- Bitcoin’s founder owns 1.1 million of the cryptocurrency.
- That potentially makes Satoshi Nakamoto wealthier than the heirs to the Walmart fortune.
Satoshi Nakamoto just became richer than the CEO of Nvidia and several of the Walmart heirs.
That’s according to Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence.
Arkham tweeted that Satoshi’s stash makes up some 5.2% of the Bitcoin supply, making him the 11th richest person in the world.
Arkham and others estimate that Nakamoto owns roughly 1.1 billion Bitcoin.
That would put the mysterious Bitcoin founder’s crypto stockpile at just shy of $121 billion in Tuesday’s prices.
Over the past week, the price of the world’s leading cryptocurrency skyrocketed to a $111,814 record. It has since retracted to hover at about $110,000.
The upshot? Nakamoto may be richer than Dell’s founder Michael Dell; Jim, Rob and Alice Walton, the heirs to the Walmart fortune; Nvidia founder Jensen Huang; and Inditex fashion group founder Amanicio Ortega, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. The rankings holdings are as of May 26.
Tesla’s Elon Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg sit squarely at the top of that ranking with an estimated personal wealth of $374 billion, $222 billion, and $222 billion, respectively.
To be sure, it’s unclear exactly how much Bitcoin Nakamoto owns. For instance, BiTBO puts Nakamoto’s accumulated wealth at 968,452 Bitcoin, which would put the value at around $106 billion. That crypto stash would make Nakamoto the world’s 17th richest person.
There have been plenty of theories about Nakamoto’s identity over the years. A menagerie of people have claimed to be the secretive founder.
There’s even a lawsuit making its way through US courts, arguing that the US government has known who Nakamoto is for years.
Unmasking Nakamoto would have seismic implications on the $3.5 trillion crypto market, with whoever controlling their wallets being able to upend the industry.
Indeed, Coinbase has regularly issued a boilerplate warning in its financial filings that the emergence of Satoshi is a risk.
Eric Johansson is DL News’ News Editor. Got a tip? Email at eric@dlnews.com.
