Satoshi experimented with customising Bitcoin addresses – and used his real name!

“Eventually there’ll be some interest in brute force scanning Bitcoin addresses to find one with the first few characters customised to your name, kind of like getting a phone number that spells out something.”

So Satoshi wrote to Hal Finney as early as 12 Jan 2009. The idea of generating a large number of random public addresses to find some special addresses was triggered by an address he gave starting with 1NS, Satoshi Nakamoto’s initials in reverse. On the same day he carried out a transaction to an address commencing 15NUwy – note how the 5 looks like an S to give SN.

But Satoshi went much further. We can be sure that he put his idea in practice because of un usual doublet address. The address was created by a miner operating in Jan 2009 who has been designated M254.  By chance, this miner happened to mine two blocks, 501 and 506, close together. This doublet of blocks was then transferred to a new address on 16 Jan 2009: 

133fZZzNNbHL5VSuCWrUkLW2oL9ZPJELbY

Note how this address starts with three doubles, 33, ZZ and NN that are evenly spaced. This is a statistically very unusual pattern. So who was M254? A transaction involving block 9 enables us to definitely identify him as Satoshi.

Could it be pure chance that the address Satoshi created to receive the double blocks featured three doublets of letters? No, because Satoshi would have had to generate and search through c.100,000 random address to find such an address.

So Satoshi was certainly customising Bitcoin addresses in Jan 2009.

Now it gets even more interesting. Satoshi could not resist the temptation to customise addresses to his real name. He had to be subtle though. The customisation used just the capital letters and a “first and last” pattern that he had also used for his pill company Rx Limited (Roux).

Satoshi customised two addresses to indicate Paul Le Roux. One was another address used by M254 who is Satoshi. The other is an address given out directly by Satoshi.

Could this be just coincidence, a case of seeing patterns where none exist? No, because we find the same customisation in a very interesting place. An email supplied by Faketoshi, Craig Wright, with instructions to Dave Kleiman to reward the third man. A short list of address contains no less than five addresses customised to Le Roux’s name using the same method. And this opens a window on Kleiman’s association with Satoshi.