“Kraken may know the identity of Satoshi” – Conor Grogan, Coinbase exec claims

Coinbase’s head of product business operations, Conor Grogan, decided to do some sleuthing recently that led him to investigate the publicly known and curiously monitored Satoshi Sakamoto wallets. The Coinbase exec made what he called some “new findings” that may not have been previously reported. 

The Coinbase executive’s analysis joins a long list of attempts to peel back the mystery around the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto.

Just last year, HBO released an eagerly anticipated documentary, Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, which claimed Canadian developer, Peter Todd was Satoshi. However, the crypto community was not convinced and was ultimately disappointed with that attempt to find Satoshi’s identity. 

Grogan’s analysis tapped data from Satoshi’s wallets to formulate his own theories. 

What Conor Grogan found 

Grogan summarized his findings into three main points:

• Satoshi was last active onchain in 2014.
• He may have used a Canadian BTC exchange.
• Kraken may know the identity of Satoshi.

The results are based on a Patoshi mining pattern set of addresses that were recently cataloged by Arkham Intelligence. While there is no definitive link between these addresses and Satoshi, Grogan believes there is good evidence he owned them. 

In total, Grogan said his research points to Satoshi owning 1.096M BTC, $108B worth, which makes the mythical figure wealthier on paper than Bill Gates. 

Grogan discovered 24 documented outbound sends from these addresses, and the most popular destination address was “1PYYj.” He also noticed that the address received BTC from Cavirtex, a Canadian exchange. 

“I believe this is the first documented on-chain interaction between a Satoshi-linked wallet and a CEX,” the Coinbase executive noted for context. 

Why the 1PYYj wallet may be linked to Satoshi

According to Grogan, the “1PYYj” address is also associated with funding 12ib, one of the largest active BTC addresses of all time, which currently holds $3 billion worth of BTC. 

According to him, it further substantiates the possibility that “1PYYj” has ties to Satoshi or a very early Bitcoin adopter or contributor. 

Grogan also noted that Kraken acquired Cavirtex in 2016. This means there is a chance that Jesse Powell, co-founder of Kraken, has information on the true identity of Satoshi, especially if they maintained any KYC information on this wallet. 

“My advice to him would be to delete the data,” Grogan wrote. Then, he revealed that the Satoshi-linked addresses also sent 200 BTC to the Bitcoin faucet across two transactions. 

He pointed out that “back in the day you could fill out a CAPTCHA and get 5 BTC for free.” Grogan believes his findings present evidence that suggests the Patoshi mining pattern is linked to only Satoshi.

“There is also a possibility that the 500 btc sent to 1PYYj (Canadian linked wallet) in 2010 was a send to another party. In which case we have a new documented case of a Satoshi payment,” he concluded. 

What is the Patoshi mining pattern? 

The Patoshi mining pattern Grogan referred to in his thread refers to a blockchain analysis technique that identifies a unique mining pattern in Bitcoin’s early blocks, attributed to a single miner.

The pattern is characterized by tracking the ExtraNonce fields in the coinbase transaction as they show a consistent increase without overlap. Some research suggests that a single miner, who may have possibly been Satoshi Nakamoto, mined approximately 1.1 million Bitcoins using this pattern.

People suspect the sole miner was Satoshi because the miner’s hashrate was notably lower and consistent, aligning with the early days of Bitcoin before it became a hot commodity. Nobody knows for sure if the single miner was Satoshi, but speculations abound and Grogan’s is just the latest. 

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