I noticed an interesting point in the crypto space—the question of how many bitcoins Satoshi Nakamoto owns constantly comes up, especially when BTC reaches new highs. And in May 2025, it became particularly relevant.

The thing is, according to analysis from Arkham, the creator of Bitcoin holds a huge stash of coins—about 1.096 million BTC. That’s 5.2% of the total cryptocurrency supply. For context: MicroStrategy, which has been actively buying BTC since 2020, owns only 2.763% of the supply. It turns out Satoshi owns roughly twice as much as one of the largest corporate hodlers.

When I calculate this in dollars based on the prices at that time, it’s about $120 billion. This places Satoshi at 11th place on the list of the world’s wealthiest people. For comparison, Bill Gates has around $115 billion. So, on paper, the creator of Bitcoin is richer than the founder of Microsoft.

How did we find out how many bitcoins Satoshi Nakamoto owns? That’s where Sergio Demian Lerner comes in—a cryptography expert who conducted a detailed analysis of early blocks. He studied blocks from January 2009 to January 2010 and discovered that one mining farm mined thousands of blocks in a row, earning about 1 million BTC in rewards. Lerner called this pattern the “Patoshi model”—and reasonably assumed that it was Satoshi himself, mining from the very beginning when the block reward was 50 BTC.

Here’s an interesting question: why has Satoshi never moved these coins? The developer last made a public appearance in 2010 and then disappeared. Most crypto enthusiasts believe he’s simply no longer alive. They say these bitcoins can be considered lost to the market.

But there’s another camp—those who believe Satoshi is alive and just silent. And if he ever decides to sell even a portion of his coins, it could trigger a serious crash. Imagine: 1 million BTC on the market—that would be catastrophic.

So, the question of how many bitcoins Satoshi Nakamoto owns and what he will do with them remains one of the biggest mysteries in the crypto industry. And it seems we may never find out the answer.