Galaxy Research Counts 11.1 Million Bitcoin (BTC) in Unattributed Addresses
Key Takeaways
- •Galaxy Research's supply classification places approximately 11.1 million BTC in unattributed addresses, exceeding half of Bitcoin's 21 million maximum supply.
- •The largest single attribution in analysis — 1,123,658 BTC assigned to the Patoshi pattern — remains a technical estimate without proof that one party controlled every address in the cluster.
- •The Patoshi hypothesis, identified by researcher Sergio Lerner through nonce irregularities in early mined blocks, is commonly associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, whose estimated 1 million BTC have remained untouched since Bitcoin's early days.
- •Entity-level Bitcoin attributions depend on address-clustering heuristics, since the ledger records addresses rather than identities, making supply breakdowns estimates that can shift as clustering methods evolve.
- •Any future movement of dormant or unattributed coins would be directly observable in public block data, independent of the labels researchers attach to them.
Galaxy Research Counts 11.1 Million Bitcoin (BTC) in Unattributed
A classification of the Bitcoin supply published by Galaxy Research places approximately 11.1 million BTC in addresses that the firm cannot attribute to any identified owner or organization — a sum equal to more than half of Bitcoin's capped maximum supply of 21 million coins. For readers of supply-concentration research, the figure marks the edge of what current labeling techniques can explain: the categories Galaxy does identify rest on analytical estimates rather than confirmed ownership records.
Update 14:44 UTC: Galaxy's own classification carries a further caveat on its largest single attribution: the 1,123,658 BTC assigned to the Patoshi pattern rests on a technical estimate of early mining activity, and the firm has not proven that every address in that cluster was actually controlled by a single party.
The Patoshi pattern is a widely cited labeling hypothesis in Bitcoin analytics. It was identified by researcher Sergio Lerner, who observed consistent irregularities in the extraneous nonce field of blocks mined in Bitcoin's earliest years — a footprint interpreted as evidence of one dominant early miner. The cluster is commonly associated with Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, whose widely estimated holdings of around 1 million BTC have remained untouched since the network's early days.
Attributing Bitcoin balances to known entities relies on address-clustering heuristics rather than direct proof: the Bitcoin ledger records addresses, not identities, so entity-level supply breakdowns are research estimates that can shift as clustering methods evolve. Coins in the unattributed category typically include early mining rewards, holdings whose private keys have been lost, and long-dormant balances. Because the ledger itself is public, any future movement of such dormant coins would be directly observable in block data, independent of the labels researchers attach to them. Galaxy Research is the research division of Galaxy Digital, the digital asset financial services firm founded by Mike Novogratz.
The figures were reported by COINOTAG on October 26, 2026.
This content was first published on COINOTAG: Galaxy Research Counts 11.1 Million Bitcoin (BTC) in Unattributed Addresses
