Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto is Among the 50 Richest People
Satoshi Nakamoto, a person or a group who founded bitcoin in 2009 by mining the genesis block, has become one of the 50 richest people in the world with a net worth of $19.4 billion.
For many years, bitcoins mined by Satoshi Nakamoto have remained unspent, all 980,000 of it. If the price of bitcoin continues to increase exponentially in the mid to long-term, Satoshi could become the most valuable individual or organization globally.
Currently, Satoshi Nakamoto is listed behind Lauren Powell Jobs of Apple and Disney, Paul Allen of Microsoft, and Stefan Persson of H&M on the Forbes billionaires list and is the 44th richest person.
Earlier this week, Standpoint Research founder Ronnie Moas predicted the price of bitcoin to surpass $400,000 in the long-term. Moas noted that the adoption rate of bitcoin as a premier store of value and currency is increasing rapidly and with the entrance of institutional investors into the market, the value of bitcoin will surge further in the coming years.
A $400,000 price per bitcoin would place the market valuation of bitcoin at exactly $8.4 billion, a market cap that is $1.4 trillion larger than that of gold. At $400,000 per bitcoin, the net worth of Satoshi would increase to $392 billion. If Satoshi is an individual, that would produce the first individual to surpass $100 billion in net worth.
In the past, the mainstream media criticized the so-called “whale problem” in bitcoin, given that a small group of individuals own the majority of the cryptocurrency’s supply. In the bitcoin market, whales are often referred to early-stage investors who have purchased large amounts of bitcoin in its early days.
Some of the whale investors include the Winklevoss twins, who have become the first verified billionaire bitcoin holders.
However, the arguments that several individuals or organizations like Satoshi Nakamoto and the Winklevoss twins possess too much of bitcoin’s fixed supply are flawed, because bitcoin is divisible, easily transportable, and highly liquid. Users can send one satoshi, or a hundredth of a millionth BTC (0.00000001 BTC) if the price of bitcoin increases to the hundred thousand region.
In fact, the divisibility of bitcoin and its use case as a currency is what sets it apart from gold and have encouraged analysts in the finance sector to call it gold 2.0. As JPMorgan global market strategist Nikolaos Panigirtzoglou stated:
“The value of this new asset class is a function of the breadth of its acceptance as a store of wealth and as a means of payment and simply judging by other stores of wealth such as gold, cryptocurrencies have the potential to grow further from here.”
Satoshi’s Achievement
This week, bitcoin pioneer and advisor to many cryptocurrency startups Charlie Shrem publicly expressed his gratitude to Satoshi Nakamoto, who has created and introduced the first decentralized financial system and currency that is operating at a large scale.
The achievement of Satoshi Nakamoto and bitcoin go beyond the introduction of a decentralized currency. Satoshi Nakamoto has transformed the global finance industry by demonstrating that the seperation of money and state is possible, through a peer-to-peer currency.