Will Satoshi Nakamoto Move Any Bitcoin This Year? Degens Are Betting on It

Polymarket odds that the elusive, pseudonymous Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto will move BTC from his wallets this year climbed from 2% at the beginning of the month to a peak of 15% last week, as some users bet big on Satoshi’s comeback.

The move is the result of tens of thousands of dollars being placed on Satoshi’s return over the past seven days, fueling speculation that someone may have inside knowledge over what the long-silent Bitcoin creator might be planning to do.

Bitcoin was created in 2008, with its founder (or founders) hiding behind a pseudonymous mask as Satoshi Nakamoto. To this day, the public remains unaware of Satoshi’s identity—whether it’s a man, woman, or a group. The crypto inventor is believed to own approximately 1.1 million BTC—about $121 billion worth—and has never moved any of it.

However, over the past week, more than $62,000 has been wagered by four Polymarket users that Satoshi will move some of these funds before the end of the year. Two of these wallets were freshly funded to bet a total of $30,000 on the Satoshi market, raising suspicions that an insider is attempting to cover their tracks.

“Two fresh wallets started aggressively buying YES,” pseudonymous Dune dashboard creator Dash wrote on X. “Both only hold that singular position. Do they know something we don’t?”

Aside from speculation that the Polymarket wallets are controlled by Satoshi himself, a prominent theory is that the users are speculating over the reliability of the resolution source.

The market resolves “Yes” if any wallet labeled as Satoshi’s on the Arkham Intelligence shows an outflow or swap. These 22,000 wallets, Arkham said, were added in adherence with the Patoshi Pattern—which describes the pattern of mining found in early Bitcoin blocks. A single miner mined the first 22,000 blocks using the distinctive behavior, and many believe this miner was Satoshi himself. 

Users are speculating that the Polymarket bettors may believe that the Patoshi Pattern is wrong, or that Arkham has mislabeled a handful of wallets. Others have wrongly speculated that Arkham Intelligence only added these 22,000 wallets recently, which would surely increase the odds of BTC being moved—but the platform added the wallets in February.

“The easiest explanation here is that he is a degen cosplaying as an insider,” Polymarket trader Euan wrote on X. “There [aren’t] many plausible theories for how this market could resolve Yes. My opinion is that it’s highly likely he’s a degen, but if so, it’s an objectively awful bet.”

If Satoshi does in fact move Bitcoin before the end of the year, the bets could prove to be the latest display of insider activity on Polymarket.

Earlier this month, for example, odds that Venezuelan resistance leader Maria Corina Machado would win the Nobel Peace Prize shot up from near-zero to over 70%—hours before the ceremony kicked off. The organizers of the Nobel Peace Prize have since opened an investigation into the case.

A Polymarket user, RememberAmalek, stepped forward as one of the people betting on Machado, although he refused to clarify why he believed Machado would be the winner.

Ultimately, prediction markets strive to be accurate rather than fair. As such, insider knowledge is part of the design—not a flaw in it. 

“If the point of [prediction] markets is to get accurate information on the prices, then you definitely want to allow insiders to trade, even if that discourages other people from betting because that makes the prices more accurate,” Robin Hanson, a George Mason University professor, told Decrypt in an interview last year. “And that’s the priority.”