Satoshi Wasn’t The Only Mining Whale, 2010 Data Reveals

Since 2021 began, there have been a slew of suspicious whale moves by miners that mined bitcoins in the early days. A miner in particular has spent 11,000 bitcoin since last year, and 1,000 bitcoin from 2010 was moved last week. Despite the fact that Satoshi Nakamoto is thought to have mined over a million bitcoins, many other network participants also mined millions of currencies.

2010 Saw Low Mining Difficulty Created More Whales

On June 9, 2021, an early miner transferred 1,000 bitcoin to a variety of addresses, resulting from 20 block rewards from 2010. So far in 2021, Bitcoin.com News has captured this whale six times, spending 6,000 decade-old bitcoin. Furthermore, before 2021, when 5,000 decade-old coins were spent in 2020, our newsdesk caught the prior five strings. Since we revealed our findings, some have speculated that the whale could be Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin.

The mystery whale is unlikely to be Nakamoto, and even though the inventor mined a million bitcoins, many others were mining alongside him. Nakamoto most likely mined bitcoin in 2010, but throughout Bitcoin’s second year, a large number of other miners processed block rewards as well. In 2010, 3.39 million bitcoins were mined, and up until mid-2010, an individual could mine bitcoin using a central processing unit (CPU). This suggests that out of the 67,920 blocks solved in 2010, a simple computer with a reasonable CPU may find block rewards.

Up to the first quarter of 2011, graphics processing units (GPUs) were used to mine bitcoins between that time and the end of 2010. Many more people may mine bitcoin alongside the developer, who left the community in December 2010, during the CPU and GPU periods.

We also know that throughout the second year of Bitcoin’s existence, the network mining difficulty was quite low. By computing specific fields included in coinbase payouts, analysts can determine the total hashrate. Version, prevblockhash, merkleroot, timestamp, difficulty target, and nonce are all included in this data.

Related article | Why It’s Unlikely the 50 Bitcoin Transaction From the 2009 Address is Satoshi

Bitcoin Mining Had Leaders, Not Satoshi Alone

Many people were mining bitcoin by July 2010, according to forum discussions on bitcointalk.org. In December 2009, it was clear that people were mining bitcoin with GPU mining rigs, and it was also clear that ASIC mining was on the way. That year, Satoshi even cautioned about a “GPU arms race,” suggesting that the community should agree not to hurry this sort of mining.

“We should have a gentleman’s agreement to postpone the GPU arms race as long as we can for the good of the network. It’s much easier to get new users up to speed if they don’t have to worry about GPU drivers and compatibility. It’s nice how anyone with just a CPU can compete fairly equally right now,” Nakamoto said.

By the summer of 2010, it was too late, and in mid-July, the pseudonymous miner Artforz, along with Laszlo Hanyecz, was claimed to be one of the first GPU miners. Artforz appears to be the first person to set up a GPU mining farm.

Back in 2010, his private code, dubbed “Artfarm,” was utilized to mine thousands of bitcoins using his own code. On July 25, 2010, the infamous Artforz claimed to have mined 1,700 bitcoin in six days. Artforz became a contentious leader in the space, with reports claiming that he controlled around 20-30% of the network’s computer power in October 2010.

We can assume that many others mined bitcoin with Satoshi throughout his period as the network’s founder, from January to December 2010. It doesn’t mean it was Nakamoto who shifted a few thousand BTC from 2010. And, as far as we know, Bitcoin’s founder has never used any of the estimated 1.1 million coins they mined at the time.

Related article | Abridged Version: The Last Days of Satoshi

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