Patoshi

Two events in the last two weeks caused interest in early blocks of the bitcoin blockchain. First, an old block was moved, block number 3654 that was mined in the second month of bitcoin's existence. The second event was the signing of a message from 145 early blocks, just a week later. Both events gave rise to the question of whether those blocks belong to Satoshi. If any message is signed or any coins are moved from an address belonging to Satoshi, it would signal that potentially 1.1 million BTC could be on the move that were previously widely regarded as permanently 'frozen', among other implications of course. After the first of these two events, we discussed the field of blockchain archaeology that you hear in this knowledge session. Old node software and mining practices had quirks that compromised the miners' privacy and now, in hindsight, allow us interesting insights into those early days. The most prominent example is the "Patoshi Pattern", which allowed the quick answer that neither of the two events were likely to be related to Satoshi. This session included showing a chart from https://satoshiblocks.info. We believe that the recording is useful even without this chart, but a quick glance over there does not hurt.