Satoshi Nakamoto is now the 20th richest person in the world

Marine Debelloir on October 18, 2021

The recent rise in the price of Bitcoin (BTC) has bolstered the fortunes of historical cryptocurrency holders, including that of the most famous of them. Satoshi Nakamoto, the mysterious creator of Bitcoin, is now the 20th richest person in the world ... And his BTCs are standing still.

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains and probably always will remain a mystery, but a little more is known about the BTCs owned by the creator of the cryptocurrency . Several reports have come out over the years, including a very comprehensive one by Sergio Demian Lerner , who estimated that Nakamoto had mined between 1 and 1.1 million bitcoins between January 2009 and January 2010.

These BTCs are now legendary in the crypto community, and they have never budged. But their value has increased considerably. So much so that Satoshi Nakamoto is now in the top 20 of the richest people in the world .

As of this writing, a Bitcoin is indeed trading for $ 62,459. If you multiply that by a million, you get a colossal sum of $ 62.45 billion . We can thus compare this sum with the biggest fortunes in the world - via the ranking of billionaires published by Forbes for example.

This places Satoshi Nakamoto in 20 th place in the standings, behind China's Zhong Shansha, who weighs $ 63 billion.

A Satoshi or Satoshis?

All of this is of course just a collection of guesses: it is possible that Bitcoin was not created just by one person, but by a team. This remains particularly notable, however: one of the world's greatest fortunes is held by an anonymous figure , and seems lost forever.

It should also be noted that if Bitcoin exceeds 100,000 dollars, a threshold particularly monitored by the crypto-community, Satoshi Nakamoto will join the top 10 of the wealthiest people in the world . That is to say currently Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Bernard Arnault, Bill Gates and Larry Ellison, among others.

No other billionaire is so anonymous, and fosters speculation as much, as Satoshi Nakamoto. Its story should therefore continue to elicit comments from the curious, and thus maintain the legend around Bitcoin.