New Estimate Suggests That Nakamoto Mined Bitcoin worth $10.5 Billion

Blockchain trackers and researchers from Whale Alert published new research on Monday claiming that the creator of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto mined about 1,125,150 Bitcoins.

A huge stack

Researchers suggest that Satoshi Nakamoto mined Bitcoins up to block 54,316 which means that he has a stack of around 1,125,150 BTC. This stack could be worth $10.5 billion according to the latest spot exchange rates. Several researchers have tried to understand how Nakamoto initially mined Bitcoins.

A popular theory comes from Sergio Demian Lerner, the RSK Labs chief scientist. He maintains a website called Satoshi Blocks and has done a famous Patoshi pattern study as well. Lerner’s data had made people believe that the originator of the coin had close to one million Bitcoins. His study included data sets from the blockchain analysis that was based on the extranonce fields which contained coinbase fields resulting from the coinbase transactions directly. Lerner’s data was published in 2016.

New studies give different estimates

A new study from Bitmex Research in 2018 suggests that Nakamoto’s Bitcoin stash was not as big as previously estimated. It suggested that the creator may have only mined 600,000 to 700,000 BTC. This could mean that his stash is worth only about $6.5 billion.

However, now Whale Alert suggests that its own study is more accurate which makes the stash worth about $10.5 billion. On July 20, the researcher notes,

“We were able to make the most accurate estimate of the number of blocks mined and bitcoins owned by Satoshi: 1,125,150 bitcoins mined up to block 54,316 with an estimated total value of the unspent bitcoin of at least $10.9 billion USD in today’s market.”

It also said that its study not only estimated the correct size of Satoshi’s stash but also found out the right purpose of Patoshi miner. It was made to defend the network from attacks. It wrote that the range of 0-9 was used between blocks 21,467 and 25,777 which were used at the start of the Patoshi chain. The number 39 was used less often. Between 25,811 and 54,316, the number 29 is not available in some chains.