Have you ever thought about what Satoshi Nakamoto’s fortune really represents? The creator of Bitcoin owns about 1.1 million coins. With the current price around 79 000 dollars, this amounts to a colossal wealth exceeding 87 billion dollars. It’s a crazy number, but even stranger is that no one truly knows who he really is.

The pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” itself seems weird. Translated into Chinese, it becomes “中本聪,” which looks like a completely made-up name. And honestly, it probably is. In 2008, while the world was collapsing financially, ordinary people began losing trust in banks. It was exactly then that a mysterious white paper started circulating online. Someone who introduced himself as Satoshi Nakamoto proposed something revolutionary: a digital currency without intermediaries. The idea was simple but powerful: thanks to blockchain, everyone could manage their own accounts and transactions without fearing bank failure or the arbitrary alteration of their funds.

At first, no one really cared. One Bitcoin was practically worth nothing. Satoshi began mining the first bitcoins on his personal computer, like a simple technical experiment. Gradually, a few tech enthusiasts in the community started to understand the potential. Then, two years after launching the project, Satoshi simply vanished. No more messages, no more replies to emails—just silence. It was as if he had volatilized.

Since then, his 1.1 million bitcoins have remained immobile, like a treasure buried deep in the ocean. Never touched, never moved. Why this disappearance? Theories are abundant. Some believe it was intentional—that Satoshi knew that for Bitcoin to be truly decentralized, there couldn’t be a clearly visible figurehead. As long as the creator remains anonymous, no one can focus attention on a single person. The system becomes stronger.

Others think it’s more pragmatic. Anyone who challenges the global financial system must know they would be under enormous pressure if they revealed themselves. If discovered, they wouldn’t just become a celebrity, but also a potential target. Another hypothesis: maybe Satoshi was simply a researcher obsessed with a technical problem, and once his experiment was launched, he preferred to withdraw quietly and watch his invention change the world from afar.

As for this colossal fortune he supposedly has, speculation continues. Some think that the moment he touches his bitcoins, he’ll be immediately identified and tracked. Everyone’s eyes would be on that address, and his privacy would disappear instantly. Others believe he was never motivated by money—that for him, Bitcoin was a technical achievement, and seeing the technology work across the world was enough. There are even those who think he lost his private keys long ago and can never access his fortune again.

What’s certain is that these bitcoins have been sleeping on the blockchain network for more than ten years, becoming one of the most fascinating mysteries in the digital world. Today, Bitcoin is everywhere. Companies use it as an asset reserve, some countries are considering it for their economy, and investors constantly track it. And throughout all this time, Satoshi Nakamoto remains invisible. But maybe that invisibility was exactly what was needed. Without a figurehead, without a face to put on display, Bitcoin has been able to become what it truly is: a system that no one can fully control, in which everyone can participate. And it’s probably the greatest victory Satoshi Nakamoto could have wished for.