[2017-10-22] BTC - $6000 USD, Satoshi Nakamoto Should Be on Forbes’ Rich List

[moriskarlov]

Bitcoin’s recent spike above $6000 USD has elevated the estimated value of Satoshi Nakamoto’s holdings to more than $6 billion USD, qualifying the anonymous creator of bitcoin for Forbes’ list of richest individuals. At current bitcoin prices, Satoshi Nakamoto’s estimated 1,000,000 bitcoins would place bitcoin’s founder at number 237 on Forbes’ list.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Stash Is Worth Approximately $5.978 Billion USD

The value of Satoshi Nakamoto’s estimated 1,000,000 bitcoins would place the anonymous creator on Forbes’ list of wealthiest individuals. Based on the estimated value of Satoshi’s holdings, which at the time of writing is approximately $6.1 billion USD, Nakamoto would be ranked number 237 on Forbes’ list.

Satoshi would be tied for 237th with South African business tycoon Johann Rupert, and Swedish heir and businessman Jorn Rausing. Nakamoto would be ranked higher than Alibaba’s Joseph Tsai, Australian mining magnate Andrew ‘Twiggy’ Forest, and Walmart heiress Ann Walkton Kroenke.

Satoshi is estimated to own approximately 5.89% of the more than 16.6 million bitcoins that are currently in circulation. The largest single bitcoin wallet is Bitfinex’s cold storage wallet, which currently holds over 168,000 bitcoins, or 1% of the total supply. The largest bitcoin wallet was previously owned by the U.S. government, after the FBI seized 144,336 bitcoins from anonymous free market The Silk Road.

https://news.bitcoin.com/with-bitcoins-price-above-6000-usd-satoshi-nakamoto-should-be-on-forbes-rich-list/

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[btcton]

This is actually not correct at all. When we are talking about extremely large sums of money such as the $6 trillion billion worth of Bitcoin that Satoshi has, simple multiplication to figure out its value does not work. Most exchanges have a volume of Bitcoin that does not even come close to the 1 million bitcoins that Satoshi might hold. For example, take a look at the graph at the bottom of this Bitstamp page: https://www.bitstamp.net/market/tradeview/. We are looking at bidding and asking volumes in the low thousands for prices within $1000 of the last price as of writing this post. Combine the volumes of all the exchanges and you will see that long before Satoshi could cash out a significant amount of his holdings, the price of Bitcoin will have already dropped very drastically. As a thought exercise, figure out how many exchanges there are and the average volume. You'll be surprised at how much your share of the entire Bitcoin economy would drive the price of Bitcoin either up or down.

Edit: Math is hard.

[panju1]

This is actually not correct at all. When we are talking about extremely large sums of money such as the $6 trillion worth of Bitcoin that Satoshi has, simple multiplication to figure out its value does not work. Most exchanges have a volume of Bitcoin that does not even come close to the 1 million bitcoins that Satoshi might hold. For example, take a look at the graph at the bottom of this Bitstamp page: https://www.bitstamp.net/market/tradeview/. We are looking at bidding and asking volumes in the low thousands for prices within $1000 of the last price as of writing this post. Combine the volumes of all the exchanges and you will see that long before Satoshi could cash out a significant amount of his holdings, the price of Bitcoin will have already dropped very drastically. As a thought exercise, figure out how many exchanges there are and the average volume. You'll be surprised at how much your share of the entire Bitcoin economy would drive the price of Bitcoin either up or down.

Well, that is precisely how wealth is calculated. It is the same methodology used for calculating other people's wealth. For example.if Bill Gates decides to sell all his Microsoft shares, the share price will tank as well. That doesn't mean that Microsoft is any less valuable.

[acquafredda]

As an article the writer needs to make it as sensational as possible so to reach more readers. Of course, if Satoshi would like to cash out all of his btc wealth there will be no exchange with that liquidity as btcton pointed out

[Iranus]

$6 billion worth of Bitcoin

FTFY

Well, that is precisely how wealth is calculated. It is the same methodology used for calculating other people's wealth. For example.if Bill Gates decides to sell all his Microsoft shares, the share price will tank as well. That doesn't mean that Microsoft is any less valuable.

Correct.  It's not like Bill Gates is holding 89.3 billion US dollars in some bank account somewhere to sit and decrease in value by 2-3 percent per year and potentially be lost since it's not fully insured.

When you reach that amount of money (anyone on that rich list), the amount of money you have is based on how much money you potentially have.  It doesn't mean that you could actually pull that amount out of nowhere.  In satoshi's case, it would decrease the value even more because when he starts selling, everyone would be terrified of him selling more and there would be a crash, but this is just speculation and doesn't affect his potential position on the list.
However, we don't know for sure that satoshi was just one person and we don't know their real identity, so I'm not sure that they should actually be on the list.

[1Referee]

However, we don't know for sure that satoshi was just one person and we don't know their real identity, so I'm not sure that they should actually be on the list.

Basically that. At this point in time there is nothing that can prove satoshi (who or what, he or they, really are), unless at least someone signs from each and every address containing the very first mint blocks. It's basically an impossible task since there are thousands and thousands of addresses that satoshi's supposed mega wealth is sitting in. It may very well be that any sort of access to these coins isn't even possible anymore, so it's safe to say that as long as they aren't moving, that we should consider these coins to be sitting in burn addresses. For years people have been going nuts on this subject, while people should point more attention to the stash that Mark Karpeles is sitting on, because at current time, it's worth billions of dollars.

[btcton]

$6 billion worth of Bitcoin

FTFY

Well, that is precisely how wealth is calculated. It is the same methodology used for calculating other people's wealth. For example.if Bill Gates decides to sell all his Microsoft shares, the share price will tank as well. That doesn't mean that Microsoft is any less valuable.

Correct.  It's not like Bill Gates is holding 89.3 billion US dollars in some bank account somewhere to sit and decrease in value by 2-3 percent per year and potentially be lost since it's not fully insured.

When you reach that amount of money (anyone on that rich list), the amount of money you have is based on how much money you potentially have.  It doesn't mean that you could actually pull that amount out of nowhere.  In satoshi's case, it would decrease the value even more because when he starts selling, everyone would be terrified of him selling more and there would be a crash, but this is just speculation and doesn't affect his potential position on the list.
However, we don't know for sure that satoshi was just one person and we don't know their real identity, so I'm not sure that they should actually be on the list.

Huh, sometimes you just forget how math works. Fixed.

I completely agree. The liquidity of the Bitcoins held by someone with a high share in the market is very low when you take into account the limited volume being traded in exchanges. I would not be surprised if it wasn't even *possible* to cash out that amount of money ever. It would be a challenge to even find a combined number of people willing to buy such a big amount of Bitcoin. At these points, it is very hard to say what the *real* value held by these people actually is.

[Nameless27]

The replies are interesting and has reflect to the way the bitcoin community thinks about Satoshi Nakamoto’s bitcoin holdings. I will be with @Iranus in this one. The market as we know, if his/her bitcoin be sold huge amount it will go dip and the value will change eventually, so that’s the big problem here. He can’t make into the list of the richest when the price of his/her bitcoin will have no fix value.

[glowing10]

Fobes list are based onthe fact and not on assumptions. Also Satoshi himself has not come out and said that if he holds the coin or not. Also we do not know if he is individual or an institution so it is not possible to find him on the fobes list.

[darkangel11]

We still don't know if Satoshi is a person or a group.. Are they putting groups of people on the list? Probably not.
As for the liquidity, it's even worse than you might think. If Satoshis coins suddenly started moving into an exchange it would be a sign for the investors to get out.
What? Satoshi is selling his coins? The founder is cashing out time to GTFO!
So he wouldn't be able to sell even half of his stash before crashing the value to less than 10% of what it is now.

[kjlimo]

Oh the irony of trying to put private decentralized assets onto a publicly available list...