Patoshi Pattern Reconstructed: Single Miner Dominated Early Bitcoin Era
A long-standing mystery in the Bitcoin community has taken a significant step forward. Researchers at Bitquery have reconstructed the so-called Patoshi mining pattern, confirming that a single entity dominated Bitcoin's earliest days and accumulated an enormous fortune.
The Patoshi pattern refers to a distinctive signature found in Bitcoin's coinbase transactions, which were first identified by researcher Sergio Demian Lerner back in 2013. The new analysis covers the first 54,316 blocks ever mined and reveals that approximately 22,000 to 23,500 blocks are attributable to a single entity.
This miner was running custom mining software while most other participants used off-the-shelf tools, suggesting a significant advantage. As of September 1, 2026, an estimated 1,023,352 BTC linked to the Patoshi pattern had never been spent, and separate analysis from Arkham Intelligence and Galaxy Research clusters around 21,900 to 22,000 addresses with about 1.096 million BTC remaining dormant.
The mining pattern began with the genesis block on January 3, 2009, and ceased around block 54,000 in mid-2010. The timing of the pattern's end matches Satoshi Nakamoto's disappearance from public life, but no cryptographic proof ties these addresses to any specific individual.