There is no concrete way to know exactly how much Bitcoin (BTC) Satoshi Nakamoto owns, but researchers believe that the amount could be anywhere between 600,000 BTC and 1.1 million BTC. One of his most famous wallet addresses is 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa, which was used to mine the Bitcoin genesis block.
Satoshi Nakamoto is an enigmatic entity that has been draped in folklore and mystery since the Bitcoin whitepaper was published in October 2008. As BTC gained worldwide acclaim for being a secure method of processing peer-to-peer payments and an alternative to traditional payment infrastructure, speculation about his true identity only grew.
However, to this day, nobody really knows exactly who he was, which Bitcoin wallet addresses belonged to him, or how many BTC he mined during the early stages of the blockchain. But there’s still plenty of evidence that suggests the figure ranges from 600,000 BTC to 1.1 million BTC spread across 20,000+ separate wallet addresses.
Key takeaways
- Two wallet addresses that certainly belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto are 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa and 1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1, which were respectively used to receive the first Bitcoin mining reward and to send the first Bitcoin transaction
- Blockchain researchers have suggested that Satoshi may have had over 20,000 wallet addresses in total, and that he may own more than 1 million BTC
- There is no definitive way to know how many addresses belonged to Satoshi, but experts have deduced that there’s certainly more than 600,000 BTC in wallets that belonged to him
Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet addresses
During the early days of the Bitcoin blockchain, not many people were aware that it existed. Those who did know generally spent their time in cryptography communities and had a highly specialized set of technical skills.
Due to the limited reach of the blockchain during its early stages, it’s widely believed that Satoshi Nakamoto was running the majority of BTC nodes himself. This has led to speculation about the exact number of BTC that lies dormant in Satoshi’s original wallets.
At this point, it’s important to note that most of the information about Satoshi’s original wallets is speculation. Since the public address of each wallet is only characterized by a hexadecimal string, and Satoshi Nakamoto was extremely cautious about not revealing his true identity, it’s practically impossible to confirm whether or not most of the early addresses were his.
Regardless, blockchain researcher Sergio Damian Lerner noticed a pattern while analyzing some of the earliest Bitcoin wallet addresses. Lerner suggests that the ‘Patoshi’ pattern can be used to determine the number of addresses that belonged to Satoshi based on several unifying characteristics in the source code of early Bitcoin blocks.
Some of the addresses that may have belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto have been included in the table below. You’ll notice that most wallets contain 50 BTC, which was the original block mining reward. Besides symbolic donations from Bitcoin investors paying tribute to the founder of the technology, each of these addresses has remained untouched since the early days of Bitcoin.
| Address | Balance | Notes |
| 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa | 99.72 BTC | Genesis address |
| 12cbQLTFMXRnSzktFkuoG3eHoMeFtpTu3S | 18.44 BTC | Address used by Satoshi to send the first user-to-user Bitcoin transaction to Hal Finney |
| 12c6DSiU4Rq3P4ZxziKxzrL5LmMBrzjrJX | 51.35 BTC | n/a |
| 1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1 | 50.08 BTC | n/a |
| 1FvzCLoTPGANNjWoUo6jUGuAG3wg1w4YjR | 50.01 BTC | n/a |
| 15ubicBBWFnvoZLT7GiU2qxjRaKJPdkDMG | 50.07 BTC | n/a |
| 1JfbZRwdDHKZmuiZgYArJZhcuuzuw2HuMu | 50.01 BTC | n/a |
| 1GkQmKAmHtNfnD3LHhTkewJxKHVSta4m2a | 50 BTC | n/a |
| 16LoW7y83wtawMg5XmT4M3Q7EdjjUmenjM | 50.02 BTC | n/a |
| 1J6PYEzr4CUoGbnXrELyHszoTSz3wCsCaj | 50 BTC | n/a |
How much Bitcoin does Satoshi Nakamoto own?
As stated, there is no definitive way to know how much Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto owns since the entity’s true identity remains a mystery to this day. Researchers have analyzed the earliest Bitcoin blocks to make educated guesses, with estimates ranging from 600,000 to 1.1 million BTC.
Sergio Demian Lerner suggested in a 2013 blog post that 63% of the first 36,288 blocks were mined by a single entity, based on consistencies in these blocks’ characteristics. Lerner notes that none of the BTC mined from these blocks has ever been spent, which would have confirmed the identity of the miner. In total, Lerner estimated that 1148800 BTC belonged to an entity that had been active since Block 1.
However, another researcher known as Dude Watchin’ built on Lerner’s analysis in collaboration with Bitmex in 2018. Bitmex published that Lerner’s methodology was limited and that there were some fundamental errors in his approach, including that Satoshi was the sole miner during the first two weeks and that hashrate consistency is not definitive or reliable proof. Regardless, the updated methodology found that over 700,000 BTC may have belonged to a single entity from these early stages.
Satoshi implemented strong operational security and took measures to obscure his activity on the blockchain after mining the early blocks. While the exact figure cannot be known, it is widely believed that Satoshi is sitting on an enormously valuable cache of Bitcoin, worth between $40 billion and $75 billion at the current market price.
Satoshi Nakamoto’s most famous wallet address
The Bitcoin address, 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa, is considered Satoshi’s most famous wallet. This is the address that Satoshi used to receive the first 50 BTC ever mined on the Bitcoin blockchain — the reward from the genesis block.
The genesis block famously has a hardcoded text string within it that reads: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” which reflects Satoshi’s original vision for the blockchain as a universal, peer-to-peer payment method with no middlemen and acts as an indelible timestamp for the point at which Bitcoin went live.
Like many of the early Bitcoin addresses that were used to receive a mining reward, the BTC lies dormant and has never been spent. However, Bitcoin users have sent an additional 40 BTC to the address to pay tribute to the visionary founder of the technology.
The Hal Finney address
Another famous wallet address that belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto is the Hal Finney address, 1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1. While there is long-standing speculation about a personal connection between Satoshi and Hal Finney, who was one of the earliest contributors to the Bitcoin project, this section will focus only on the transaction made between Satoshi and Hal on 12th January 2009.
Running bitcoin
— halfin (@halfin) January 11, 2009
Hal Finney was a renowned cryptographer and coder who was among the first people to download the Bitcoin software in 2009 after Satoshi released it. 9 days after Bitcoin first went live, Finney received the first Bitcoin transaction from Satoshi on Block 170.
This transaction, worth 10 BTC, was likely a test to see whether the chain was working as intended. It successfully demonstrated that BTC could be sent peer-to-peer using a trustless and secure network of nodes. The transaction is considered to be highly symbolic, cementing Hal Finney’s place as one of the pioneering supporters of Bitcoin.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin wallet?
Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to have owned many different Bitcoin wallet addresses. Two confirmed addresses are the wallet that was used to receive the first 50 BTC mined during the Bitcoin genesis block, and the address that was used to send 10 BTC to Hal Finney shortly after the blockchain went live.
These addresses are 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa (genesis block reward) and 1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1 (Hal Finney address).
How many Bitcoin addresses belong to Satoshi Nakamoto?
There is no definitive way to know how much BTC belongs to Satoshi Nakamoto. However, estimates from blockchain researchers have suggested that Bitcoin’s first contributor owns between 600,000 BTC and 1.1 million BTC.
The Bottom Line
There is a lot of speculation surrounding Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous founder of the Bitcoin blockchain. He (or she or they, but since the character was intended to be male, it follows that the correct pronoun is he) went to great lengths to obfuscate his true identity and has, to this day, been very successful in that effort.
Due to the quasi-anonymized nature of the blockchain and the lengths taken by the entity known as Satoshi Nakamoto to remain unknown, every estimate made about the exact total of BTC owned by the founder are limited. It is, however, general consensus that more than half a million BTC remain dormant in addresses that belonged to Satoshi Nakamoto.
