The Grin General Fund has recently received an anonymous 50 BTC donations from an early bitcoin adopter, a move that sparked rumors it could’ve been Satoshi Nakamoto.

Grin is a privacy-focused cryptocurrency that aims to empower anyone to transact and save money without fearing external control or oppression. One of its developers, Daniel Lehnberg, recently revealed the project received a 50 BTC donation from an address that stored the coins since they were mined.

A look at the data on the blockchain shows the address mined the 50 BTC back in December of 2010, when block rewards were still of 50 BTC and when the cryptocurrency was worth very little.  The only transactions the address have are the one receiving the coinbase rewards in December 2010, and the donation to Grin this month.

Analyzing the data Litecoin creator Charlie Lee said on Telegram the donation came from Bitcoin’s creator Satoshi Nakamoto. Lee later on clarified his comment was a joke, but rumors started flying, setting the crypto community abuzz.

Lehnberg revealed in his post that he managed to interact briefly with the donor, who chose to remain anonymous. The donor said he wouldn’t judge how the funds, currently worth around $429,240, would be spent and assured him the project was going great and that it “feels like 2009/2010 again.”

The donor reportedly added:

It’s wonderful that we have GRIN now, our motives are not economical! It’s about the technology and the protocol. Please put it to good use for the development of GRIN … We saw your work and your ethics towards the project and your interest free work. This is what we are honouring right now with these donations so that you can work freely on GRIN. Without economic dependencies.

The donor added that hopefully they judged right and “time will tell.” It’s worth pointing out that blockchain data also shows that at the time of the transaction, December of 2010, the number of unique addresses on the Bitcoin network grew from 500 to 600.

One unique address if often associated with one user, although anyone can, of course, create multiple unique addresses. As the donor mentioned it “feels like 2009/2010” wit’s possible they got into Bitcoin the year it was created, 2009.

If so, blockchain data shows the number of unique addresses grew to 100 that year, which could still mean there are 100 potential candidates, one of them being Satoshi Nakamoto himself.

Featured image by André François McKenzie on Unsplash.