Satoshi only spent 50 BTC. Here's where those coins are now

[TheRealSteve]

Are you able to post the addresses of the two 'in-circulation' coins (where you left them on your chart) so that I can do a taint analysis of my own wallet addresses? Now I am interested to know! 

Lazy much?

If you wanted to try and trace things yourself, blockchain.info is a good start.  Here's that first transaction: https://blockchain.info/tx/f4184fc596403b9d638783cf57adfe4c75c605f6356fbc91338530e9831e9e16
On the left, click on 'View Tree Chart': https://blockchain.info/tree/15029

Just 'follow the coin' :p

[1714786734]

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[Bitram]

If he would spent all of it, price would fall too deep. I guess he is waiting for moment when bitcoin would be strong enough to sell it without risk.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

I always thought that if Satoshi burned 1 satoshi from one of his addresses the market would react positively.
He waits until everyone notices it, and then spends 1 satoshi.
Then he burns 2 satoshis, wait, and spends 2 satoshis.
Next day burns 4, wait, spents 4.
Keeps doing it until everyone is sure he is not going to dump all those coins in the market, just spend a few.

Regarding Satoshi's coins, I also concluded that block 9 was the only block reward Satoshi spent.

Best regards, and happy chain-archeology day!

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

You're a big fan of the taint huh?

Taint is good - it defeats the whitelisters.

In the future there will be tainting services for this purpose.

Taint all the coins!!

[g4c]

You're a big fan of the taint huh?

Taint is good - it defeats the whitelisters.

In the future there will be tainting services for this purpose.

Taint all the coins!!

I think he might have been making an innuendo:

Taint can refer to the Perineum, the region of the human anatomy between the genitals and the anus.

[Taras]

Thanks for the mentions, guys!
http://bitslog.wordpress.com/2014/04/03/chain-archeology/
http://www.amongtech.com/who-has-the-first-50-bitcoins-mined-by-satoshi-that-were-ever-spent/

@niels:

Satoshi, the creator of Bitcoin is expected to have many millions of Bitcoins making him the richest Bitcoin millionaire in the world, but there is currently only 1 block that has been confirmed is from Satoshi.

Actually, Sergio and I have and can link thousands of blocks to satoshi with good confidence. Block 9 is only special because it's the only block satoshi is known to have ever spent the bitcoins from... The rest haven't moved, at all.

From the original 50, only 6.31 BTC are still circulating today and there is a small chance, your wallet might contain .00001 of the very first circulating bitcoins mined by Satoshi him self.

Not a small chance. It's mathematically improbable that your address doesn't have some of satoshi's coins in it.

[validium]

Thanks op for this interesting read.

-BTC

[AussieHash]

Satoshi, having observed that the blockchain can now support itself without him, disappeared from public in 2010, and vanished completely in 2011.

The lower bound I believe is 985,000 BTC.

Has anybody checked that the approx 20k block rewards haven't been spent ?

[Taras]

Satoshi, having observed that the blockchain can now support itself without him, disappeared from public in 2010, and vanished completely in 2011.

The lower bound I believe is 985,000 BTC.

Has anybody checked that the approx 20k block rewards haven't been spent ?

Yes, although I'm now going through it and checking myself. Manually.

[porqupine]

I always thought that if Satoshi burned 1 satoshi from one of his addresses the market would react positively.
He waits until everyone notices it, and then spends 1 satoshi.
Then he burns 2 satoshis, wait, and spends 2 satoshis.
Next day burns 4, wait, spents 4.
Keeps doing it until everyone is sure he is not going to dump all those coins in the market, just spend a few.

Regarding Satoshi's coins, I also concluded that block 9 was the only block reward Satoshi spent.

Best regards, and happy chain-archeology day!

If the coins were dumped on the market that would be good for Bitcoin in the long run, the wealth concentration is steeper than for the US 1%.

[iraszl]

Nice analysis.

I argued in my post that Satoshi's stash is the biggest systemic risk.

Not because I don't trust the guy, but because somebody could inherit it or 'steal' it from him and the new owner may not have the integrity Satoshi has.

Unfortunately speaking to insiders the consensus is that Satoshi is dead. He was battling a terminal illness when he was forced to give up on Bitcoin and later he died. I hope that's not true and that one liner when he saved Dorian is an argument against this.

Regardless, I hope he's alive and hope he sold his coins without moving them and lives comfortably somewhere. I highly recommend he never reveals his true identity. He would be dissected by the media and all kinds of organizations.

[findftp]

Satoshi is the name of a government, possibly even US.
They will not cash out BTC to fiat.
I strongly belief that Satoshi is the name of a government agency of some country.
All the events points in this direction for me.
People will disagree with me, I don't care.


Just my 2 satoshi's

[wan3646886]

真心没看懂

[drawingthesun]

Any possible news of satoshi's coins would hurt Bitcoin.
They're gone? That's 1m btc wasted for eternity.
They're spendable? One person could ruin the market, and it could be called a pyramid scheme as a whole.
They're donated suddenly? That's a million btc about to be sold by charities to help people.
A little bit spent? Well now we know satosji can spend them all, which could kill us.
For now, no news is very good news.

I agree with this, Satoshi moving coins would probably send a bad vibe/ripple through the market.

However, I believe Satoshi should surface and move the coins sooner rather than later, to get the impact out the way with.

He could do some good will, like donate 500,000 coins to ease people's fears. Donate coin to every charity in the world. The price of bitcoin would depress for about a year, but come back more resilient with less fear of a single person holding such power over the circulation.

Satoshi would still have 500,000 bitcoin, on the path to becoming the richest person in the world, and the charity news would put bitcoin on everyone's radar, the price might even rebound in hours, not years!

[mczarnek]

Do you think these are all his coins?  If I were him once I got to 1 million in that wallet, I'd have switched over to mining into a different wallet address.. held onto the 1 million as an investment and spent the rest.

Oh and I doubt that satoshi will become the richest person in the world.. first of all, proof of stake is being figured out by coins like Nxt and going to use something like 1200 times less energy than Bitcoin to run, not to mention being significantly more cost efficient for the same security.  That aside.. even if Bitcoin did get to be worth as much as the USD these days, Satoshi would be approximately just as wealthy as Bill Gates, though granted he could actually spend his without needing to cash out his stock and crash it, because everyone else would simply hold onto any BTC he's handed them.

[AussieHash]

Nice analysis.

I argued in my post that Satoshi's stash is the biggest systemic risk.

I agree, it does not seem like the work of a benevolent founding father, to mine 1 million BTC.

Regardless of the bitcoin price in the future, satoshi moving a single block reward will cause a huge sell off. That wouldn't be an issue right now, but it will be in 18+ months from time.

[kadter]

Well 1 million is kinda nice

[OhMyCoin]

Very interesting report and great work! Thx

[hashman]

Do you think these are all his coins?  If I were him once I got to 1 million in that wallet, I'd have switched over to mining into a different wallet address.. held onto the 1 million as an investment and spent the rest.

Every block was mined to a different address.  The evidence of one operator is from the extra nonce. 

[boumalo]

Satoshi is the name of a government, possibly even US.
They will not cash out BTC to fiat.
I strongly belief that Satoshi is the name of a government agency of some country.
All the events points in this direction for me.
People will disagree with me, I don't care.


Just my 2 satoshi's

You don't give any arguments or clues

Do you think these are all his coins?  If I were him once I got to 1 million in that wallet, I'd have switched over to mining into a different wallet address.. held onto the 1 million as an investment and spent the rest.

Oh and I doubt that satoshi will become the richest person in the world.. first of all, proof of stake is being figured out by coins like Nxt and going to use something like 1200 times less energy than Bitcoin to run, not to mention being significantly more cost efficient for the same security.  That aside.. even if Bitcoin did get to be worth as much as the USD these days, Satoshi would be approximately just as wealthy as Bill Gates, though granted he could actually spend his without needing to cash out his stock and crash it, because everyone else would simply hold onto any BTC he's handed them.

Satoshi will probably never spend his stash
If a BTC is work well into the 6digits he would be the richest person on the earth providing he exists, he is alive and he has access to his BTC

Well 1 million is kinda nice

1000 is pretty nice, 1,000,000 is extraordinary