On September 16, 2022, Jameson Lopp published “Was Satoshi a Greedy Miner?” on his blog, directly challenging the narrative that Bitcoin’s creator selfishly hoarded coins during the network’s early days.
Key data points:
- Satoshi mined approximately 1,100,000 BTC (~5% of total supply) across ~22,000 blocks over 14 months
- Maximum hashrate capacity: 6 Mhps — actual observed rate: 4.35 Mhps
- Satoshi controlled >50% of network hashrate but voluntarily decreased mining power in October 2009
- Only 0.09% of Satoshi’s blocks were ever spent
- Fewer than 5 minutes elapsed between Satoshi’s consecutive blocks, suggesting intentional pausing between mining rounds
Counterfactual analysis:
Lopp models two alternative scenarios:
- Full capacity (no pauses): Mining continuously at observed 4.35 Mhps would have yielded ~31,783 blocks / ~1.59 million BTC — approximately 1.5× the actual amount
- Maximum capacity: Mining at the machine’s full 6 Mhps would have yielded ~43,829 blocks / ~2.19 million BTC — nearly 2× the actual amount
The ~300-second pauses between consecutive blocks and the deliberate use of only 72.5% of available hashrate demonstrate that Satoshi prioritized network bootstrapping and decentralization over personal enrichment.
Building on Sergio Demian Lerner’s Patoshi pattern research, Lopp’s analysis provided quantitative evidence that Satoshi’s mining behavior was altruistic rather than extractive. The article concludes: “Anyone who claims that Satoshi was greedy simply hasn’t done the math.”