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

[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!!!