New leads in the endless quest to unmask Satoshi Nakamoto

The never-ending quest to uncover the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of bitcoin (BTC), has taken another twist. New findings suggest that one crypto exchange – Kraken – might know who Nakamoto really is.

At least, Conor Grogan, head of product business operations at the Coinbase crypto exchange, believes so.

Grogan recently examined BTC addresses believed to be controlled by Nakamoto, more or less confirming previous findings that these addresses hold around 1.096 million BTC ($106 billion), making the bitcoin inventor the 17th richest person in the world (if Nakamoto is a person and not a group of developers), according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. In comparison, Elon Musk is considered to be the richest, with his total net worth estimated at $412 billion.

I went through Satoshi Nakamoto's wallets; thread of new findings that I don't think have been previously reported including:

-My best guess is that Satoshi was last active onchain in 2014
-He may have used a Canadian BTC exchange (!)
-Kraken may know the identity of Satoshi pic.twitter.com/ajD2A73fm8

undefined Conor (@jconorgrogan) February 5, 2025

However, what Grogan believes hasn't been found before is that Nakamoto might have still been active on-chain in 2014, when he used a Canadian BTC exchange, CaVirtEx, and that Kraken may know Satoshi's identity.

"CaVirtEx was purchased by Kraken in 2016. As such, there’s a chance that [Jesse Powell, co-founder of Kraken,] has information on the true identity behind Satoshi if they maintained any KYC information on this wallet. My advice to him would be to delete the data," Grogan suggested.

Powell didn't respond to that post, at least publicly. However, the Kraken exchange chimed in, repeating the old adage of bitcoiners that "We are all Satoshi," meaning that, at this point, it doesn't matter who the bitcoin creator is.

Meanwhile, Grogan has also concluded that this research gives him more confidence that Satoshi is no longer active.

"No movement in any connected wallets through 2014 is very bullish!" the director said.

Some in the bitcoin industry are afraid that Satoshi Nakamoto, who was last seen online on April 23, 2011, might return, selling his huge BTC portfolio and crashing the price of bitcoin. However, some also believe that Nakamoto has died.

In either case, attempts to uncover Nakamoto’s identity are still ongoing. One of the latest such efforts was even turned into an HBO documentary, which suggested that bitcoin developer Peter Todd is Nakamoto – a claim that was largely dismissed by the industry.