Bitcoin’s Secretive Founder Nears Billionaire Elite as Prices Soar
Bitcoin’s enigmatic creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, is edging closer to joining the ranks of the world’s wealthiest individuals—all without spending a single dollar of their colossal fortune or revealing their true identity.
Following Bitcoin’s surge past $122,000 on Monday, Satoshi’s estimated holdings of about 1.1 million BTC have ballooned to over $134 billion, based on blockchain data. This remarkable figure places Nakamoto just outside the world’s top ten richest people, ahead of prominent names like Michael Dell and Rob Walton, and closing in on Steve Ballmer, Warren Buffett, and Sergey Brin, whose net worth stands at roughly $142 billion, according to Forbes’ real-time billionaire list.
Satoshi’s bitcoin cache was entirely mined during Bitcoin’s earliest days, when the network operated on a handful of laptops. Astonishingly, none of these coins have ever moved since 2010, fueling speculation for years about whether Nakamoto has passed away, disappeared, or deliberately chosen not to interfere with Bitcoin’s development.
Unlike many billionaires who built empires, courted investors, and listed companies on stock exchanges, Satoshi released Bitcoin quietly and then vanished. Sixteen years later, that single act of innovation has blossomed into a crypto ecosystem valued at over $2.4 trillion.
Bitcoin recently reached new all-time highs, buoyed by ETF inflows, growing institutional participation, and persistent narratives around crypto as an inflation hedge. Though Satoshi’s wealth remains theoretical—with none of the coins ever sold or proven accessible—the staggering valuation underscores how far the crypto space has evolved since Nakamoto’s last public message in 2011.
