The founder of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the so-called Satoshi, is credited with 1 million BTC, just under 5% of the total supply.
That figure was calculated by Sergio Lerner in a well-cited blog post dating from 2013. Lerner wrote: "I can not say with 100% certainty that all black dots (in the diagram below) are owned by Satoshi, but almost all are owned by a single entity, and that entity began to extract directly from block 1, and with the same performance as the genesis block ...
It is also the only entity that has shown total confidence in Bitcoin, since it has not spent any currency (the last thing the eye can see). I estimate that Satoshi's fortune is around 1M in Bitcoins ".
On Monday, Bitmex Research, famous for its meticulous research reports, published a new report on the subject. It is based largely on Lerner's original research, but it points downwardly Satoshi's holdings by 30%. The technical logic behind why most blocks of the early days of Bitcoin can be attributed to an entity are described in the Bitmex blog in some detail.
Bitmex Research aims :
"Although there is strong evidence of a dominant miner in 2009, we believe that the evidence is much less robust than many have assumed. Even if one is convinced, the evidence only supports the claim that the dominant miner may have generated significantly less than one million bitcoin in our opinion. Maybe 600,000 to 700,000 bitcoin is a more realistic approach. "
Even if the Bitmex investigation proves its veracity, it is difficult to say with certainty, if Satoshi still has a good amount of 700k BTC available. Therefore, the "loss" of 300 thousand BTC, even though its value amounts to around $ 2 billion, may seem immaterial in the grand scheme of things, since it is assumed that the Satoshi coins will never be spent .
However, the ownership of 1 million BTC extracted by an early adopter or the adoption factors in a series of other calculations relating to the distribution of currencies.
When calculating the number of bitcoins in circulation, for example, those 1 million BTC are written off along with the coins whose wallets have been lost, since it is assumed that the Satoshi coins will never move. That said, even if 300k BTC issued in 2010 belongs to someone other than Satoshi, those coins are unlikely to move, since they have remained static since they were first issued as a coinbase reward.
If Satoshi is supposed to be a single entity that is not dead or in prison, it can be assumed that those coins were not accidentally lost. Bitmex Research concludes his blog quoting Satoshi Nakamoto: "Why eliminate a wallet instead of moving it aside and save the previous copy just in case? You should never eliminate a wallet. "
During 2009 and 2010, Satoshi decided not to spend his bitcoins. Your decision to continue with that policy, all in mind that BTC increased exponentially in value, is surely deliberate. If those coins someday start to move, it could cause all kinds of panic in the market. Until then, those bitcoins, whether 1 million, 600k or something in between, should be considered as one of the many mysteries that Satoshi left behind for the Bitcoin community to discover.
Source: Bitcoin News