Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoin Wealth Falls By $41 Billion, Now Poorer Than Bill Gates

Bitcoin’s price has seen a dramatic drop over the past month, dragging its elusive creator’s purported net worth down with it.

Just over a month ago, Satoshi Nakamoto’s total Bitcoin holdings were valued at $137 billion, according to Arkham Intelligence data, based on wallets believed to be connected to the pseudonymous creator.

This made Satoshi the 11th richest person—if it is a single person, that is—in the world, when compared to the Forbes billionaires list, ahead of the likes of Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates. (Forbes doesn't track Satoshi, to be clear.)

However, with Bitcoin’s decline of more than 30% to a recent price of $87,281, from its all-time high of $126,080 set in early October, Satoshi’s net worth has fallen to $95.8 billion in just over a month. This now places the mysterious founder as the 20th richest person in the world, poorer than Gates at $104.4 billion.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the pseudonym adopted by the creator of Bitcoin when they wrote the white paper in 2008, as well as when talking on forums or via email. Despite countless attempts to unmask Satoshi's true identity—including a high-profile HBO documentary last year—no one has successfully convinced the public that they have found the right person.

Crypto experts have been able to determine how much Bitcoin the creator holds. Identified using what is called the Patoshi Pattern—a distinctive pattern of mining only found in the earliest Bitcoin blocks—experts estimate that Satoshi owns approximately 1.1 million $BTC, close to the 1.096 million $BTC tally that Arkham Intelligence tracks.

That said, Satoshi’s real net worth could be potentially much different from this figure, as we do not know of any off-chain or non-Bitcoin holdings. Equally, Forbes calculates the net worth of billionaires using the individual’s public holdings and estimates the value of private holdings, which could be inaccurate. 

Regardless of Satoshi’s exact net worth, it’s safe to assume that $95.8 billion is a significant portion of their net worth. For that reason, some believe the elusive creator may step out from the shadows as quantum computing advancements threaten to break Bitcoin, also known as Q-Day. 

Proposals have already been made to freeze Satoshi’s Bitcoin due to the looming quantum “existential threat.” Others have suggested a Bitcoin hard fork to quantum-proof the entire network.

However, Joseph Chalom—the co-CEO of SharpLink Gaming, a leading Ethereum treasury company—previously told Decrypt that he believes Satoshi may reveal themself as this hurdle is attempted.

“I have a wild idea that at some point—five, 10 years from now—when the Bitcoin network needs to be quantum-proofed, there will be some really important decisions around standards and encryption,” Chalom said in September. “There'll be decisions about whether you need to hard fork the protocol [and] what you do with wallets that are dormant.”