Topic: How much was Satoshi's Bitcoin worth when he last posted? (Read 415 times)

Sometimes the question in my mind is, what is the last transaction in Bitcoin from Satoshi wallet, because sometimes we need to come to a realization that there are somethings that we don't need public information on and if that be it, why are we asking for such information, and what is the advantage or contributions of such information to the current Bitcoin ecosystem, Satoshi Nakamoto have played his part and he moved on, regardless of what and where he is, we should let it be instead trying to generate some baseless discussion concerning Satoshi of what the heck he does with the Bitcoin holdings at that time.

Also getting Satoshi total Bitcoin worth as at the tinthe last posted in this forum is very simple, because the profile Satoshi is very much available in the forum all that you need to do, is to visit the account last posts, and get the date and time of his last post, and then search them in Blockchain explorer, you will get all the needed information, about his Bitcoin value wort as at that time.

Where do you draw all these conclusions from? How do you know what his real intention was besides what has been written in the white paper? Maybe not as a get-rich-quick scheme as I assume that someone being able to write code like that would probably have the ability to scam people otherwise and get rich quicker. But you never know, he could have had hidden shares in crypto exchanges, everything is possible as nothing is impossible. it's rather a question of how much sense do some of the theories make. Destroying the private keys, but for what purpose?

That "trust" you are talking about is an illusion in your head. It doesn't exist because Bitcoin isn't designed to be based on p2p trust, but on p-to-network trust. People trust the network because it does its job algorithmically and in an incentivized way such that acting in the best interest of themselves means acting in the best interest of the network means acting in the best interest of all peers due to what is at stake if they try to behave against the best interest of the network.

Bitcoin became so big because there is no trust that can be broken by Satoshi. If he moves his coins, it won't change much in regards to the long term vision. The only reason I see that moving these coins could become problematic is if it turns out that the North Korean dictator owns over 1 million BTC. I don't know what the repercussions would be.

My best guess would be that whoever is behind Bitcoin, the actor doesn't need money and had plans beyond just coding Bitcoin and then say goodbye.

Whether it is 1M BTC or not, nobody was for obvious reasons able to precisely pin it down to a single number. But there are ballparks that suggest it is somewhere around there and I think it makes sense. But again I don't know.

As for the CIA/NSA, I pertain to the category of people who neither claim to be sure about one option nor exclude any option from the realm of possibilities. But regarding the CIA specifically, it is known that they know a thing or two about cryptography and how to spy on almost the entire world for decades without going noticed.

But ok, I would exclude one option. It wasn't probably our alcoholic neighbor Joe, smoking cigarettes in his basement, using his IT skills from 30 years ago and now living his life on social security.

Thanks for that info. I was pretty sure Satoshi's main load of 1M Bitcoin hadn't been moved.

So the fact remains that Satoshi, if he is still alive, has access to about $60 billion in Bitcoin assuming he hasn't lost it (which is unlikely to happen, I believe).

This bolsters my thesis that Satoshi was actually a person or team at the CIA or NSA. It's very very strange to me that somebody who invented this system wouldn't take even a dollar from it--that just doesn't gibe with everything I know about human nature.

However, if it was the CIA/NSA, they wouldn't be able to cash in the coins based on the need for secrecy, the paperwork involved, etc.

I don't think philipma1957 actually meant that Satoshi is moving coins frequently from wallets proven to belong to him because as far as I know that has never happened. It's not really proven how many BTC and how many wallets Satoshi really owns either.

But what has happened in the past are things like this



and as you can see, they write "analysis suggests". Nobody knows for sure whether Satoshi has kept mining for years afterwards. He could have set up new wallets that are not connected to those knows from the very early days. Or whether he has been acquiring any afterwards. But if he has access to his wallets right now, I am dead sure that he would never move tiny amounts to peel off some pocket money on a quarterly or semiannual  basis!

@philipma1957 you are a very modest man, getting along with only 50 BTC sold twice a year  I assume the yacht is already bought, so you only need some cash to refuel it! Oh and some food and water just to survive of course off of those 50 BTC twice a year.

Is there any actual evidence of that?

it is obvious that he likely peels off 50 coins every once in a while and sells them.

I think three million one or two times a year would work for me.

Why would that have ruined anything? His coins were his coins, and everybody knew it. He might have been "playing a long game", but not in the sense that we would out and out destroy them.

And the idea that he is just sitting there, knowing he's the author a gigantic technological change without telling anybody... doesn't add up I don't think.

Or maybe he simply destroyed the private keys on purpose? We have to understand that the Bitcoin ecosystem was much different back then. It was probably only a handful of enthusiasts interested in the technology, and apparently Satoshi did not create the system as a "get-rich-quick" scheme.  He knew everyone was watching those first mined coins. Its like he was playing a long game, and cashing out those coins would have ruined the whole thing. Bitcoin wouldnt be what it is today if he had broken that trust.

Its possible he viewed the project as a success and moved on, leaving the future of Bitcoin to the community.

You don't pay capital gains tax on unrealized gains, so there would be no problem (assuming he is in the US).



Besides Elon and Bill here, there are lots and lots of billionaires and centimillionaires that blend right in and they might be in line at the supermarket with you for all you know. Folks like Elon and Bill actually went out of their way to maintain a high profile for their own reasons.

And, wouldn't you know it, there's a thriving industry around keeping the lives of billionaires very private and quiet . Throw enough money at the problem, and it gets... solved...

Most major "holders" are people with billions of dollars net worth already. How do you think the state would react if a person, out of nowhere, suddenly decided to sell a million bitcoin? You think it's easy to justify that to the taxman? People frequently experience tax problems with far less than that, because for more than 10 years there was barely a legislative framework for cryptocurrencies.

And I'm still quite unsure of your point. That being a famous billionaire is better than an infamous? I'm pretty sure I'd feel better if I had infinite money without anyone knowing it than being an Elon Musk.

I agree it's more of a risk than coding and talking etc., but most people who remain anonymous never had the whole world looking for them like Satoshi has. My point is that he was clearly very very good at it. Net-net, based on the attention he brought to himself, creating Bitcoin was the most dangerous thing anybody could have done.



I've known lots and lots of people (I'm a silicon valley vet of many successful startups) who thought they would be satisfied with a few million dollars--until they got a few million dollars and understood how little that changed their life .


Most major Bitcoin holders don't hold their keys, either. They leave that to experts like at Coinbase etc. Then they are no different than Elon Musk or Bill Gates.


They hire people and it's done, and they hire people to pay those people. Those billionaires have far more free time than average joes, and they live a life that is far safer.

Does this man look like he's fretting for his life?

Creating Bitcoin did not require risking his anonymity. You can work from home, connect to mailing lists and forums via Tor, and just be cautious to not leave any hints of who you are. Selling bitcoin, on the other hand, requires revealing an information which can be linked to your real world identity, even if you accept just cash via mail.

We frequently notice old coins being moved. It would be possible Satoshi spent some of them in 2011, just to see it working. Then, in 2013, sell another thousand, and become a millionaire. Then, in 2017. Then, a few weeks ago with that block reward I shared in my previous post. That would be far more preferable than publicly announce he's selling Satoshi's coins.

Yes, some of us would be satisfied with just a few million dollars.

No one has $60 billion in cash or gold. This is a completely different situation, one none of us would want to be in with the whole world aware of it. It would be extremely dangerous.

Maybe a person does not want to hire an army of security and lawyers for the sake of living his life? Maybe... You know, he wants to live like a regular human being?

Yes, as far as I know Satoshi hasn't said anything himself. So the only evidence we have is the statements made by Hal Finney regarding his communications with Satoshi and that he received the coins as a test.

That's what I always found very odd when people come up with the conclusion that he is most likely dead. Is it because they think otherwise he wouldn't be able to resist to access the coins?

The theories I read on this forum so far that I found weird were that he is dead, or that he lost his private keys... If a guy writing the code for BTC the lost his private keys giving him access to a million BTC (or whatever the amount is), that's the most absurd option of all of them to me.

And I have to say that I don't understand the discussion at all because didn't we all agree that Craig Steven Wright is Satoshi? 

Compared to creating Bitcoin? In order to stay anonymous all of this time (and with a potential $50 billion payoff), he was obviously extremely adept at maintaining his anonymity. I don't think somebody like that would be too afraid of using an anonymous exchange to get USD. And of course the flip side to why is... millions of dollars? That's usually a pretty good motivation for most normal humans .


Yes, I am. So are you . Anybody here who pretends they "know for certain" here shouldn't be listened to.

You are speculating. There is no way to know for sure. Maybe he just wanted to remain anonymous. If he didnt want to reveal his identity back then, when Bitcoin wasnt that popular or valuable in the first place, why would he do it now? You say "for fun". But do you understand that revealing his identity could impact his personal life and safety? Not to mention legal challenges related to the creation and distribution of Bitcoin, depending on the jurisdiction.  It could totally mess up his life. Thats why its probably better for him to stay anonymous.

he is likely peeling off a block here and there.

it is over 3,000,000 usd when he does it. So,depending on how he or she lives that is more than enough.

Let's leave asides that the real world is one big surveillance State for a moment. Why would he reveal such an extremely sensitive information to the trade? I don't understand, what's the benefit he gains? Why not just pretend he is an early miner?

I think you've got it backwards. Back then, there were barely exchanges for converting your bitcoin to electronic fiat. Selling bitcoin for cash is a pretty recent option, and even today it's difficult.

It's impossible to believe he would sit on top of $60 billion without touching a cent, but it's entirely reasonable in my mind, to take just 0.1% of that, live like a king while risking nothing. Seriously, think about it. What would you rather have: a few million dollars and nobody would know a damn, or billions and everybody would know your name and that you literally reinvented money?

An adult does not risk his life for the lolz.

Why not spend them under his "name" since it's obviously a very carefully (and successfully) guarded alias? In other words, what would he be afraid of? I suspect that--especially early on--there would be very secure ways of converting the Bitcoin to USD (physical paper) and thus stay completely anonymous. I agree that what you are saying is possible, but I think there's contraindications here too.


I think it's impossible to believe that somebody would sit on $60 billion (or even $60 million). I also think that it's very unlikely somebody who did something like this would never want the world to know it was them--that just doesn't jibe with everything I've ever learned about human nature in my years on this planet. Hence, even if he actually lost the keys (which doesn't seem very likely), I still have a hard time believing he would not reveal himself just for fun.

I hope he's healthy and doing well too--after all, in my scenario he's probably made GS15 by now .

Satoshi related topics have become and overwhelming event for us lately and this one is one of such topics aimed at discussing satoshi again, I think it time for us to change focus and talk about more relavant topic that is bitcoin related instead of discussing on past memory that will not add up anything to the forum or the entire bitcoin ecosystem.

Mind you satoshi did not take any action on his bitcoin wallet, so it hard to really tell which one is satoshi wallet and which one to know it worth at the time of satoshi last post here on bitcointalk.

The truth is that we actually can't pinpoint the actual networth of Satoshi before he disappeared. It would be like trying to count a couple of sea shells down the beach because there is literally no way for you to actually pinpoint an exact and accurate amount of bitcoin Satoshi mined and owned before he vanished. Of course during the earliest period of the launch of bitcoin we really didn't have a lot of bitcoin miners around as at that time since bitcoin adoption is pretty much low.

Based on all this it's a very possible scenario for Satoshi to move some coins to even a centralised exchange without any one actually suspecting that he did. Of course there are a couple of wallets flagged as Satoshi's but they may just be speculations since it's very possible that some of his wallets are still unknown till date.

If the blocks in the first two years are still controlled by Satoshi every once in a while they are sold.

At least two or three from 2009-2011 were sold in 2024.

Now since no one knows who or whom Satoshi is , no one knows who cashed those old blocks this year.

As for satoshi value of the coins from 2009 to 2011 when he left in 2011 .

Maybe 10 million value which is now 60 billion in value.

Until now BTC has not moved since it was mined by Satoshi?
I don't know if Satoshi ever enjoyed the bitcoin profits he made? This is still a big question after his mysterious disappearance.

Yeahh this is just speculation who Satoshi really is? Many have claimed him but we never believe in his evidence and confessions.

Even if he wanted to spend a few, just to see it working, it would make absolutely no sense for him to spend them under the name of Satoshi. The most rationale approach would be to start spending them after he would have acquired them under his real name, whatever that is. Entirely possible for him to hide in the early miners crowd, and as I said, I think it's the most likely scenario.

Why are we even assuming he's dead? When someone leaves a project and doesn't return online, the default assumption shouldn't be that they've passed away. Especially when, from the start, there were signs he planned to leave, and he built a project designed to avoid any single point of failure. It all adds up to the perfect plan.

I hope he's healthy and doing well.

Could be. Personally, my own feeling about human nature is that somebody in Satoshi's position would want to spend at least some of his original coins just to see if it worked. I get not spending a "lot" of it, but it seems like he'd want to spend at least a few dollars worth just as a proof of concept, and/or a badge of personal pride. If he was "humble", he would just spend a few satoshis and make (say) $10 or something like that.

But if you worked at the CIA/NSA, making even $10 in "revenue" would make a giant mess since they would have no way to account for it, who knows what rules or even laws you would be breaking, and so on. And it wouldn't be his money, it would be the government's, so he wouldn't care about any personal gain. This scenario, for me, explains why the number is zero and not say some small number (or big number).

My interpretation is that, if he didn't pass away during the early days, he did spend his coins; just not all of them. After thinking about it extensively, I've come to the conclusion that the most likely scenario is that he simply spent a fraction of his coins, just to not "make a splash" that he's Satoshi, essentially hiding in the early miners crowd.

No person really needs hundreds of millions of dollars. Satoshi could easily retire by selling just one block reward from all the hundreds of thousands he's suspected to have earned. Check out this recent transaction. It spends 50 bitcoin that were mined just a couple of weeks after the network was set in stone. This could easily be his. (Of course, it could be somebody else's as well, Satoshi did not mine in secret, he had released Bitcoin immediately after the first block.)

That's certainly what I would do if I were Satoshi.

P.S: Highly doubt it's the NSA. It would either have been leaked or most coins would have been moved, and I'm sure they'd have found a way to cover that. Only a person whose life would be in danger could disappear and spend only a small fraction of all those billions in bitcoin.

Interesting. That would be consistent with my theory that Satoshi was CIA/NSA. In other words, the operative there created it, it got out of hand, so they pulled away and let the community take it over. If they felt they were making somebody's life miserable because somebody was falsely accused of being them, it would make sense that they would feel bad about that (or would be afraid of being sued over it) and pop their head up to correct the situation.

And it may look inauthentic because it was another aspect of the organization e.g. legal department that perhaps didn't use the same tradecraft.

For me, this mystery hinges on one thing that people seem to miss: why would anybody let $50 billion just sit there? Or in this case, $737 million? No individual on the planet is rich enough blow off that much money, and statistically you'd have to assume that Satoshi was just an ordinary worker somewhere that made a decent salary, not a Forbes List billionaire.

Another thing that doesn't add up here is that Satoshi apparently made absolute zero on Bitcoin. Again, if he was just an "ordinary Joe" (or Jane) then you would think he'd at least sell $10k worth if only as a means of feeling good that his invention really worked.

But if he were CIA/NSA, he would not want to sell anything because it would be... a big mess with his superiors and his organization (and my theory is that now it's an even bigger mess that they don't know what to do about).

(I began my CIA/NSA theory here on bitcointalk half-joking, but... hmmm....).

The mined Bitcoin, rumored to be 1 million coins, happened way back in the early days. He was the first miner since he created the whole network. That theory was explained in a post by...

Whether he's buying or selling Bitcoin isn’t really the point. If he actually owns 1 million Bitcoins, what else is he gonna do but sell some, right? There’s no proof he’s selling, but if he’s alive, it’s hard to believe he hasn’t spent a bit. Maybe he sold through P2P to avoid leaving any traces for authorities.

Do not believe all what you are reading online about Satoshi about the bitcoin he mined, only few of it will be true. You do not know if Satoshi is even still mining bitcoin right now. Also no one knows if Satoshi continued to mine bitcoin after the addresses linked to be his addresses.

No one knows who Satoshi is. We do not know if Satoshi is a man, a woman or a group of people. We do not know if he is buying and selling bitcoin right now. I think we should just leave all these kind of question not answered because the answers are not accurate.

We really don't know. If we knew with certainty that he sold some bitcoin, then it'd be probable that the buyer knows his real name, and judging by his behavior, there's no chance he would have left the slight traces of Satoshi during a trade.

What evidence do we have about this? Was it just Hal claiming he received them from Satoshi?

Agreed.
Moving them may be done for other reasons unknown to us, however, Satoshi probably enjoys the position he is now in.
Anonymous. Famous. Safe. And reached pretty much everything he would want to, probably.

When you say "sell," there should be some evidence that it was sold on an exchange, but so far, there hasn't been any. So, it's safe to assume that Satoshi never sold his Bitcoin for USD. Sure, there are speculations that some of the Satoshi-era wallets have moved significant amounts of Bitcoin, but even if that was Satoshi, just moving coins doesn’t mean they were sold.

Other than the 10 bitcoins he sent to Hal Finney, we can't prove how much of Satoshi's total bitcoins he owns, but since there are thousands of bitcoins that haven't been spent since the early days, we can say that the bitcoins Satoshi mined may never have been spent.

Thanks for the facts presented!
On the side note, Arkham did a great job.
Overall, it can be speculated as much as people want, as much as who Satoshi really is 

The thing about Bitcoin is that it can provide any individual with a great deal of anonymity if they want it. Satoshi did that which means we don't know which coins are Satoshi's to talk about how much they are, how much they're worth and whether he has ever sold them or not.

The only thing we know for sure is that Satoshi owns only 2 keys:

• First one is the key to the output of the Genesis block. Those coins have never been moved and you can already see the balance of the address because some people sent coins to it (remember to deduct 50 if you are checking it on a broken block explorer that includes the unspendable Genesis block output)
• Second one is the key to the input Satoshi announced to own when he sent 10BTC from it to Hal Finney back in 2009 as the first bitcoin transaction ever. People have sent coins to that key as well (to the P2PKH version of it) and it hasn't moved either.

around $50M was his value at the time for 1M coins.

Figures on bitcoins own by Satoshi Nakamoto are speculation and the Bitcoin founder can own more or less than speculative numbers. We can not know whether Satoshi sold any of his bitcoins, never can know that. The publicly spending is 10 BTC to Hal Finney, and that's all we can be sure.

Who owns the most bitcoin?

Sergio Demian Lerner's article "The Well Deserved Fortune of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin creator, Visionary and Genius" is probably the most coherent opinion on that subject.

According to his analysis (he compared distinct mining patterns), a miner which could be Satoshi ("Patoshi") had mined around 1814400 BTC. From those, 1148800 BTC were not spent until the article's date (April 2013). a million Bitcoins (Lerner later talks about 900,000). (Edited: corrected an error here. The 700,000 BTC which were spent are not believed to be from Satoshi.)

Satoshi's last email which seems to be authentic was written on April 13, 2011. According to Bitinfocharts, on April 12, 2011, the price was at 81 cents, and at the next data point (April 15, 2011) in that chart it's at 99 cent. MtGox was already online back then so we have a relatively coherent market already.

So Satoshi's fortune at that time was worth between 930528 and 1137312 $ if we only count the coins which weren't moved, or around 1.7 times that amount if we count the moved coins too.

PS: There's this mysterious post which many believe not to be authentic from March 6, 2014 ("I am not Dorian Nakamoto"). If we count this one, the price was at $642 one day later according to the same source. So we'd be talking about $737 million at that date.

We do not know exactly how much BTC Satoshi holds at that time all what I read is mostly rumors and speculation with no credible evidence.

I never heard Satoshi sell his bitcoin holdings to USD at that time before he stopped posting here on the forum.
And I believe, selling his bitcoin at that time indicates that he lacks confidence in this project, especially in the early days.
So I think Satoshi never sold his Bitcoin even these days.

Since we're on the topic of Satoshi, I thought I'd put this question I had out there.

Another related question: did Satoshi ever sell any of his Bitcoin for USD, etc. before he stopped posting?