Bitcoin’s anonymous creator just cracked the top 50 richest list: We’d introduce the newest member of the world’s top 50 richest billionaires — but we have no idea who he or she is. Who is Satoshi Nakamoto… besides being one of the richest men (or women) in the world.
Prince al-Waleed bin Talal once called bitcoin an “Enron in the making.”
Two months later, the Saudi royal suddenly finds himself looking up at the man or woman (or group) behind the soaring cryptocurrency on the list of the world’s wealthiest billionaires, according to numbers crunched by Quartz on Monday.
Read also: Opinion: Bitcoin is perfectly tracking major bubble phases
And yet, even after all the buzz, we still don’t know who the bitcoin’s anonymous creator, known as “Satoshi Nakamoto,” actually is.
Perhaps an Australian entrepreneur?
No. Or maybe it’s Tesla’s TSLA, -1.60% Elon Musk? Guess again.
Nevertheless, with bitcoin BTCUSD, -2.50% trading just under $20,000 ahead of the launch of bitcoin futures on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange Sunday, Nakamoto’s net worth reached $19.4 billion, enough to place him at 44th on the Forbes rich list.
That would put him ahead of the prince and just behind Microsoft MSFT, -0.81% co-founder Paul Allen and Apple AAPL, -0.86% founder Steve Jobs’s widow.
Nakamoto’s net worth estimate comes from the 980,000 bitcoins he is believed to own, which, at the current price of about $18,900, has him slipping down the list. In the crypto world, these numbers shift faster than we can keep track.
However, you want to calculate his net worth, he’s come a long, long way since October when he would have cracked the Forbes list at No. 247 with a fortune of $5.9 billion. Clearly, it’s been a good couple months/years to be a bitcoin “holder.”
SOURCE: MARKETWATCH