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Satoshi Nakamoto: The mystery behind Bitcoin's elusive creator and his $89 billion fortune
As crypto risks mount, the mystery surrounding Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, and his disappearance remains unsolved.
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Bitcoin, a decentralised cryptocurrency, is back in the headlines after the world's largest crypto exchange, Binance, was hit by a security breach that put $6.3 billion in crypto assets at risk.
This latest incident has brought the scale of crypto-related security breaches into focus, with the $6.3 billion at risk nearly four times the previous record of $1.5 billion stolen from Bybit in February 2025, according to a Chainalysis report.
But while crypto exchanges and investors continue to grapple with the risks surrounding digital assets, one of Bitcoin's biggest mysteries remains unsolved: the disappearance of its pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Having vanished from public view in 2011, Nakamoto is believed to hold a multi-billion-dollar Bitcoin fortune. Nearly 15 years later, questions surrounding his identity, whereabouts and the fate of his enormous wealth continue to intrigue the crypto world.
Deep Dive
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Nakamoto's billions: Where are they?
Since the disappearance of Nakamoto over a decade ago, his hefty Bitcoin wallet, comprising close to 1.1 million BTC, as per a New York Times report, has sat completely untouched since 2009. As per real-time bitcoin price levels, that wealth now accounts for 5% of all bitcoin in circulation, comprises one of the largest single concentrations of wealth in any asset class, and is worth around $89 billion as of October 2026, a Nexo report reveals.
Bitcoin's operational mechanism is based on a public ledger called ‘blockchain’ which permanently records and publicly displays every single block dating back to the very first one in January 2009. Using on-chain research called the Patoshi Pattern, analysts like Sergio Demián Lerner have traced approximately 1.1 million BTC to early addresses that share the same mining patterns culminating in a cluster of about 20,000 early addresses- collectively called ‘Satoshi’s wallet'- where not even a single coin has moved.
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Beyond a genesis address (1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa) and the first transaction address (1HLoD9E4SDFFPDiYfNYnkBLQ85Y51J3Zb1), a cluster of thousands of parallel addresses can be accessed at block explorers like Blockchain.com and Arkham Intelligence.
Who is Satoshi Nakamoto
Despite multiple attempts at uncovering Nakamoto's true identity, including an HBO documentary and a New York Times report, speculation remains rife on who exactly founded Bitcoin.
The New York Times Report pushed for British cryptographer Adam Back as a suitable candidate to fill this identity gap. The report listed a series of similarities in Back's journey with that of Bitcoin to make the connection including his early articulation of Bitcoin-like ideas, parallels between his work and that of Nakamoto, a pattern in his online activity that justifies the period of Nakamoto's disappearance, and commonalities in their eccentric writing styles. Back, however, rejected the claim and called the investigation a case of “confirmation bias” built on coincidences, as previously reported by HT.
‘Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery’, directed by Cullen Hoback, too took its shot at uncovering the mystery by stipulating that Peter Todd, a college student in 2008, might be the original creator of the cryptocurrency. Todd too has denied all such claims.
