In the world of billionaires, where Forbes' list is updated hourly and the fortunes of Elon Musk, Larry Ellison or Mark Zuckerberg are always the center of attention, there is a name that is quietly rising, a "ghost" that is haunting the wealth rankings. That is Satoshi Nakamoto.
When the cryptocurrency market exploded on July 14, seeing bitcoin surpass $120,000 for the first time in history, the mysterious founder’s fortune skyrocketed to an incredible $132.8 billion. Satoshi Nakamoto unofficially became the 11th richest person in the world, surpassing tech mogul Michael Dell, who is worth an estimated $125.1 billion.
“Unofficial,” however, is the key word. Forbes and traditional rankings don’t take into account crypto assets held in private wallets, which can’t be publicly verified like stocks. But in the digital world, numbers don’t lie.
Based on analysis by blockchain company Arkham, it is believed that Satoshi controls around 1.096 million bitcoins, scattered across thousands of wallet addresses created in the early days of the epoch. These wallets, like their owners, have been dormant for more than a decade.
The road to becoming the richest man on the planet
Breaking into the top 11 is just a stop. At the current rate of growth, the question the market is asking is no longer whether Satoshi will climb higher, but when he will challenge for the top positions.
Let’s do some simple math: Elon Musk reigns supreme with a net worth of over $404 billion, followed by titans like Larry Ellison and Mark Zuckerberg, each worth around $274 billion. For the ghost of Satoshi Nakamoto to overtake them all and take the throne, the price of a single bitcoin would need to increase by around 208% from its current price, which would bring it to $370,000.
This number may sound far-fetched, but in a market known for its volatility and unbelievable jumps, nothing is impossible.
Bloomberg senior analyst Eric Balchunas has come up with a compelling scenario. He predicts that if bitcoin maintains its historical average growth rate of 50% per year, Satoshi could surpass Warren Buffett this year and surpass Mark Zuckerberg to become the world's second-richest person by 2026.
Bitcoin's mysterious founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, has suddenly risen to the ranks of the world's richest individuals when the price of bitcoin surpassed the $120,000 mark on the morning of July 14 (Photo: Cryptonews).
The Silent Prophet and Lessons from Jack Bogle
What makes Satoshi Nakamoto’s story so extraordinary and so different from other billionaires is his absolute silence. While other billionaires actively manage, invest, and flaunt their wealth, Satoshi has never moved a single satoshi (the smallest unit of bitcoin) from his original wallets.
“It’s amazing that the founder of something so successful never took a dime of profits,” Balchunas said. “It reminds me of Jack Bogle.”
This comparison is incredibly insightful. John “Jack” Bogle, founder of the legendary investment firm The Vanguard Group, revolutionized the financial industry by creating low-cost index funds, helping millions of ordinary investors build wealth.
Despite creating a trillion-dollar empire, he died in 2019 with a fortune of only about $80 million — a modest figure compared to his billionaire peers. Bogle believed his mission was to serve investors, not enrich himself.
Did Satoshi have similar ideals? Did he create bitcoin as a decentralized financial tool, a gift to the world, and was his personal enrichment never his goal? His silence, his refusal to part with his vast fortune, transformed him from a programmer into an iconic figure, a sage of the digital age.
The "king" of the "whales"
To better understand the size of Satoshi's fortune, let's put it next to other famous "whales" (people who hold large amounts of bitcoin).
The Winklevoss brothers, who are famous for their legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg and are early bitcoin investors, are believed to hold around 70,000 BTC.
Legendary venture capitalist Tim Draper owns around 30,000 BTC after winning a US government auction in 2014.
Michael Saylor, CEO of MicroStrategy, who turned his company into a bitcoin vault, is also said to hold around 17,732 BTC personally.
All of these numbers add up to a fraction of Satoshi’s 1.1 million BTC hoard. Even according to BiTBO data, the total amount of bitcoin held by all the businesses and custodians in the world is only about 847,000 BTC. Satoshi alone owns more than all of them.
Question of identity
Adding to the mystery are the occasional strange transactions that hit Satoshi’s wallets. Most recently, an unknown wallet transferred $20,000 worth of bitcoin to the Genesis Block—the first block ever mined by Satoshi. Was this a gesture of gratitude? An encrypted message? Or simply a mistake in withdrawing funds from an exchange? No one knows for sure.
These trickles of “donations” are like whispers into the void, trying to communicate with a god who has disappeared. Any movement from Satoshi’s “dormant” wallets has the potential to cause a seismic shift in the market, not just because of their financial value but also because of their symbolic significance.
And finally, the biggest question remains: Who is Satoshi Nakamoto? Theories have been floating around for years. Recently, some researchers have pointed to circumstantial evidence pointing to Jack Dorsey, co-founder of Twitter. Meanwhile, Craig Wright, an Australian computer scientist who has repeatedly claimed to be Satoshi, had his claim officially rejected by a British court after a bitter lawsuit.
Satoshi’s identity may forever remain a mystery. But his legacy is clear. He not only created a trillion-dollar asset class, he birthed an entire industry, a financial revolution. And along the way, he intentionally or unintentionally transformed himself into a billionaire ghost, a living legend who is quietly challenging the richest and most powerful people on the planet.
Source: https://dantri.com.vn/kinh-doanh/ty-phu-bi-an-cha-de-bitcoin-uy-hiep-ngoi-vi-nguoi-giau-nhat-the-gioi-20250714153421787.htm
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