Satoshi Nakamoto was not only the creator of Bitcoin. He was also the first BTC miner and surely he is the one who has mined it the most. According to various estimates, he has about a million BTCs in his possession, which makes him one of the richest people in the world.
But of course, it is not known whether he is still alive or not. In fact, since 2011 there has not been any trace of its existence, there are several assumptions that he is actually deceased.
Moreover, it is not even sure whether he was only one person, because Satoshi Nakamoto could also be the name of a group or the pseudonym used by the spokesman of a group.
That being said, several estimates of how many BTCs he has mined over time seem to converge towards a figure between 900,000 and one million bitcoins, also because until the first halving in November 2012 each block mined every 10 minutes distributed 50 BTCs, so it was enough to mine 20,000 to get to those figures.
To date, with bitcoin worth about 3,800 dollars, the assets of Satoshi Nakamoto in BTC would have a value of almost 4 billion dollars. According to Forbes at the end of 2018, the person with the largest personal assets in the world was Jeff Bezos of Amazon, with 112 billion dollars.
Therefore, to date, Satoshi Nakamoto would not be the richest person in the world. Moreover, not even during the peak of value in December 2017, when bitcoin touched 20,000 dollars, Nakamoto would have been the richest person in the world, since at the time his assets in BTC would have amounted to about 20 billion dollars, against the 86 of Bill Gates.
But what if bitcoin reaches, or exceeds, 100,000 dollars? In that case, Satoshi could become the richest person in the world, but only if he is still alive, he is a single person and the estimates of his assets are correct.
Added to this is the fact that since 2011 all the BTCs believed to be in the possession of Satoshi Nakamoto have never been used, and this supports the thesis of Satoshi’s death.
In theory, it may well be that a number of BTCs in his possession are not known, and given that their value is much higher than in 2011, he may have even chosen to freeze that million BTCs mined before 2011 and use other ones, but to date, this hypothesis is unconfirmed.
