Satoshi Nakamoto Nears Global Rich List as Bitcoin Hits $122K
Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, now sits just outside the top 10 richest people on the planet—without ever spending or moving a cent of their estimated 1.1 million BTC fortune.
As Bitcoin surged past $122,000 on Monday, Satoshi’s holdings crossed the $134 billion mark, according to on-chain data. That places them ahead of billionaires like Michael Dell and Rob Walton, and closing in on Steve Ballmer, Warren Buffett, and Sergey Brin, whose net worth is currently around $142 billion, per Forbes’ real-time billionaires list.
All of Nakamoto’s coins were mined in Bitcoin’s earliest days, when the network was powered by just a few laptops. None of those coins have ever moved since 2010, fueling speculation for over a decade: Is Nakamoto dead, deliberately silent, or simply refusing to interfere with the project’s growth?
Unlike most billionaires, Nakamoto never built a company, pitched to investors, or rang the opening bell at an exchange. Yet their creation has grown into a $2.4 trillion ecosystem, making it one of the most valuable financial innovations in history.
Bitcoin’s recent breakout, driven by ETF inflows, institutional demand, and macro optimism, helped push the market to new highs. While Satoshi’s wealth remains untouched and theoretical, its scale underscores how much the crypto world has evolved since their final forum post in 2011.
