I may have overlooked that satoshi spent an additional 25 BTC in 2009. Not sure.

[Taras]

Conclusion: Not enough evidence supporting or contesting that these are satoshi's blocks.

Embarrassingly, I may have missed one of Satoshi's earliest transactions in my blockchain analyses.
It's on the third fucking day of bitcoin's existence, too. And nobody else seems to have known either! _{(or they did and just didn't tell me.)}

I'm trying to figure out who the coins went to now. If anyone else wants to look, the TX is d71fd2f64c0b34465b7518d240c00e83f6a5b10138a7079d1252858fe7e6b577


I will update this post with a chart of where the coins went (like in my articles) and later with T-Shirts and coffee mugs.

EDIT, this is major for me. First of all it's very stupid that I overlooked this. Second of all, I'm very excited to see where the coins are now.

EDIT, looking at these transactions, I really don't know what to think. It's obvious this is someone playing with 25 bitcoins. Could be satoshi testing it out, or a curious cypherpunk.

[1714769825]

1714769825

[Taras]

Considering the coins were spent again (and played with further) in 2011, I'm going to assume this isn't satoshi.
The 3.14159 _(classy!) and 0.10841 outputs are considered "royal" because they were mined by satoshi and have not been tainted by other coins. Not that it matters because I doubt they'll ever move again. But maybe.

EDIT, wow, I found another block satoshi seems to have spent. Maybe it's someone else's slope. I'm going to write a book by the time I'm finished going through all this.

[gmaxwell]

The fixation on Satoshi makes me a little sad.  Bitcoin was created to create a system of money without trust and central control— all the salient features are in the system, not in the motivations or non-public activities of its creator... so this kind of research is just valuable as a historical novelty, not in any practical way.

Making Bitcoin available was a gift to the world, but we seem to be repaying it with a not stop effort at violating the privacy of someone who clearly prefers it, plus these analysis are seldom very accurate— in most cases it may just as well be someone else... and then some other poor slub gets accused erroneously of being Satoshi, and potentially endangered when mentally ill people make assumptions about the returns on kidnapping. ::sigh::

I'd be less disappointed if the focus were just on early transactions, which are somewhat interesting on their own merits without the unnecessary game of pin the transaction on the person game.

[bg002h]

The fixation on Satoshi makes me a little sad.  Bitcoin was created to create a system of money without trust and central control— all the salient features are in the system, not in the motivations or non-public activities of its creator... so this kind of research is just valuable as a historical novelty, not in any practical way.

Making Bitcoin available was a gift to the world, but we seem to be repaying it with a not stop effort at violating the privacy of someone who clearly prefers it, plus these analysis are seldom very accurate— in most cases it may just as well be someone else... and then some other poor slub gets accused erroneously of being Satoshi, and potentially endangered when mentally ill people make assumptions about the returns on kidnapping. ::sigh::

I'd be less disappointed if the focus were just on early transactions, which are somewhat interesting on their own merits without the unnecessary game of pin the transaction on the person game.

+1E8

The techniques you are using could be employed on more complex transaction sets and might yield useful tools. That would be interesting from a technical perspective.

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

The fixation on Satoshi makes me a little sad.  Bitcoin was created to create a system of money without trust and central control— all the salient features are in the system, not in the motivations or non-public activities of its creator... so this kind of research is just valuable as a historical novelty, not in any practical way.

Making Bitcoin available was a gift to the world, but we seem to be repaying it with a not stop effort at violating the privacy of someone who clearly prefers it, plus these analysis are seldom very accurate— in most cases it may just as well be someone else... and then some other poor slub gets accused erroneously of being Satoshi, and potentially endangered when mentally ill people make assumptions about the returns on kidnapping. ::sigh::

I'd be less disappointed if the focus were just on early transactions, which are somewhat interesting on their own merits without the unnecessary game of pin the transaction on the person game.

Something wrong with the forum software - it dropped the part where you say, "I am 100% sure satoshi was/is not a bad actor".

If there is a non-zero chance that satoshi was/is a bad actor, then investigations into satoshi are justifiable - because unlike Henry Ford and the Model T, satoshi may know something/have something about bitcoin that I might be better off knowing about.

Looking at the code is one way to do it.  Looking at founder actions and coin sources/destinations is another.

There are steps the founder can take in private to direct/quell the inquiry - contribute to a charity, send to a known bad address, and other things that people without my name can envision.

[gmaxwell]

Something wrong with the forum software - it dropped the part where you say, "I am 100% sure satoshi was/is not a bad actor".

Thanks for showing so clearly that you missed my point and also don't understand Bitcoin technology.

Bitcoin's design is such that it could have been started by a malicious force and it wouldn't matter— in fact, in an abundance of prudence you should assume that it was and analyze it from that perspective: many severe bugs in the original software have been fixed that way.

Looking at founder actions and coin sources/destinations is another.

No— in fact, it's not. Because unlike centralized systems the integrity of the software exists independently and orthogonally with the system's creator. The system could have holy origins, but if its bugged and bad, it's bugged and bad. It could have been created by the devil but if the problems have been removed, then the problems are removed and the system is trustworthy.

can take in private to direct/quell the inquiry

This sounds like some veiled extortion. Am I reading you incorrectly?

[jl2012]

The fixation on Satoshi makes me a little sad.  Bitcoin was created to create a system of money without trust and central control— all the salient features are in the system, not in the motivations or non-public activities of its creator... so this kind of research is just valuable as a historical novelty, not in any practical way.

Making Bitcoin available was a gift to the world, but we seem to be repaying it with a not stop effort at violating the privacy of someone who clearly prefers it, plus these analysis are seldom very accurate— in most cases it may just as well be someone else... and then some other poor slub gets accused erroneously of being Satoshi, and potentially endangered when mentally ill people make assumptions about the returns on kidnapping. ::sigh::

I'd be less disappointed if the focus were just on early transactions, which are somewhat interesting on their own merits without the unnecessary game of pin the transaction on the person game.

Something wrong with the forum software - it dropped the part where you say, "I am 100% sure satoshi was/is not a bad actor".

If there is a non-zero chance that satoshi was/is a bad actor, then investigations into satoshi are justifiable - because unlike Henry Ford and the Model T, satoshi may know something/have something about bitcoin that I might be better off knowing about.

Looking at the code is one way to do it.  Looking at founder actions and coin sources/destinations is another.

There are steps the founder can take in private to direct/quell the inquiry - contribute to a charity, send to a known bad address, and other things that people without my name can envision.

Bitcoin is open source. Intention of the creator is irrelevant

[TooDumbForBitcoin]

Quote
can take in private to direct/quell the inquiry
This sounds like some veiled extortion. Am I reading you incorrectly?

I am powerless to extort anyone.    Founder is not powerless to participate in/respond to enguiry while preserving "his" privacy.  I should have thought of examples not referenced to founders stash.  Reinforcing my name there.

[jl2012]

It is interesting that this transaction sent 25BTC back to the same public key. Is it a handcrafted transaction?

[jonald_fyookball]

The fixation on Satoshi makes me a little sad. 

hi Greg,

I can understand the sentiment, but
its better if we just accept it because
the fixation will only grow as Bitcoin does.

Cult of personality behavior is just human nature, for
better or for worse.   Let's just be happy Satoshi was
wise enough to be anonymous in the first place!

Cheers, Jonald.

[Taras]

The fixation on Satoshi makes me a little sad.  Bitcoin was created to create a system of money without trust and central control— all the salient features are in the system, not in the motivations or non-public activities of its creator... so this kind of research is just valuable as a historical novelty, not in any practical way.

Making Bitcoin available was a gift to the world, but we seem to be repaying it with a not stop effort at violating the privacy of someone who clearly prefers it, plus these analysis are seldom very accurate— in most cases it may just as well be someone else... and then some other poor slub gets accused erroneously of being Satoshi, and potentially endangered when mentally ill people make assumptions about the returns on kidnapping. ::sigh::

I do look at satoshi's blocks and separate them cleanly from the ones around them, keeping in mind, however, that I'm also looking at everyone else's blocks too. Other than satoshi, Hal, and Druid, I have not to date "identified" a single miner. I can only separate them and tell you that some blocks were mined by one person, and some blocks were mined by this other person, but no mix-matching.

I have no intentions to learn more about satoshi than we're supposed to, or to find out who mined which coins and who broadcasted which transactions. (In fact, for more than 80% of the miners I've found so far, it'd be damn near impossible.)
I give every miner either a pseudonym (like Hes, Dud, Bbz etc.) if they made a significant impact on the blockchain or a number (like UIM-12 or UIM-2485) if they mined a block and left forever. If those people want to step out and tell the world what they've mined, they can. It's not my decision.

I'd be less disappointed if the focus were just on early transactions, which are somewhat interesting on their own merits without the unnecessary game of pin the transaction on the person game.

I don't need to know who received 50 bitcoins from satoshi or 25 bitcoins from satoshi or whatever. I only want to learn what other things they've done on the blockchain, and keep them separate from other people's work.

I'm currently documenting all the transactions in the first 10,000 blocks. I'll probably have to set up a mediawiki to share all the knowledge.
And as for the purpose of all this, you hit the nail right on the head. It's a historical novelty, not a massive doxing operation.

[gmaxwell]

I have no intentions to learn more about satoshi than we're supposed to,

The best of intentions… but really, thats less of my point than the rest— the sluthing creates an impression that it actually matters, as you can see in TooDumbForBitcoin's response. Thats unfortunate.

[Carlton Banks]

plus these analysis are seldom very accurate— in most cases it may just as well be someone else... and then some other poor slub gets accused erroneously of being Satoshi, and potentially endangered when mentally ill people make assumptions about the returns on kidnapping. ::sigh::

On one hand, there's nothing to stop someone with a pathological fixation on discerning Satoshi's real identity for themselves from using the same flawed assumption that Satoshi mined every block in 2009-10. That information's not going anywhere anytime soon, regardless of whether someone presents it publicly.

On the other hand, this does add to the collective awareness of potential Satoshi hunters, and in turn the risk to people who did early mining/transactions who are not Satoshi or have nothing to do with him/it/them. I'd be pretty annoyed if I owned any of the outputs that have been labelled as Satoshi's, as spending them will likely never be worth the amount of trouble it could cause. It sucks from all perspectives really.

I'd be less disappointed if the focus were just on early transactions, which are somewhat interesting on their own merits without the unnecessary game of pin the transaction on the person game.

There's never going to be anything to stop people's imaginations only getting as far as "maybe those are x's coins! I know, I'll make a post saying that! No-one else said that yet, it'll be an original contribution" No real point in wishing for people to be wiser, there'll be an endless succession of people who become just cognizant enough to publicly announce the first notion that comes into their head.

Maybe there's some hope for the idea of being conscious of the dangers of suggesting inferences about public data and it's links with private people or groups, but that kind of culture will likely come about as the result of experiencing egregious violations of that principle.

[laurentmt]

I'd be pretty annoyed if I owned any of the outputs that have been labelled as Satoshi's, as spending them will likely never be worth the amount of trouble it could cause. It sucks from all perspectives really.

"In the future, everyone will be Satoshi Nakamoto for 15 minutes" (Andy Warhol - Newsweek interview - 1983)

[Carlton Banks]

 

It's difficult these days to tell whether Warhol was exaggerating or being completely deadpan.

[Sergio_Demian_Lerner]

Taras, block 286 may not be Satoshi's. Please be careful with easy conclusions.

Here is a possible mining pattern of another miner that pass through block 286.



Many blocks with a low extraNonce can be confused easily with Satoshi's because most other miners start and stop mining with low extraNonce values, and have very few blocks in their pattern.

[Taras]

Taras, block 286 may not be Satoshi's. Please be careful with easy conclusions.

Here is a possible mining pattern of another miner that pass through block 286.



Many blocks with a low extraNonce can be confused easily with Satoshi's because most other miners start and stop mining with low extraNonce values, and have very few blocks in their pattern.

Oh, that's interesting!
I will certainly have a look at this. It is my understanding that block 9 should be the only one satoshi spent, right?
What I did was looked at the incrementing eN, and just didn't check satoshi's slope for spent blocks assuming there were none.
Then when I did check I started getting spent blocks.