Kraken May Know Bitcoin Creator Satoshi: Coinbase Exec

In a recent twist surrounding Bitcoin’s elusive founder, data surfaced this week suggesting a Canadian exchange — later acquired by Kraken — may hold key clues to the true identity of the pseudonymous Satoshi Nakamoto.

The development follows newly published forensic research by Arkham Intelligence and a subsequent deep dive from Conor Grogan, Director at Coinbase, who posits that Satoshi may have used Canada’s Cavirtex (acquired by Kraken in 2016) for at least one transaction in Bitcoin’s early days.

Does Jesse Powell Know Who Created Bitcoin?

On Tuesday, blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence revealed that it had added an additional 22,000 addresses tied to Satoshi Nakamoto’s purported mining activities, bringing the total to over 1,096,354 BTC — valued at approximately $108 billion. These addresses were identified using the well-known “Patoshi Pattern,” a blockchain analysis technique that pinpoints a cluster of early blocks believed to have been mined by Satoshi.

Arkham announced via X: “We’ve added an additional 22,000 Satoshi addresses with a total BTC balance of 1,096,354 to the Satoshi Nakamoto entity on Arkham. These are derived from a known mining pattern referred to as the Patoshi Pattern, and include the only (known) addresses from which Satoshi spent BTC from.”

Conor Grogan, who serves as a Director at Coinbase since 2020, used Arkham’s dataset to conduct his own analysis. On February 5, he posted a series of findings on X, highlighting several activities he believes may shed light on the mysterious Bitcoin founder, including evidence of a potential link to a Canadian cryptocurrency exchange.

“I went through Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallets; thread of new findings … 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,”Grogan wrote.

Among Grogan’s most striking revelations is that an address labeled “1PYYj” — which he connects to Satoshi through the Patoshi Pattern cluster — received BTC from Cavirtex, a Canadian exchange that Kraken later purchased in 2016. According to Grogan, “This address is also associated with funding 12ib, one of the largest active BTC addresses of all time, which hold 3B of BTC today.”

He argues that if Cavirtex did indeed hold any personally identifiable information (KYC data) on 1PYYj or related addresses before Kraken’s acquisition, then “there is a chance that Jesse Powell has information on the true identity behind Satoshi.” Grogan added in jest: “My advice to him would be to delete the data.”

Grogan’s analysis also points to 24 outbound transactions from the addresses tied to the Patoshi Pattern. Notably, 200 BTC were sent to an early Bitcoin faucet across two transactions, reminding the community of a time when claiming 5 BTC was as simple as filling out a CAPTCHA.

Additionally, he noted a 500 BTC transfer in 2010 to 1PYYj that could represent “a new documented case of a Satoshi payment,” if the sender was indeed Nakamoto and the recipient a third party.

While Grogan’s thread underscores mounting indications of Satoshi’s interaction with a Canadian exchange, he remains cautious about drawing definitive conclusions. He states, “We can’t definitively link these [addresses] to Satoshi but there is good evidence,” adding that these findings slightly weaken earlier theories pointing to cryptographer Len Sassaman. “This is the first set of evidence I’ve seen in years that has decreased my confidence that Satoshi was Len [Sassaman],” Grogan wrote.

For now, neither Kraken nor its co-founder Jesse Powell has commented on the matter, leaving observers and researchers to continue sifting through the blockchain’s early-day clues in search of the world’s most infamous pseudonym.

At press time, BTC traded at $97,834.

Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com