Coinbase’s Conor Grogan has recently uncovered the total Bitcoin stash owned by the bellwether crypto’s elusive creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. That amount converted to fiat surpasses the wealth of Microsoft founder Bill Gates.
Even more interesting, the Coinbase executive dropped new findings indicating that one of the leading U.S. cryptocurrency exchanges, Kraken, might have insight into Satoshi’s true identity. This comes just a couple of months after HBO suggested Peter Todd was Satoshi.
Does Kraken Know Who Satoshi Is?
Coinbase director Conor Grogan shared in an X thread that he had come across a set of addresses exhibiting the Patoshi Mining Pattern, suggesting strong, though not definitive evidence of a link to Satoshi.
Grogan discovered that these addresses transacted 24 times, mostly with a Bitcoin address labeled “1PYYj.” The 1PYYj address also received BTC from CaVirtEx. Kraken acquired the Canadian-based exchange in 2016.
Therefore, the Coinbase exec believes that former Kraken CEO Jesse Powell could be aware of who Satoshi really was through CaVirtEx’s know-your-customer (KYC) records.
“As such. There is a chance that @jespow has information on the true identity behind Satoshi if they maintain any KYC information on this wallet.” Grogan urged Powell to delete that information: “My advice to him would be to delete the data.”
“We are all Satoshi,” Kraken’s X account said in response to Grogan’s post. Powell, however, has yet to issue a statement on the matter.
The 1PYYj address is connected to an address beginning with “12ib”, one of Bitcoin’s biggest active addresses currently owning roughly $3 billion worth of BTC, Grogan notes.
“This lends credence to the link that 1PY was associated with Satoshi or a very early adopter/contributor,” Grogan posited.
From the data he gathered, the Coinbase director doesn’t think Len Sassaman was the true Bitcoin inventor: “This is the first set of evidence I’ve seen in years that has decreased my confidence that Satoshi was Len.”
Satoshi May Be Wealthier Than Bill Gates
From the data he gathered, Grogan also discovered that Satoshi’s last documented on-chain Bitcoin transaction reportedly occurred back in 2014 — approximately four years after he completely disappeared from public forums.
After analyzing the Patoshi mining pattern, Grogan estimates that Satoshi currently owns 1.096 million BTC. That eye-popping BTC cache is worth around $108 billion at current market prices — making Satoshi far richer than Microsoft’s Bill Gates.
At press time, Gates had a net worth of around $106 billion, making him the world’s 16th richest person, per Forbes.