Sergio_Demian_Lerner



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Hero MemberActivity: 549Merit: 544 Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD(DEBATE GOING ON, DO NOT TWEET!) April 13, 2013, 10:27:04 PM

Last edit: April 14, 2013, 05:02:20 AM by Sergio_Demian_Lerner #1



It is impressive, isn't it?

That's a good reason to stay anonymous!



I've used the data from the blockchain in bootstrap.dat, so my estimation does not take into account the last 6 months.



I've assumed:



1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength

(Mhash/s) that was constant at 7 Mhash/s for this period of time. (check in

If Satoshi mined alone the first 14 days, then he mined almost alone for the rest of the year.



2. I assume that boostrap.dat contains only the best chain (not orphan blocks)



3. I only take into account coinbase transactions.



4. I've assumed that if a coinbase output is spent, then none of the spent coins went back to Satoshi.



5. From the 1814400 BTC awarded, 1148800 BTC has never been spent (63%)



6. The BTC/USD exchange rate is 100 USB per BTC



If someone wants to check my computations, is welcomed because I used a special block chain parser made by myself.



Best regards, Sergio.







I've estimated a lower bound of current Satoshi's fortune. My estimation is that he owns more than 1M BTC, or 100M USD at current change.It is impressive, isn't it?That's a good reason to stay anonymous!I've used the data from the blockchain in bootstrap.dat, so my estimation does not take into account the last 6 months.I've assumed:1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength(Mhash/s) that was constant at 7 Mhash/s for this period of time. (check in https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en&key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc&hl=en&gid=0 If Satoshi mined alone the first 14 days, then he mined almost alone for the rest of the year.2. I assume that boostrap.dat contains only the best chain (not orphan blocks)3. I only take into account coinbase transactions.4. I've assumed that if a coinbase output is spent, then none of the spent coins went back to Satoshi.5. From the 1814400 BTC awarded, 1148800 BTC has never been spent (63%)6. The BTC/USD exchange rate is 100 USB per BTCIf someone wants to check my computations, is welcomed because I used a special block chain parser made by myself.Best regards, Sergio.

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LegendaryActivity: 1666Merit: 1006Marketing manager - GO MP Re: Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD April 13, 2013, 10:40:47 PM #4 How do you think you can tell it was satoshi only? What you have to know is that difficulty 1 is the minimum, it cannot go below that.

So if the network power was derived by the difficulty it would seem to be constant.

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Sr. MemberActivity: 451Merit: 250 Re: Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD April 13, 2013, 11:01:09 PM #8 Quote from: Sergio_Demian_Lerner on April 13, 2013, 10:27:04 PM



1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength

(Mhash/s) that was constant at 7 Mhash/s for this period of time. (check in

If Satoshi mined alone the first 14 days, then he mined almost alone for the rest of the year.



I've assumed:1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288). This assumption is based on the Total Network Strength(Mhash/s) that was constant at 7 Mhash/s for this period of time. (check in https://spreadsheets.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?hl=en&key=0AmcTCtjBoRWUdHVRMHpqWUJValI1RlZiaEtCT1RrQmc&hl=en&gid=0 If Satoshi mined alone the first 14 days, then he mined almost alone for the rest of the year.

This assumption is at least partly wrong based on what Hal Finney says in this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=155054.msg1643833#msg1643833



Quote When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test.

I assume Satoshi has many coins but I don't begrudge him any of them. He deserves them but I suspect he is not some one whose main motivation was to become rich.



Also my understanding is that the first block is un-spendable. I think I've read that Satoshi did this as he was the only person who could mine this block so it would be unfair if he could spend it but subsequent blocks were up for grabs by anyone who was mining (admittedly in practice probably only Satoshi and maybe Hal and some other very early adopters).

This assumption is at least partly wrong based on what Hal Finney says in this thread:I assume Satoshi has many coins but I don't begrudge him any of them. He deserves them but I suspect he is not some one whose main motivation was to become rich.Also my understanding is that the first block is un-spendable. I think I've read that Satoshi did this as he was the only person who could mine this block so it would be unfair if he could spend it but subsequent blocks were up for grabs by anyone who was mining (admittedly in practice probably only Satoshi and maybe Hal and some other very early adopters).

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LegendaryActivity: 3192Merit: 1730Viva Ut Vivas Re: Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD April 13, 2013, 11:10:36 PM #9 The bottom feeders are going to come out of the woodwork to chastise the rich. How dare he create a revolutionary new currency and benefit from it.



How dare he combine risk, work and thought for reward. Such a thing is unheard of. He should have earned it through favor and force. First seastead company actually selling sea homes: Ocean Builders https://ocean.builders Of course we accept bitcoin.

DeathAndTaxes

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DonatorLegendaryActivity: 1218Merit: 1007Gerald Davis Re: Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD April 13, 2013, 11:43:00 PM

Last edit: April 14, 2013, 12:17:36 AM by DeathAndTaxes #11



1) Difficulty couldn't go below 1 & the "network" has no idea what the hashing power is. We can only guesstimate the hashing power based on the time between blocks. If you look at the period of time between blocks in the first year you will notice there is variance. Variance can either be natural variance from the mining process or changes in hashing power. It is simply a false statement to claim the hashrate was a constant 7 MH/s. There is no way to prove that is true and it arguably never was. The spreadsheet is merely a guesstimate at an aproximate hashrate based on the average time between blocks of the preceding period and is subject to error like any hashrate estimate (i.e the times between blocks was X and since the AVERAGE block requires 4.2 billion hashes the hashrate would need to be ~y to solve block at this rate ON AVERAGE).



2) There is no evidence that Satoshi mined alone the entire time. Hal Finney reports mining early (in the first 100 or so blocks) and there are other reports of people mining on and off during the early mailing list days.



Quote from: Hal on March 19, 2013, 08:40:02 PM When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography mailing list, he got a skeptical reception at best. Cryptographers have seen too many grand schemes by clueless noobs. They tend to have a knee jerk reaction.



I was more positive. I had long been interested in cryptographic payment schemes. Plus I was lucky enough to meet and extensively correspond with both Wei Dai and Nick Szabo, generally acknowledged to have created ideas that would be realized with Bitcoin. I had made an attempt to create my own proof of work based currency, called RPOW. So I found Bitcoin facinating.



When Satoshi announced the first release of the software, I grabbed it right away. I think I was the first person besides Satoshi to run bitcoin. I mined block 70-something, and I was the recipient of the first bitcoin transaction, when Satoshi sent ten coins to me as a test. I carried on an email conversation with Satoshi over the next few days, mostly me reporting bugs and him fixing them.



3) The early client "mined" automatically in the background when running. For Satoshi to have mined all the blocks for the first year that would mean nobody, not a single person ever downloaded the client which is simply false.



On edit:

4) The first 2016 block interval took 28 days and the next 7 took on average 17 days (with a deviation of only +/- 1 day). This strongly suggests interest significantly increased after the first week. One could conclude that the first week was Satoshi alone but I don't think that is likely either. By May hashing power had fallen significantly with the 2016 timeframe rising from ~17 days to 28 and then up to a peak of 42. While there is some variance due to the nature of difficulty to think that Satoshi was the sole miner one would have to think that when the network was at its slowest Satoshi intentionally reduced his own hashing power to roughly half of that in the earlier weeks. Some flaws with the analysis.1) Difficulty couldn't go below 1 & the "network" has no idea what the hashing power is. We can only guesstimate the hashing power based on the time between blocks. If you look at the period of time between blocks in the first year you will notice there is variance. Variance can either be natural variance from the mining process or changes in hashing power. It is simply a false statement to claim the hashrate was a constant 7 MH/s. There is no way to prove that is true and it arguably never was. The spreadsheet is merely a guesstimate at an aproximate hashrate based on the average time between blocks of the preceding period and is subject to error like any hashrate estimate (i.e the times between blocks was X and since the AVERAGE block requires 4.2 billion hashes the hashrate would need to be ~y to solve block at this rate ON AVERAGE).2) There is no evidence that Satoshi mined alone the entire time. Hal Finney reports mining early (in the first 100 or so blocks) and there are other reports of people mining on and off during the early mailing list days.3) The early client "mined" automatically in the background when running. For Satoshi to have mined all the blocks for the first year that would mean nobody, not a single person ever downloaded the client which is simply false.On edit:4) The first 2016 block interval took 28 days and the next 7 took on average 17 days (with a deviation of only +/- 1 day). This strongly suggests interest significantly increased after the first week. One could conclude that the first week was Satoshi alone but I don't think that is likely either. By May hashing power had fallen significantly with the 2016 timeframe rising from ~17 days to 28 and then up to a peak of 42. While there is some variance due to the nature of difficulty to think that Satoshi was the sole miner one would have to think that when the network was at its slowest Satoshi intentionally reduced his own hashing power to roughly half of that in the earlier weeks.

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DonatorLegendaryActivity: 1218Merit: 1007Gerald Davis Re: Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD April 14, 2013, 12:25:46 AM #14 To assist in deepceleron chart.



To find a block at difficulty 1 requires an average of 2^32 hashes. So 50 blocks per day = ( 50 * 2^32) / (60 * 60 * 24 * 1000^2) = 2.485 MH/s



50 blocks per day = ~2.5 MH/s

100 blocks per day = ~5.0 MH/s

144 blocks per day = ~7.2 MH/s

150 blocks per day = ~7.5 MH/s

200 blocks per day = ~9.9 MH/s



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LegendaryActivity: 1484Merit: 1004 Re: Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD April 14, 2013, 12:31:47 AM #15 One thing to note about the blocks from genesis to 30,000 or so is that

a) They, for the most part, all appear to have different coinbase transactions.

b) They are also almost completely unspent.



I think the likeliest scenario is that hundreds of people downloaded and ran the client then, got a bunch of blocks that were at the time useless because they were valueless, then deleted their clients. Recall that in May 2010, bitcoins were only trading for 0.0025 USD each. It's my personal guess that these coins are just lost to the chain forever. Code: XMR: 44GBHzv6ZyQdJkjqZje6KLZ3xSyN1hBSFAnLP6EAqJtCRVzMzZmeXTC2AHKDS9aEDTRKmo6a6o9r9j86pYfhCWDkKjbtcns

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Hero MemberActivity: 549Merit: 544 Re: Satoshi's Fortune lower bound is 100M USD April 14, 2013, 03:27:39 AM #18 Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on April 13, 2013, 11:43:00 PM Some flaws with the analysis.



1) Difficulty couldn't go below 1 & the "network" has no idea what the hashing power is. We can only guesstimate the hashing power based on the time between blocks. If you look at the period of time between blocks in the first year you will notice there is variance. Variance can either be natural variance from the mining process or changes in hashing power. It is simply a false statement to claim the hashrate was a constant 7 MH/s. There is no way to prove that is true and it arguably never was. The spreadsheet is merely a guesstimate at an aproximate hashrate based on the average time between blocks of the preceding period and is subject to error like any hashrate estimate (i.e the times between blocks was X and since the AVERAGE block requires 4.2 billion hashes the hashrate would need to be ~y to solve block at this rate ON AVERAGE).

But a single computer in 2009 could do 2^32 hashes in 10 minutes. So if we assume that Satoshi PC was all time powered on mining, then we MUST accept that almost all the coins were generated by him. Why would Satoshi turn off his PC if he foresaw the future?

The average number of zeros in block hashes in that range is 33, not more. The average number of zeros in the first 30 blocks is 32.8.

We must accept that during the first two hours he was mining alone!



Therefore there was, at average, a single or maybe two PC mining (but rarely) until block 36288.



So your argument is flawed



Please try to refute this argument!



Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on April 13, 2013, 11:43:00 PM

2) There is no evidence that Satoshi mined alone the entire time. Hal Finney reports mining early (in the first 100 or so blocks) and there are other reports of people mining on and off during the early mailing list days.



My prior argument says exactly that: IF he was continuously mining, then he was mining almost alone.



Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on April 13, 2013, 11:43:00 PM Quote from: Hal on March 19, 2013, 08:40:02 PM When Satoshi announced Bitcoin on the cryptography....I mined block 70-something...



Everybody read that Hal mined the block 70-something, which means that he mined very little, as most of the people in that time interval.



Quote from: DeathAndTaxes on April 13, 2013, 11:43:00 PM 3) The early client "mined" automatically in the background when running. For Satoshi to have mined all the blocks for the first year that would mean nobody, not a single person ever downloaded the client which is simply false.



People downloaded the software, mined a few blocks, and dumped it. Almost everybody except for Satoshi.



So again, IF he was mining continuously in that interval, then he has at least 500k BTC now, with independence if somebody else was mining or not. But a single computer in 2009 could do 2^32 hashes in 10 minutes. So if we assume that Satoshi PC was all time powered on mining, then we MUST accept that almost all the coins were generated by him. Why would Satoshi turn off his PC if he foresaw the future?The average number of zeros in block hashes in that range is 33, not more. The average number of zeros in the first 30 blocks is 32.8.We must accept that during the first two hours he was mining alone!So your argument is flawedPlease try to refute this argument!My prior argument says exactly that: IF he was continuously mining, then he was mining almost alone.Everybody read that Hal mined the block 70-something, which means that he mined very little, as most of the people in that time interval.People downloaded the software, mined a few blocks, and dumped it. Almost everybody except for Satoshi.So again, IF he was mining continuously in that interval, then he has at least 500k BTC now, with independence if somebody else was mining or not.