A new crypto theory proposes that hundreds of thousands of BTC mined by the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin are actually giveaways in the world’s greatest prize competition.
Traders on Bitcointalk are searching for clues left by Satoshi that they hope will allow them to piece together the private keys needed to unlock the huge stash of Bitcoin.
The theory is based on cryptocurrency expert Sergio Demian Lerner’s observation of a statistical imbalance or a non-uniform distribution in the blocks that Satoshi Nakamoto is thought to have mined.
One of the reasons that Lerner attributed the statistical imbalance to was that “Satoshi left a message fingerprinted in the nonces. A message for us to see in a distant future.”
The initiator of the theory on Bitcointalk argues that the statistical imbalance is deliberate.
“What we are doing is to inform people what we’ve discovered and that it was not a random mining.”
It is estimated that Satoshi Nakamoto could have mined between 750,000 to 1,000,000 BTC. At current prices, the value of the stash ranges between $34.8 billion to nearly $46.4 billion, theoretically ranking whoever created the original cryptocurrency among the 50 richest people in the world.
Some posters on the Bitcointalk forum are skeptical of the theory, with one user warning that trying to unlock Satoshi’s Bitcoin stash is akin to “trying to find a needle in a haystack.”
Satoshi founded the Bitcointalk website in November of 2009.
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