I just fell into one of those mental rabbit holes that won't let me rest. It turns out that the creator of Bitcoin, that Satoshi Nakamoto everyone talks about but no one knows, is probably the tenth richest person in the world right now. Yes, you read that right. Almost in the top 10 of global billionaires, but without moving a single dollar of their fortune.

Think about it for a second. Satoshi accumulated around 1.1 million bitcoins in the early days of the network, when mining was something you could do from your laptop. Those coins are valued today at approximately 89 billion dollars considering the current price. That would put them above names like Michael Dell or the heirs of Walmart, and quite close to Steve Ballmer or Warren Buffett. The fortune is within reach of Sergey Brin from Google.

The craziest part is that not a single bitcoin has moved since 2010. Zero transactions. Nothing. That fuels all kinds of speculation: Is Satoshi dead? Did they disappear? Did they simply decide not to touch anything else so as not to interfere with what they created? No one knows.

And here’s what’s truly fascinating: the creator of Bitcoin didn’t do what all billionaires do. They didn’t found a traditional company, seek venture capital, or list anything on the stock exchange. They simply launched Bitcoin in 2009 and disappeared. Sixteen years later, that network is worth 2.4 trillion dollars. Satoshi’s last public message was in 2011, and since then total silence.

This week, Bitcoin hit new all-time highs, driven by ETFs that continue to attract institutional money. It’s interesting to see how the cryptocurrency keeps gaining traction just as we’re questioning its origins the most. All this speculation about who the creator of Bitcoin is remains one of the greatest mysteries of modern technology.

Satoshi’s fortune is mainly theoretical because no one has verified that they can access those coins or that they will ever sell them. But the number is there, on the blockchain, for anyone to see. It’s a reminder of how far Bitcoin has come since those early days when almost no one believed it would work.