiner();

[Point at Infinity]

I would also not assume that the timestamps on the pre-public blocks are accurate— all we really know for sure was that there were at least two blocks created between 03/Jan/2009 and 11/Jan/2009. Rounding that down to 7 days suggests a lower bound hashrate of 14 KH/s.  Even if Satoshi had more computing power he might have simply been borrowing it for testing.

The debug.log posted by Hal on the sourceforge list on 10/Jan lists blocks up to 49. There's posts by two more people in January.

[mrb]

deepceleron: are you saying bitcoin 0.1.0 launched 1 miner thread per socket instead of 1 per core? If that is the case, for all we know, Satoshi may have been running, say, 4 instances of bitcoin on a quad-core machine. Or maybe he was running 4 Bitcoin VMs. These multiple instances must have been needed by him anyway, if only to test the network code.

The bottom line is that I showed a single $200 processor released in 2008 was able to account for 5 Mhash/s with the crypto++ code used back then. So if there were other users, either they were mining with extremely weak processors (10-year-old Pentium III), or they were not mining 24/7.

[hobbes]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=37333 Satoshi Nakamoto - 1,5 million Bitcoins - We need answers

Also this graph  http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png shows wild fluctuations of the hashrate in 2009. Seems unlikely it was only one person mining. From the steps it almost looks like you could see single computers going offline / online.

[Etlase2]

Also this graph  http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png shows wild fluctuations of the hashrate in 2009. Seems unlikely it was only one person mining. From the steps it almost looks like you could see single computers going offline / online.

I'm not sure how you conclude that it was unlikely that only one person was mining. There are two dips that look as if Satoshi's power was cut off due to the massive amount of electricity he used mining. Or perhaps he contemplated the failure of his plot for world domination and had two periods of despondency.

Before the teeth sink in--I am joking.

[hobbes]

Also this graph  http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-ever.png shows wild fluctuations of the hashrate in 2009. Seems unlikely it was only one person mining. From the steps it almost looks like you could see single computers going offline / online.

I'm not sure how you conclude that it was unlikely that only one person was mining. There are two dips that look as if Satoshi's power was cut off due to the massive amount of electricity he used mining. Or perhaps he contemplated the failure of his plot for world domination and had two periods of despondency.

Before the teeth sink in--I am joking.

It is a logarithmic scale. I see at least five different hash rate levels. Maybe somebody can plot the 2009 hashrate estimate / block times as a linear diagram.

[Etlase2]

It is a logarithmic scale. I see at least five different hash rate levels. Maybe somebody can plot the 2009 hashrate estimate / block times as a linear diagram.

:shrug: The dips would require more investigation, but I see that about 90% of those coins were mined within a hashrate factor of 2-3. The first chunk appears to be mined at around 5-6Mh/s, then the rest is 2-3Mh/s, save the dips. Additionally, variance is a b*tch sometimes.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

I've changed my mind. Well, a bit.

I try to skip "proofs" relating to comments, remembrances, e-mails, stories, private conversations, chats, etc.

I only speak the language of the block chain.

The ExtraNonces fields are incraesing too slowly to be one computer.

The deltas of the ExtraNonces fields in the first 10 blocks tell me that each block was approximately 4 ExtraNonces apart from the predecessor (ExtraNonce starts with one)  .

One possibility it that there were 16 independent threads running on 16 cores.

If the average block time is 8 minutes, a single thread would have required 8*16 = 128 minutes to do 32 zero bits. 32-5-7= 20 bits. --> 1 Mhashs/sec

So there were probably eight Intel CORE 2 duos, running two thread each.

All started at almost exactly at the same time (I would say no more than 16 minutes apart).


PS: Regarding my computations on Crypto++ performance, I was taking into account that the webpage says only one core was used, and Bitcoin could use two cores simultaneously. But obviously I was mistaken by a factor of 2X because of the double-hash thing.

[johnyj]

I just looked at the first 20 blocks, none of them has the same generation address, is it always generate a new address for each found block?

And as I understand, in early days of bitcoin client, there is no pre-generated addresses in wallet, how the coin generation payment is done at that time?

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

The relation between 6 minutes and 6 days is 11 bits.
The relation between 32 zero bits and 43 zeros bits is 11 bits.

So blocks 1-10 match EXACTLY the same hashing power as the genesis block.

The genesis block has a 4 ExtraNonce value, approximately equal to the blocks 1-10 ExtraNonce deltas.

So THE SAME mining computers that mined the genesis block probably mined blocks 1-10.

People tend to explain PoW in the genesis block as "just luck".

I don't believe in luck. I can't believe in luck, since I have some cryptography background.

The whole mystery of ExtraNonces mismatches is solved.

Obviously the 16 threads/core configuration is not the only possible one, there may have been more PCs, each one slower. I'm sure that in the ExtraNonce fields there is enough statistical information to tell how many. Too many (>50) is not very probable, since they ought to be connected and started mining in a short time interval (2 minutes or so).

[deepceleron]

The relation between 6 minutes and 6 days is 11 bits.
The relation between 32 zero bits and 43 zeros bits is 11 bits.
So blocks 1-10 match EXACTLY the same hashing power as the genesis block.
People tend to explain PoW in the genesis block as "just luck".
I don't believe in luck. I can't believe in luck, since I have some cryptography background.

This is nonsense. It takes no extra time to randomly find a <0000000ffff hash that is equivalent to difficulty 1, 2, or 2000. Anything may come out of the hasher as the first hash you get. There is no "six days of hashing", that is just a stupid idea.

The genesis block has a 4 ExtraNonce value, approximately equal to the blocks 1-10 ExtraNonce deltas.
So THE SAME mining computers that mined the genesis block probably mined blocks 1-10.
The whole mystery of ExtraNonces mismatches is solved.

This is nonsense, as I described before, this likely means only that 2^32 * (ExtraNonce - previousExtraNonce ) + nonce hashes were performed after genesis mining start before a block solution was created. Any computer that starts Bitcoin 0.1.0 mining increments its nonce+extranonce in the same deterministic way absent any network block or transaction messages. There is no connection between the genesis creator and the rest of the blockchain.

Obviously the 16 threads/core configuration is not the only possible one, there may have been more PCs, each one slower. I'm sure that in the ExtraNonce fields there is enough statistical information to tell how many. Too many (>50) is not very probable, since they ought to be connected and started mining in a short time interval (2 minutes or so).

Lets look at how many Bitcoin clients there actually were then:

When Hal posted his crash debug log (cleverly pointed out by non-noob member Point at Infinity) containing the same first 49 blocks as we have now, it showed no timewarping or forking was done. Block 49's Timestamp is 2009-01-10 18:56:42; the email list message time is 2009-01-10 19:13. Block finding rate is similar before and after this point.

What it also shows is the number of Bitcoin clients listening in IRC for peers. Each Bitcoin has it's own 14 character "u" nick in the #bitcoin channel in 0.1.0 (you'll still find these in that channel from time to time). Who was in that channel? Three people were in the channel: Hal, another Bitcoin 0.1.0, and a listener.

List of nicks in #bitcoin channel:
IRC :lem.freenode.net 353 uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs @ #bitcoin :uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs x93428606 @u4rfwoe8g3w5Tai
IRC :lem.freenode.net 366 uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs #bitcoin :End of /NAMES list.

More info about those users?:
(format RPL_WHOREPLY "<channel> <user> <host> <server> <nick> ( "H" / "G" > ["*"] [ ( "@" / "+" ) ] :<hopcount> <real name>")

First nick to join channel (had channel ops): Bitcoin 0.1.0 user u4rfwoe8g3w5Tai
lem.freenode.net 352 uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs #bitcoin n=u4rfwoe8 h-68-164-57-219.lsanca54.dynamic.covad.net irc.freenode.net u4rfwoe8g3w5Tai H@ :0  u4rfwoe8g3w5Tai

Second nick to join channel: x93428606 (not bitcoin, connecting by Tor)
lem.freenode.net 352 uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs #bitcoin i=x9342860 gateway/tor/x-bacc5813d7825a9a irc.freenode.net x93428606 H :0  x93428606

Third nick to join channel: Hal's Bitcoin, uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs
lem.freenode.net 352 uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs #bitcoin n=uCeSAaG6 226-132.adsl2.netlojix.net irc.freenode.net uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs H :0  uCeSAaG6R9Qidrs

There is no evidence either way that bitcoin #1 was satoshi. To receive the first bitcoin transaction, Satoshi would not even need to run Bitcoin, just giving an address would be sufficient.

I am done responding to this thread, since my previous analysis is not interpreted correctly and there is no hypothesis here. Satoshi is bitrich, you aren't.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

This is nonsense. It takes no extra time to randomly find a <0000000ffff hash that is equivalent to difficulty 1, 2, or 2000. Anything may come out of the hasher as the first hash you get. There is no "six days of hashing", that is just a stupid idea.

I really can't understand your message. Either you cannot explain yourself or we speak different languages.

Can anybody explain in plain English deepceleron sentence?

Have you understood my message?

I'm not taking about the hash digest itself, just the work done to find it. Obviously the hash digest has not statistical information be can feasibly extracted.

[AlphaWolf]

3. Was satoshi mining through tor? That would have slowed down his generation rate.

The Bitcoin client would have a local copy of the blockchain, and the hashing is obviously done completely locally... How exactly would Tor affect his generation rate in any way at all?

[Gordonium]

Besides mining Satoshi might have bought new coins up to this moment. So there really is no upper boundary. 

[darkmule]

How exactly would Tor affect his generation rate in any way at all?

Obviously tor wouldn't affect Satoshi's hashing rate, but it might affect the number of blocks that he successfully mined.

If Satoshi generated a block at the same time as someone else, I presume the delays caused by broadcasting blocks through tor would mean that the rest of the network would be likely to see the other person's block before Satoshi's block.

The effect is presumably small, but I don't see why it would be zero.

TOR latency is rarely more than a second or two.  Especially if you were one of the few miners in operation, the odds of a block coming in at the same time would be negligible.  The odds would be slightly increased by the low difficulty, but it may have never happened even once in the early days.

[Dabs]

What if he's gone? That's 1 million bitcoins that will never be spent. It will forever be in the blockchain. That also means no one can ever buy all the coins in existence.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Please check the new thread https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=178629.0 where I present new evidence (never shown before) to the discussion.

[gmaxwell]

I don't believe in luck. I can't believe in luck, since I have some cryptography background.

Then why are you not hysterically warning about the miner who mined http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d having enough hashpower to replace the entire history of Bitcoin in an hour?

It's worth pointing out for posterity that you've gone and edited your claims in this thread to back them off from their previously falsified forms. This is somewhat discourteous to the other participants here, because it makes it look like you didn't take the positions that they've argued with.  I'm glad to see more accurate claims being made, but I'm wondering when you're going to go revise them further to point out that you were completely wrong and that your extranonce data strongly supports the position that there were multiple people mining the whole time.

I'm not even particularly computer savvy compared to many guys, just stumbled across as a proposed replacement to torbank, so surely many others did the same to a bigger degree.

However I would be surprised if guys who were mining in 2009 not only continued mining, but had the foresight

Yup. Exactly. But that kind of view doesn't let you generate ALL CAPS headlines.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

It's worth pointing out for posterity that you've gone and edited your claims in this thread to back them off from their previously falsified forms. This is somewhat discourteous to the other participants here, because it makes it look like you didn't take the positions that they've argued with. 

Whenever I edit a published post, I add the word "Edit:" or I strike the words that must be removed.

Could you stop this fruitless competition ?

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Then why are you not hysterically warning about the miner who mined http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d having enough hashpower to replace the entire history of Bitcoin in an hour?

There has been 231828 blocks solved (without counting orphans) which is roughly equal to 2^18. So we can statistically expect a block with 18 more prefixed zeros than the expected difficultly. Block 125552 has only 12 more prefix zeros than the expected (67 vs 56) so statistically it has no meaning at all.

 That's why I'm not hysterically warning you.

[johnblaze]

you people are retarded

you think he still owns his bitcoins?

he would've sold them all along on the way up, prob was out by the time they hit $30

[deadweasel]

you people are retarded

you think he still owns his bitcoins?

he would've sold them all along on the way up, prob was out by the time they hit $30

+1


also i don't care about anyone else's bitcoins.  nor could i prove ownership.  these satoshi speculation threads are asinine.

[AlphaWolf]

you people are retarded

you think he still owns his bitcoins?

he would've sold them all along on the way up, prob was out by the time they hit $30

This thread is retarded... but the fact that those coins have not been exchanged is a matter of public record... like *all* Bitcoin transactions.  They could be lost forever.. but they most certainly were not "sold".

[deepceleron]

The relation between 6 minutes and 6 days is 11 bits.
The relation between 32 zero bits and 43 zeros bits is 11 bits.
...People tend to explain PoW in the genesis block as "just luck".
...
I don't believe in luck. I can't believe in luck, since I have some cryptography background.

Then why are you not hysterically warning about the miner who mined http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d having enough hashpower to replace the entire history of Bitcoin in an hour?

There has been 231828 blocks solved (without counting orphans) which is roughly equal to 2^18. So we can statistically expect a block with 18 more prefixed zeros than the expected difficultly. Block 125552 has only 12 more prefix zeros than the expected (67 vs 56) so statistically it has no meaning at all.

You mean it's just luck? Okay, then.

[AlphaWolf]

Then why are you not hysterically warning about the miner who mined http://blockexplorer.com/block/00000000000000001e8d6829a8a21adc5d38d0a473b144b6765798e61f98bd1d having enough hashpower to replace the entire history of Bitcoin in an hour?

There has been 231828 blocks solved (without counting orphans) which is roughly equal to 2^18. So we can statistically expect a block with 18 more prefixed zeros than the expected difficultly. Block 125552 has only 12 more prefix zeros than the expected (67 vs 56) so statistically it has no meaning at all.

 That's why I'm not hysterically warning you.

A: 231828 is short of 2^18 by 30,316.  Not really a "small" difference.
B: Why would you look at how many blocks have been solved "to date"?  At the time that block was solved, there were...  125,552 blocks solved.  That's a lot closer to 2^17.  (Short by 5,520).
C: What is this magical theorem that says "the log base 2 of the number of blocks found is the number of leading 0's that might be found exceeding the network difficulty in a double sha256 hash of an essentially random input"?  I don't think it exists.

[maaku]

C: What is this magical theorem that says "the log base 2 of the number of blocks found is the number of leading 0's that might be found exceeding the network difficulty in a double sha256 hash of an essentially random input"?  I don't think it exists.

That's a result trivially derived from probability theory.

[AlphaWolf]

C: What is this magical theorem that says "the log base 2 of the number of blocks found is the number of leading 0's that might be found exceeding the network difficulty in a double sha256 hash of an essentially random input"?  I don't think it exists.

That's a result trivially derived from probability theory.

Also trivially derived from rectal extraction theory.  We'll need PoW to determine which was applied.

[richard_dein]

Let's say you flip a coin 10 times.
You mark a cross on paper if the first 3 flips gives you heads; in this case, if up to the 7th flip you still get heads, you put a circle around the cross you just marked.
Now do this for several billion times, divide the number of circles by the number of crosses. It should be rather close to 1/16. That's the idea.
If you don't want to do this by hand, simulate this with the best PRNG you can find. It should be fairly quick.

If you still don't understand, go ask your math teacher. Or I can show you the ropes if you would pay me some BTC for the effort.

The generation of random numbers is too important to be left to chance.

[AlphaWolf]

Let's say you flip a coin 10 times.
You mark a cross on paper if the first 3 flips gives you heads; in this case, if up to the 7th flip you still get heads, you put a circle around the cross you just marked.
Now do this for several billion times, divide the number of circles by the number of crosses. It should be rather close to 1/16. That's the idea.

I think this model has a number of flawed assumptions... but please correct me if I'm wrong:

1.  The difficulty is not constant.  For the first 32,255 blocks the difficulty remained at 1. That's roughly 2^15 of your "crosses".  You'd have to retroactively count which "blocks" of 10 coins had 3 leading "heads", which would reduce the "current number of blocks solved" (or crosses) significantly.  OP based his claim on current blocks solved of all difficulties.

2. SHA256 is a deterministic function - does not produce random output.  Given an infinite set of inputs, it will reduce each to one of 2^256 values.  Over an infinite set of inputs, one might assume the outputs are evenly distributed, but...

3.  There is not an infinite set of inputs.  Based on the block hashing algorithm, there are 80 bytes x 8 = 640 "bits" of coin "inputs" possible.  40 bytes (half) are almost guaranteed to be the same for all miners, and at the same positions.  That leaves 2^320 bits to be toggled "randomly" before being fed into the SHA256 function.  Because half the total input bits are static, the inputs themselves are not evenly distributed.

4.  SHA256 isn't as "fair" as one might assume.  http://www.femto-second.com/papers/SHA256LimitedStatisticalAnalysis.pdf.  I'll admit this paper is above my head... so feel free to take advantage of that and tell me this paper doesn't say what I think it says 

5.  The original SHA256 output is again hashed with SHA256.  Therefore the maximum inputs for the final iteration is 2^256, as a best case scenario.  The input was skewed once due to the structure of the block header, skewed again by the imperfect nature of the SHA256 algorithm, and now skewed yet again by a second iteration of SHA256.

6.  Has anyone proven mathematically that each and every value from 0 to 2^256- 1  is actually possible as an output of SHA256?

7.  Has it also been proven that SHA256 can produce all 2^256-1 outputs given only the inputs from 0 to 2^256 - 1?

To me, the OP's claim failed right at #1.  As I said:

C: What is this magical theorem that says "the log base 2 of the number of blocks found is the number of leading 0's that might be found exceeding the network difficulty in a double sha256 hash of an essentially random input"?  I don't think it exists.

"Number of blocks found" != "number of blocks found at X difficulty".  OP was claiming the former, you're claiming the later, which at least makes sense.

For what it's worth, there will always be 2106 blocks solved at a given difficulty before the next is chosen.  That's roughly 2^11.  Within those 2016 blocks, someone found an answer with 12 extra leading 0's.    Assuming completely random inputs (which they aren't) and assuming SHA256 is fair (it isn't) and that a 2nd iteration of SHA256 can still produce all 2^256 outputs (who knows?), it still seems that block 125552 was statistically significant.  And you can't really count very many blocks after those 2106, because the difficulty has been changed again... you're now requiring 4 heads in a row for a cross, but still only 7 for circles, which doubles the probability of a "circle".

Thoughts?

[richard_dein]

If you escalate to that amount of scrutiny, yes it is far, far from perfect. It is also rather well known that cryptographic objects don't really behave the way theoreticians (and Satoshi) would like them to. I won't be surprised that any hash function or PRNG would behave suboptimally under some kind of test, maybe even a strikingly simple one. Even something like SHA-2147483648 wrapped a thousand times could possibly fail to an almost trivial statistical test. A related quote is "Anyone who considers arithmetical methods of producing random digits is, of course, in a state of sin", by von Neumann

In this model SHA-256 is basically assumed to behave like a random oracle, a black box that gives us numbers that are uniformly random. But random oracles are a theoretical impossibility. On the other hand, the security of SHA-256 as the main POW algorithm in the Bitcoin protocol does not really rely on it being a random oracle. Here's a post on StackExchange that briefly tells us a few things: http://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/879/what-is-the-random-oracle-model-and-why-is-it-controversial

Intuitively, the multiplicative difference between 2^12 and (say) 2^16 should outweigh many other factors, although indeed it's hard to be very sure. At least, it definitely outweighs most factors you brought up. It's too big a difference even for the link you gave us.

For #1, while I agree the estimation done by Sergio_Demian_Lerner isn't very good, the conclusion isn't very far off either. Basically you don't need to have a lot of blocks, mined at a difficulty that requires 56 zeros, to demonstrate statistical insignificance of that block with a 67 zeroes. Still assuming the stinky random oracle model, even if you only look at 2^10(=1024) blocks with 56 zeros, well smaller than the number of blocks at a single difficulty, it is a rather large probability (~40%) that one of them has at least 67 zeros.

[BitcoinFX]

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=191362.0 

[crazy_rabbit]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

Damn right it's a premine scam! The right thing to do would have been to give everyone a equally fair chance to mine by announcing it far in advance on bitcointalk. Oh, wait a minute........

[franky1]

its not a scam. your just not the first one to have mined it. i wouldnt say your too late, im just saying your mad for not being in earlier

in 7 years time some noob will come along and say "hang on in 2009-2020 there were millions of people mining bitcoin, theres only 3 million coins left - its been premined"

same as all the gold miners in 2013 are shouting most of the world has been premined. its not the previous miners fault or the egyptian/native americans fault for being the first to find value in gold. its only the complainers fault for not being there in the early days.

so stop complaining and make one simple decision.

join the new economy known as bitcoin or stick with fiat and keep blaming others.

[Etlase2]

join the new economy known as bitcoin or stick with fiat and keep blaming others.

False dilemma[/size]

[ElectricMucus]

same as all the gold miners in 2013 are shouting most of the world has been premined.

Less than half of the gold has been mined. Most of it is still in the earth, and that is only including sources currently accessible to us.
Peak gold is believed to be after 2020.

[franky1]

same as all the gold miners in 2013 are shouting most of the world has been premined.

Less than half of the gold has been mined. Most of it is still in the earth, and that is only including sources currently accessible to us.
Peak gold is believed to be after 2020.

most of the WORLD has been mined, Eg geographically there is not one country that has not been searching for gold. never said most of the gold.

but the point is even in the gold mining industry there are a few gold haters saying there is not much left and hating the fact that they have to use excavators to get at it instead of a bucket and spade like in the days of the wild west/victorian era. or earlier

[ElectricMucus]

same as all the gold miners in 2013 are shouting most of the world has been premined.

Less than half of the gold has been mined. Most of it is still in the earth, and that is only including sources currently accessible to us.
Peak gold is believed to be after 2020.

most of the WORLD has been mined, Eg geographically there is not one country that has not been searching for gold. never said most of the gold.

but the point is even in the gold mining industry there are a few gold haters saying there is not much left and hating the fact that they have to use excavators to get at it instead of a bucket and spade like in the days of the wild west/victorian era. or earlier

No you are looking for an easy way out.
There is gold everywhere still, it is just not as accessible as before, the mining industry is rather efficient.

Comparing BTC mining to gold just doesn't work out. There is no hubbart peak in bitcoin, just an ever decreasing supply rate.

[thejaytiesto]

Seems that Bitcoin is a premine scam if true.

I would like to know if any of those premined blocks where touched in front of major crashes. How can I find an answer for this question?

Nope, it just means no one cared to mine in the early days because mining was absolutely useless back then (you were mining 0 USD BTC).

[killerjoegreece]

100M USD wow. i think satoshi needs to come out of the closet and do a huge giveaway for the community. 

[defconone]

So can i have a wallet address Satoshi used?
And what program did Satoshi use? CGMiner 0.1?

[saturn643]

So can i have a wallet address Satoshi used?

Get any address used in the coinbase transactions of the first several blocks

And what program did Satoshi use? CGMiner 0.1?

No, that software didn't even exist until much much later. He used Bitcoin Core (actually just called Bitcoin when announced, it was the software that he wrote himself) mining capability to cpu mine.

[Vipul982]

Hi Satoshi,

If this is true, then please send me some 5 to 10 bitcoins :p
..|..|...
see, I didnt recieve any.. Its just a speculation..

But this is an amazing invention of all time, so if he has it then he deserves it

[Shova]

Of course, satoshi tested it first, mined some blocks alone, tested transfers, fees, and sure he did hold.
That's might be one reason for him to keep quite at this time, people would ask about his premine.
By the way 1M BTC would be 4.2 Billion USD, that's a year budget for mongolia.

[Anarc Senior]

Of course, satoshi tested it first, mined some blocks alone, tested transfers, fees, and sure he did hold.
That's might be one reason for him to keep quite at this time, people would ask about his premine.
By the way 1M BTC would be 4.2 Billion USD, that's a year budget for mongolia.

You and I are very late comers 😂-  and,  it would be 7.46 billions USD as of today 11/5/2017 😊.

In my very humble opinion: 

1). As some have already pointed out - too much assumptions that Satoshi is in this simply for the money is very disrespectful and insulting to the good gentleman...

2). I wish I own more BTCs - and if I do, I wouldn't worry about the temporary crashes in value of BTC due to the sell off.  That would disregard all the fundamental concepts  of why BTC/ blockchain has become quite successful in the first place...we could use a few crashes from the dump, so average folks like us can afford some more BTC...

[amishmanish]

Of course, satoshi tested it first, mined some blocks alone, tested transfers, fees, and sure he did hold.
That's might be one reason for him to keep quite at this time, people would ask about his premine.
By the way 1M BTC would be 4.2 Billion USD, that's a year budget for mongolia.

You and I are very late comers 😂-  and,  it would be 7.46 billions USD as of today 11/5/2017 😊.

In my very humble opinion: 

1). As some have already pointed out - too much assumptions that Satoshi is in this simply for the money is very disrespectful and insulting to the good gentleman...

2). I wish I own more BTCs - and if I do, I wouldn't worry about the temporary crashes in value of BTC due to the sell off.  That would disregard all the fundamental concepts  of why BTC/ blockchain has become quite successful in the first place...we could use a few crashes from the dump, so average folks like us can afford some more BTC...

This maybe completely irrelevant to the original topic but the "waiting for the dump" strategy never works. It never goes down long enough to time it. Now the dips will be much harder to time because of the futures trading announcement. So, the best way is to fix some amount per month. Divide it in a total of 8 days for 2 days/ week.
Buy that whenever there is a dip. Of course put some buy orders at coinbase and other exchanges if you're in the US and can afford to lock that money.
Finally, Hail Satoshi. That must have been some man to leave those BTC untouched all this while and be completely anonymous. We'll never know.

[amishmanish]

So can i have a wallet address Satoshi used?
And what program did Satoshi use? CGMiner 0.1?

These are the few early addresses:
1BBz9Z15YpELQ4QP5sEKb1SwxkcmPb5TMs contains 11 out of the 32 (Not touched since 14-01-2009)
1BDvQZjaAJH4ecZ8aL3fYgTi7rnn3o2thE contains 1 out of 32 ( Not touched since 12-01-2009)
1DUDsfc23Dv9sPMEk5RsrtfzCw5ofi5sVW contains 10 out of 32 ( Not touched since 12-01-2009)

Here's a link to an awesome topic about Satoshi's and Hal Finney's first transaction: (You'll have to scroll up as the link i found from my post history will only take you to my post)

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2346992.0

EDIT: Corrected the link to point to the actual post rather than my message, now that i know how to do it..

[bobthegrownup]

Was there ever a conclusion to this? I think Sergio's original quest is interesting. Would love to see the most up-to-date archaeological study

[Nekroser]

I've estimated a lower bound of current Satoshi's fortune. My estimation is that he owns more than 1M BTC, or 100M USD at current change.

It is impressive, isn't it?
That's a good reason to stay anonymous!

He needs to remain anonymous anyway. This is all the power of Bitcoin. No manipulation to affect the coin. I think Satoshi knows the real value of his creation in the future. This is just the beginning. The price will continue to grow further and then it will have more than all the rich people in the world combined.

Probably he has some plan to capture the world. After all, the one who controls the money can do a lot.

[satoshyknew]

Sergio, maybe Satoshi created the greatest prize competition and the privatekeys are somehow within the blockchain and that each 'black branch' in the picture of your wonderful work https://bitslog.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/ represents one solution.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5150688.0

[newassumption1]

I've assumed:

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength

That is an incorrect assumption

Satoshi mined 1/3/2009 - May 2010 (block 0 - block 54000+) to P2PK addresses, approximately 40 percent of these coinbase coins. (1.1 million+ coins)
He also mined other coins and transferred them to P2PKH addresses. (Amount and addresses unknown, he had several computers)
Sergio +1

Do I get to be Satoshi too? I was off by only a few days... https://i.imgur.com/w57rtbs.png

I know first-hand that there were several different people who mined before January 2010. It's kind of funny that history I've lived through is being questioned...

You are in the group of 60 percent not being Satoshi's P2PK coins.


What is Satoshi's intention?

December 2015 a Bitcointalk member discovered a puzzle transaction while playing around with his bot:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg13381244#msg13381244
At that time nobody declared such a puzzle transaction which was created January 2015 until the creator of that competition came out 2 years later:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1306983.msg18765941#msg18765941
As of 01/10/2019 there are still more than 100 BTC to win. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5166284.0

We think that the early mined coins of Satoshi are also a prize competition and that Satoshi is waiting this coins to be moved. We also think that he will not respond after somebody moves the first coins but it will be a message to the Bitcoin community that the private keys are somehow on the blockchain. If Satoshi disagreed with that conclusion he would have moved the coins to other addresses.

One day these P2PK coins will be moved.