Patoshi Pattern, Range of Estimates and Limits of Evidence
A person under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, who is credited with creating Bitcoin, is often credited with around 1.1 million BTC. This figure does not come from direct proof of ownership, but from an analysis of how one miner worked in the early months of the network. Satoshi published the whitepaper on October 31, 2008, and the network was launched in January 2009.
On September 1, 2026, analytics firm Bitquery published a new analysis of the early blocks, and on September 5, 2026, 600 BTC mined in 2010 were moved. Both events have reopened the question of how much BTC can be attributed to the miner known as Patoshi based on statistical patterns, and what can be inferred from the blockchain data about this.
Source: cointelegraph
How the Patoshi pattern was discovered
On April 17, 2013, researcher Sergio Demián Lerner published an analysis of blocks from 0 to 36,288. He tracked the ExtraNonce field in coinbase transactions, i.e. the first transactions in a block that give rise to new Bitcoins. The software increases this value every time it exhausts a 32-bit nonce field, and when it restarts, it returns it to the beginning, so the operation of the same machine is seen as a series of long, even lines. Bitquery also mentions another feature: the nonce values of this miner fall into several narrow ranges.
Lerner thus singled out a miner who had been working from the very beginning of the network and who was named Patoshi in the community. He had already written in 2013 that he could not be completely sure that all these blocks belonged to Satoshi, and he estimated the amount at around one million BTC. In September 2026. Lerner, according to media reports, stated that he still considers the estimate of about 1.1 million BTC to be correct, noting that the evidence is circumstantial and that there is no mathematical proof or direct witness.
Lerner bases the connection between that miner and Satoshi on circumstantial evidence, which he describes as compelling reasons, but not as evidence. According to him, several early users, including Hal Finney, Dustin D. Trammell, Nicholas Bohm and Mike Hearn, received Bitcoins from the rewards for blocks with a Patoshi pattern. Lerner also believes that the miner used specialized software, probably prepared before the network was launched, and considers it unlikely that someone else set up such a system in the hours between the release of the first version of the software and the first mined block.
Source: cointelegraph
What Bitquery's analysis shows
Bitquery rebuilt the sample from raw data, evaluated all 54,316 blocks from the early period, and tracked Bitcoins from them until September 1, 2026. The public list of Patoshi blocks, compiled based on Lerner’s research, includes 21,953 blocks, and Bitquery’s reconstruction includes 23,466 blocks in three confidence levels. A 99.2 percent match to the public list only applies to the highest-rated blocks. The timestamp order test on 5,836 pairs of neighboring blocks showed no discrepancies, which speaks to the consistency of the reconstruction, but not to the identity of the miners.
Previously published estimates, as cited by Bitquery, generally range from 1.0 million (Lerner, 2013) to 1.13 million BTC (Whale Alert, 2020), while BitMEX Research estimated 0.6 to 0.7 million BTC in 2018. Bitquery’s analysis, depending on the stringency of the criteria, gives a range of 0.89 to 1.17 million BTC, with the upper value referring to a set of 23,466 blocks. Bitquery expects this pool to also contain three to four thousand blocks from other miners, so it considers blocks outside the public list as candidates.
As of September 1, 2026, 1,023,352 BTC have never moved in that set, and 1,096,102 out of 1,097,652 BTC, or 99.86 percent, have never moved in the public list.
Source: cointelegraph
What has moved so far
Bitquery states that 31 block rewards have been transferred from the public list so far, totaling 1,550 BTC, and the last such transfer was recorded in December 2017. About two-thirds of that amount, according to that analysis, was transferred by the r-shockto which the Patoshi sample was attributed in 2009 and 2010. Among these transfers is a payment to Hal Finney in January 2009, which consumed the reward from block 9. Finney later wrote that it was his first transaction received, when Satoshi sent him 10 BTC.
Bitquery especially points out on May 17, 2010, when in two transactions about an hour apart, rewards from twelve old blocks, a total of 600 BTC, were consumed. According to Bitquery, it is not clear from the blockchain whether the miner paid someone or moved Bitcoins between their own wallets, but only that the keys were in use two weeks after the last block attributed to that machine. Gaurav Agrawal of Bitquery believes that this is the moment in which the blockchain itself, and not the statistical sample, most clearly indicates that these blocks from 2009 were in the same wallet.
Between 2020 and September 1, 2026, 28 rewards from the first 16 months of the network were spent, totaling 1,400 BTC. According to Bitquery, none meet the criteria pre-set by the company for attributing Patoshi to the miner, and three blocks were rated as borderline cases.
Source: cointelegraph
600 BTC Move in September 2026
On September 5, 2026, 600 BTC were moved from the twelve block rewards mined in March 2010, when the block reward was 50 BTC. This is a different event than the one in May 2010, although the amount is the same. The Whale Alert platform stated that, according to its research, none of these blocks can be linked to Satoshi.
Gaurav Agrawal stated that ten of the twelve blocks do not match the Patoshi pattern, and that the remaining two show a weak match that can occur by chance. According to him, the transactions were made with modern wallet software, so the keys were at least loaded into the newer software, and the blockchain only records that someone had access to the keys, not by whom. The mere displacement of the old Bitcoins therefore does not show that they were moved by Satoshi.
Source: cointelegraph
What blockchain can and can't show
Agrawal divides the claim that Satoshi owns about 1.1 million BTC into three parts. In his opinion, the claim that these Bitcoins originated from a single machine has strong support in the data, the claim that this machine belonged to Satoshi is based on circumstantial evidence, and the claim that access to the keys is still with the same person cannot be established simply because the Bitcoins do not move.
The data from the blockchain thus shows which Bitcoins from the early blocks were never consumed. The attribution of these Bitcoins to the Patoshi sample is a statistical estimate, and the association of the sample with Satoshi is based on circumstantial evidence. Who has access to the keys today, and whether anyone has it, cannot be determined from this data.