Let’s add up how much bitcoin’s creator could be worth.
The founder of the world’s first cryptocurrency bitcoin (BITCOIN: Bitcoin) remains to be one of the most mysterious figures of our time. No one knows if it’s a person or a group, but numerous people have been rumored to be him. Regardless, Satoshi Nakamoto is a proud owner of the genesis block of the bitcoin blockchain, so let's sum up how much that could be in the tangible money.
How much did Satoshi obtain?
In case of Nakamoto, it’s a ‘what’s your name?’ kind of question, or to put it simply - highly debated. A number of studies were conducted on this, but no one knows the answer for sure. The author of the most in-depth study to date, Sergio Demian Lerner has come up with a theory that Satoshi has control of over a million bitcoins. He used the extraNonce method to evaluate the amount.
Lerner has found that most of the initial bitcoins were mined by a single computer. By looking at coinbase-transactions (the first transaction is always conducted by a miner), he revealed that since the genesis block and up to block №36288, there was a large scale miner on the network. Those estimates are in line with previous studies that estimate the number of tokens to be at 1 148 800 BTC.
How much is Nakamoto worth now?
This may be harder than expected since no one knows which wallets belong to Satoshi. Let’s assume that originally he gathered 1 148 800 bitcoins, and 16,7 were donated. What we get is 1 148 816,7 BTC which is roughly $7,7 billion at the current rate. If we add bitcoin cash to the mix, $8,619 billion more should be added. And that’s without including any other forks of bitcoin that are currently out.
Bitcoin hardforks
He has around 911 million worth of bitcoin cash (at price around $790 per coin). And then we can add such forks as bitcoin gold with 33,3 million, Bitcoin Diamond (2,4 million), Bitcoin God, Super Bitcoin, Bitcoin Platinum and all the others. So it becomes obvious, he is rather wealthy.
Meanwhile, the idea of forking is only taking off since for this year at least 20 are being planned. Just imagine how many there will be in 10 years time!
How much was Nakamoto worth at market peak?
On December 2017, when bitcoin was at $19 783, Satoshi would have been worth at least $22,73 billion dollars.
Could Satoshi become the richest person?
In order for Nakamoto to become the richest person alive, bitcoin needs to rise to $60 000. But currently, he wouldn’t get into a top-100 according to the Forbes rich list.
How can Satoshi spend the dough?
No one knows what Nakamoto is doing with his crypto, but one thing for sure, those bitcoins have never left the accounts. The extraordinary amount of tokens has some experts worried as they are scared of implications of over a million tokens appearing on the market. But that would only be the case if Satoshi decides to sell it all at once.
The weight such an infusion could carry that if so many tokens come to the market, the price of bitcoin could drop to zero. Professor Matt Green of Johns Hopkins University, a cryptocurrencies expert has written extensively on such on the possibility of such a decision. In the works, he highlights a real worry that Satoshi’s influence has not been felt by the market ever since he departed the scene.
The faceless billionaire
We do not who he is, where from and much more, and this is a yet another reason why people would be curious to find out. Regardless, the blockchain is transforming the economy and multiple industries as it provides valuable solutions to multiple areas, improving efficiency and security. Difficult to say how the technology would have developed if Satoshi’s identity was known, but one thing for sure is that the world is watching for the fist of the million-plus bitcoins to leave the wallet.