Did Satoshi Nakamoto really disappear in 2011?

Coinbase chief Conor Grogan claims to have identified wallets belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, suggesting that Bitcoin's creator was still active on-chain until 2014. This is a remarkable finding because according to previous information, Nakamoto has been out of public service since 2011.

The last known message he sent was in April 2011, in an email exchange with developer Mike Hearn, which read: "I've moved on to other things. Bitcoin is in good hands with Gavin and everyone." This also marks his official departure from the Bitcoin project.

As time draws to a close, Nakamoto is becoming less and less involved in forum discussions. However, the timing of his departure coincided with a visit by Gavin Andresen, his successor in the role of Bitcoin developer, to CIA headquarters.

This has sparked much speculation about the connection between the two events. Some argue that Nakamoto simply wants to remain anonymous or leave the project for personal reasons. Meanwhile, some other theories raise the possibility that he died or had an incident that prevented him from continuing his work.

Grogan made his statement based on Bitcoin addresses belonging to the Patoshi Pattern, an early Bitcoin mining model recently noted by blockchain analytics platform Arkham.

While it is impossible to say for sure that the addresses belonged to Nakamoto, Grogan said there is reliable evidence to link the data together. According to estimates, Nakamoto may own about 1.1 million BTC, or $109 billion, making him richer than Bill Gates in terms of paper value.

Sergio Demian Lerner, a cryptography and blockchain researcher, discovered a special Bitcoin mining model in the early stages, allegedly Satoshi's. The difference of this model is that it does not mine blocks in a row, in order to keep the Bitcoin network from being centralized in a single miner.

However, some researchers suggest that Satoshi's estimate of 1.1 million BTC may be exaggerated due to duplication in mining models or based on unverified assumptions. According to them, the actual number may only be around 600,000 - 700,000 BTC, while some other theories suggest that Satoshi could own up to 1.5 million BTC.

Grogan questioned whether Satoshi Nakamoto could be Canadian and whether Kraken could know his true identity. Grogan found that there were 24 transactions sent from these Bitcoin wallets, with the most common receiving address being a wallet that started with "1PYYj". This is a wallet address linked to another Bitcoin address that starts with "12ib7", which is believed to contain more than $3 billion in BTC.

Notably, this address used to receive Bitcoin from CaVirtEx, a Canada-based exchange. Grogan thinks this could be the first evidence that a wallet believed to belong to Satoshi once traded with a centralized exchange (CEX).

Another notable point is that CaVirtEx was acquired by Kraken in 2016, and Grogan speculated that Kraken co-founder Jesse Powell, or some of the people at Kraken, might know Satoshi's true identity if the KYC data associated with the wallet was still stored. However, Kraken and Powell have never officially stated that they know who Nakamoto is.

Powell has suggested that Satoshi could be an individual or a group with high technical expertise, and some in the crypto community may already know his true identity.

Grogan thinks the study could help determine whether the Patoshi mining model really belongs to Satoshi alone. He said that this was the first evidence in years that led him to reduce his belief that Satoshi was Len Sassaman, a cryptographer and privacy expert who had been associated with Bitcoin before his death in 2011.

In other words, the purpose of this study is not to prove that Satoshi is still active, but to confirm that from 2014 to now, he is actually no longer present. The fact that this BTC is not moving is also a positive sign, as if Satoshi sells, the market could be hit hard.

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