Bitcoin TOP-500 Richest

[manfred]

If the information in this thread is not correct, please send PM or comment with links to the more accurate information.


The long-awaited thread is here. From public sources, let us collect information on people/institutions who have disclosed their holdings. Only actual bitcoins count, similarly as in this collective thread.

Methodology comments OK (there is a lively debate on how to determine a bitcoin holding; let's try to find a common sense way). If the number of coins is marked with (*), there is additional explanation here.

The list is intended to help the people in question to identify themselves as Bitcoin powercenters, help networking and organization and boost their Bitcoin businesses. Free links are provided with list entry.

Please post your additions to the list to this thread or PM!


BITCOIN TOP-500: 1-50

1.  BTC980,000*. Satoshi Nakamoto

2.  BTC350,000*. "Dread Pirate Roberts" a.k.a. "DPR"

3.  BTC300,000.  Roger Ver

4.  BTC300,000*. "knightmb"

5.  BTC200,000. Mark Karpeles

6.  BTC174,000*. FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation, USA)

7.  BTC119,000. AsicMiner Management Team of 3 (names?)

8.  BTC110,000. Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss

9.  BTC75,000. "artforz"

10.  BTC70,000. Erik Voorhees

11.  BTC40,000. "Loaded"

12.  BTC30,000. "nakowa"

13.  BTC30,000. Mircea Popescu

14.  BTC30,000. "Goat"

15.  BTC25,000. Chamath Palihapitiya

16.  BTC25,000. Gavin Andresen

17.  BTC20,000. Max Keiser

18.  BTC20,000. "Theymos"

Others in this category, awaiting for sources:
Jon Matonis
Tony Galippi
Peter Vessenes
Luke Dashjr
Mike Caldwell (Casascius)

BITCOIN TOP-500: 51-500 (link)

Nice list, but no mention of any AHA members or the group as a whole.  Most members (especial founding 3) make the top 20 easy. The entire group together should be top spot or?

[rpietila]

Nice list, but no mention of any AHA members or the group as a whole.  Most members (especial founding 3) make the top 20 easy. The entire group together should be top spot or?

Please give me some sort of estimate, and link to it.

[manfred]

At this time its hard to know how many coins anyone has. But, if you mine virtually from day one when you literately could mine with a laptop and mine for over 2 years you must have a large amount of coins. The only proof is that over 77k have been cashed out by one member most likely it is just a fraction of total holdings.

Lets summarise some known facts:

2009-01-03 18:15:05 Historic moment Genesis block created
2009-01-13 18:20:08 50 coins where mined
2009-01-16 19:18:35 those 50 coins where sent to address 12higDjoCCNXSA95xZMWUdPvXNmkAduhWv
a total of 77,624 BTC  where received at this address until 2011-06-04 then cashed out
http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewgpg.php?nick=I}ruid
http://bitcoin-otc.com/viewratingdetail.php?nick=I}ruid&sign=ANY&type=RECV

Quote from: franky1 on October 16, 2013, 02:50:53 AM
|}ruid is Dustin trammell

Dustin D. Trammell
 I am both I)ruid and I}ruid.  I)ruid is the correct spelling.  I use the alternate I}ruid spelling on IRC due to the IRC protocol not allowing the close-parenthesis character ")" to be used in nicknames.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=23696,  yes VIP status with a registration date of June 2011

HD Moore,  Dustin D. Trammell and Tod Beardsley,  all co-founded AHA! (the Austin Hackers Association) many years ago.  All three still attend monthly meetings.
AHA is a white had hacker group that is Government friendly (Cahoots) and a hacker against the hacker.

HD Moore: Information security researcher and programmer, Moore developed security software utilities for the United States Department of Defense.
Dustin D. Trammell:  Entrepreneur, Security Researcher performing research within the fields of vulnerability exploitation, network protocols, steganography and covert communications, and Internet telephony
Tod Beardsley:  Technical Lead for the Metasploit Framework and Metasploit Pro, Founded Austin Hackers Anonymous  August 2006

Quote
Moore, who today is one of the best known names in security research, had just returned to high school after dropping out for two years. He was getting some hands-on experience in security by auditing, consulting, and setting up collocation servers. Moore didn't have the proper classified security clearance at DOD, but his job description was written so that his then-rare skills could still be applied to some classified DOD work. He developed some exploits and wrote "something that captures traffic based on a set of rules" (essentially a sniffer) for DOD
Straight talk a US Government Snitch

Now depending of your view point you could ask is it a surprise that DPR is where he is?  Was SR past its use-by date and has served its purpose. To Alternative coins look attractive with 100% knowledge from the start who is behind it and is truly decentralized.
With this known affiliated friendliness to the DOD Bitcoin is tainted to say the leased. Worst case scenario (you my call tin had foil scenario) government has majority control if "need be" or has had it right from the word go, take your pick, one way or another it does leave a bitter taste in the mouth.
If HD is Satoshi or not does not really matter as the bulk of the coins is concentrated to a dozen or so individuals (whatever many members AHA has). Over 2 years of mining by whatever many computers at an very easy difficulty will mine generate a large number of coins.
How much combined hashing power it has or total combined stack, I'ts up to your imagination.

[rpietila]

At this time its hard to know how many coins anyone has. But, if you mine virtually from day one when you literately could mine with a laptop and mine for over 2 years you must have a large amount of coins. The only proof is that over 77k have been cashed out by one member most likely it is just a fraction of total holdings.

How do you advice to take them into account?

The period of free mining ended in early 2010, as you can see from the difficulty. Of the 2 million coins generated in 2009, half is already attributed to Satoshi. In 2010, 3 million coins were mined, do you think that this group has a significant holding of them? It would have taken an industrial approach to mining, with hardware costs. Was this the plan all along? If the group still controls many coins, what is the purpose?

[manfred]

How do you advice to take them into account?

I have no idea. (a mere mention at this stage)

They have significant holdings that is sure, how many exactly will not be known for many years to come, if ever. If you receive the first pub-key hash transaction less than 2 weeks after the existent s of the blockchain you are right at the core of happenings. (The first transaction ever was to outspoken cyberpunk Hal Finney on 2009-01-12 03:30:25).
Also what exactly defies the group, the 3 core members of AHA, all ordinary members, or all friends families and work collages of all members of whatever many members there are.
Fact is AHA existent at the time and one member received the coins, either it was sent from himself, his best friend HD Moore or someone else, no idea.
Fact is also Satoshis first coins where not from an ordinary computer. Also combined as a group they easily have more computing power than Satoshi (if HD is not Satoshi) with the same starting time.
Every Alt coin is truly de-central and creator known.

The only thing to do at this stage is to keep an open mind.
Of course if you let the mind roam completely free its scary.

[Boba]

Kristoffer Koch has sold most of his bitcoins, with only a remaining 1000 bitcoins in cold storage according to this norwegian article:
http://www.hardware.no/artikler/norske-kristoffer-ble-bitcoin-millionaer-over-natten/153707

Apparently he thought it was a bubble and rushed to sell starting in april.

[molecular]

Kristoffer Koch has sold most of his bitcoins, with only a remaining 1000 bitcoins in cold storage according to this norwegian article:
http://www.hardware.no/artikler/norske-kristoffer-ble-bitcoin-millionaer-over-natten/153707

Let's see if it was a good decision in the long run.

[Boba]

Let's see if it was a good decision in the long run.

I'm sure he will be struck with a serious condition of sellers remorse some time into the future

[molecular]

Let's see if it was a good decision in the long run.

I'm sure he will be struck with a serious condition of sellers remorse some time into the future

I'm not sure, but I sure am hoping.

[rpietila]

Kristoffer Koch has sold most of his bitcoins, with only a remaining 1000 bitcoins in cold storage according to this norwegian article:
http://www.hardware.no/artikler/norske-kristoffer-ble-bitcoin-millionaer-over-natten/153707

Apparently he thought it was a bubble and rushed to sell starting in april.

Okay, need to remove him from the list then. The article also mentioned that most of the money is still sitting with Bitcoin-24. Poor lad

I have been thinking about the list, and perhaps put a lower limit of BTC2,100 in cold, hard bitcoins. It is 1/10,000 of the theoretical upper limit of bitcoins and I have estimated that 400 people will make it to the list. On the other hand, the first rule of Vladimir Club is, "don't tell if you are a member".

Yes, we need to have privacy. But currently the overarching pursuit of "security" is undermining the "liberty", which, according to Franklin, will lead to losing both. The evil organizations have all their resources to analyze the blockchain and combine the information, and know the non-anonymous (and by this I mean you have to be really skilled and had a plan since the beginning) large holders very well. The curious public knows almost nothing, which is detrimental for bitcoin's adoption.

I have stepped forward by declaring that I have minimum 2,400 bitcoins at all times. My life has gotten better since making that statement, and I believe it has increased both liberty and security.

[wachtwoord]

the first rule of Vladimir Club is, "don't tell if you are a member".

Then Vladimir sure failed to follow that rule of the club is named after him

[MaxBTC1]

I know Keiser pushes it a lot but fuck me thats a lot of BTC

[elasticband]

14. Long-time forum VIP member, not disclosed his bitcoin holdings but estimate is based on several anecdotal evidence such as 400,000 LTC holding which is secondary to BTC holding, and BTC5,000 bet with Matthew that the latter defaulted.

400,000LTC x 0.01188BTC = 4752.00 BTC. Not sure how this equates to goats second largest holding being 30,000BTC.

[weaknesswaran]

Isn´t loaded = nakowa?

[Zephir]

Isn´t loaded = nakowa?

"Loaded" is an (Institutional maybe?!) investor, who appears sometimes in the wall observer, before the price is going nuts, like last week.
I can hardly believe he and "nakowa" are the same person.

[EFS]

Thanks for this useful topic rpietila. I don't think it's off-topic, it should be in Bitcoin Discussion.
Thanks to all contributors, too.

[el_rlee]

Thanks for this useful topic rpietila. I don't think it's off-topic, it should be in Bitcoin Discussion.
Thanks to all contributors, too.

I think this thread has it's right to be here from an investors point of view - if you want to invest in something you are interested in that information by nature.

On a speculative note: I think theymos' and Gavin's believe in Bitcoin is stronger than the numbers stated   , but I didn't read through the thread to get the basis they are based upon.

[rpietila]

Updated the AHA group founding members. As for the other members, I am interested to hear more. At some point of time we'll need to start a careful look towards the top end of the list so that it does not contain 12 million coins. In the other thread of mine, it was estimated that only 3 million coins were owned by the >10k segment and now we already have more than that and likely the list will still grow.

Sorry the background info section is outdated and out-numbered. Should it be merged with the actual list? The quality of links is quite low still, but I was prepared for it. More research makes it better.

[wachtwoord]

Thanks for this useful topic rpietila. I don't think it's off-topic, it should be in Bitcoin Discussion.
Thanks to all contributors, too.

I think this thread has it's right to be here from an investors point of view - if you want to invest in something you are interested in that information by nature.

Yup, it isn't the same thing as insider ownership I like to look at in stocks, but it is certainly related

[elasticband]

14. Long-time forum VIP member, not disclosed his bitcoin holdings but estimate is based on several anecdotal evidence such as 400,000 LTC holding which is secondary to BTC holding, and BTC5,000 bet with Matthew that the latter defaulted.

400,000LTC x 0.01188BTC = 4752.00 BTC. Not sure how this equates to goats second largest holding being 30,000BTC.

The grammar means that "even though he has about BTC5,000 worth of litecoins, he has much more BTC". I usually have many evidence but post only some because of tldr.

0.01074 x 400,000 = 4296