Bitcoin has exploded back into the limelight following the election of Donald Trump—the self-declared crypto president whose return to the White House could trigger a bitcoin price boom.
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As a result, interest in the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto—the creator of bitcoin whose real world identity has remained unknown even as the bitcoin price tops $100,000—has surged, with a HBO documentary last year claiming to have finally unmasked him.
Now, as Tesla billionaire Elon Musk confirms his bitcoin-inspired plans for the U.S. Treasury, a Coinbase executive has claimed Satoshi Nakamoto’s identity may be known by the rival crypto exchange Kraken—as fresh data puts his bitcoin stockpile at a value of over $100 billion.
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Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin, is believed to control $100 billion worth of … [+]
“I went through Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallets,” Coinbase director Conor Grogan posted to an X thread. “My best guess is that Satoshi was last active onchain in 2014 … He may have used a Canadian BTC exchange [and]
Kraken may know the identity of Satoshi.”
Satoshi Nakamoto’s last known message, in which he claimed to have “moved on to other things,” was sent to bitcoin developer Mike Hearn via email in 2011.
Grogan identified a bitcoin address linked to the Canada-based crypto exchange CaVirtEx. “I believe this is the first documented onchain between a Satoshi-linked wallet and a CEX,” he posted in the X thread.
CaVirtEx was bought by the U.S. crypto exchange Kraken in 2016 and Grogan speculated cofounder Jesse Powell or others at Kraken may know the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto via customer information connected to the wallet.
“My advice to him would be to delete the data,” Grogan wrote.
Satoshi Nakamoto has successfully kept their real identity hidden since they published bitcoin’s white paper in 2008 as bitcoin has become a $2 trillion asset.
Bitcoin’s price rise has made the man, woman or group known only as Satoshi Nakamoto potentially worth around $100 billion if they still control the bitcoins they’re believed to hold across a series of wallet addresses.
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The bitcoin price has rocketed in recent years, which has increased scrutiny on the identity of … [+]
Responding to Grogan, Kraken’s official X account posted: “We are all Satoshi,” a bitcoin community meme that can mean a combination of “Satoshi Nakamoto’s real world identity isn’t important,” and “if Satoshi Nakamoto didn’t want to be found, people shouldn’t be looking.”
The fresh evidence uses the so-called “Patoshi Pattern” bitcoin addresses cataloged by the blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence. Earlier this week, Arkham analysts revealed they had linked new wallets to Satoshi Nakamoto.
“We’ve added an additional 22,000 Satoshi addresses with a total bitcoin balance of 1,096,354 to the Satoshi Nakamoto entity on Arkham,” the researchers posted to X. “These are derived from a known mining pattern referred to as the Patoshi Pattern, and include the only (known) addresses from which Satoshi spent bitcoin from.”
