Who wants Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin and why it is risky

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Who wants Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin

Why Satoshi’s coins have become a subject of debate again

Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, may hold about 1.1 million BTC. This is not a single wallet, but many early addresses that appeared in the first years of the network’s existence. Many of them hold 50 BTC — that was the reward for mining a block in 2009.

According to Arkham Intelligence, these are assets worth tens of billions of dollars that have never moved. Any movement from these addresses would immediately become an event for the entire market: traders would start expecting a sale, analysts would look for traces of Satoshi, and community members would argue over what it means for Bitcoin.

The estimate of 1.1 million BTC did not come from guesswork. In 2013, researcher Sergio Demian Lerner described the so-called Patoshi Pattern — a distinctive “fingerprint” in Bitcoin’s early mining. Using this pattern, he identified a group of blocks that were likely mined by one miner. Many believe that miner was Satoshi Nakamoto.

These coins have returned to the spotlight for several reasons. The first is the development of quantum computers. Some old Bitcoin addresses may become more vulnerable in the future if quantum computers learn to break today’s cryptography. The second is new projects and forks that propose their own ways of deciding the fate of Satoshi’s coins. Let’s look at each in more detail.

From the quantum threat to eCash

In April, a group of developers led by Jameson Lopp proposed BIP-361 — a plan to move Bitcoin toward post-quantum protection. Under the proposal, old vulnerable addresses would first be closed to new transfers and then effectively disabled. In practice, this would mean freezing coins that were not moved to new addresses in time.

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Satoshi’s coins could fall under this scenario. They have not moved since Bitcoin’s earliest years, so no one knows whether the owner still has access to the keys or whether they will be able to move the assets to new addresses. Supporters of BIP-361 say this is needed to protect the network: if quantum computers become capable of breaking old cryptography, such addresses could become targets for attack.

Another controversial example is the eCash hard fork proposed by Bitcoin developer Paul Sztorc. He wants to launch a new network in August 2026 and credit BTC holders with new eCash coins at a 1:1 ratio. But for the coins presumed to belong to Satoshi, he proposed a different rule: out of roughly 1.1 million eCash, 600,000 would be credited to Satoshi, while another 500,000 would be directed toward developing the new ecosystem.

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Sztorc says no one will seize Satoshi’s real Bitcoin, since this is only about distributing coins in a new blockchain.

Why Satoshi’s coins should not be touched

The main argument against any action involving Satoshi’s coins is property rights. Bitcoin has no administrator who can freeze a wallet, write off coins, or decide that an owner has “not used them for too long.” If a person has the private keys, the coins belong to them. If there are no keys, no one should gain the right to manage those assets on the owner’s behalf.

This is why many community members strongly oppose such ideas. For example, Galaxy Digital head of research Alex Thorn says there is a shared principle among Bitcoin developers and supporters: Satoshi’s coins should not be touched. According to him, the issue is not only security, but also the fact that interfering with these assets would harm Bitcoin as a neutral monetary network.

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The danger is also in the precedent. Today, one can say that Satoshi’s coins are too old, too large, or too dangerous for the market. Tomorrow, the same arguments could be applied to other wallets: lost, inactive, large, or simply inconvenient for part of the community. In that case, Bitcoin would begin to resemble the traditional financial system, where access to money depends not only on keys but also on other people’s decisions.

The quantum threat cannot be ignored. But it can be addressed without forced intervention: through new address types, post-quantum tools, and voluntary movement of funds by active users, exchanges, and custodians. If the network starts violating property rights in the name of security, it risks losing the very thing Bitcoin was created for.

That is the core of the dispute. For some, Satoshi’s coins are a potential technical problem that must be solved in advance. For others, they are a test of Bitcoin’s basic principle. That is why, for many Bitcoin enthusiasts, these coins should remain where they have been for the past 15 years — deep in the blockchain.

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