Bitcoin’s mysterious creator Satoshi Nakamoto has received almost 26 bitcoin worth just over $1 million—more than 10 years after they disappeared.
A wallet created by Satoshi Nakamoto, the so-called Genesis wallet that was the first ever created on the bitcoin network, received the bitcoin—sparking speculation that the bitcoin creator had “woken up.”
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“Either Satoshi woke up, bought 27 bitcoin from Binance, and deposited into their wallet, or someone just burned a million dollars,” Conor Grogan, a director at bitcoin and crypto exchange Coinbase, posted to X alongside an Arkham Intelligence link showing the transaction.
Grogan added he thought it could be “some sort of weird ETF marketing scheme,” referring to the closely-watched race by Wall Street giants including the world’s largest asset manager BlackRock to bring a long-awaited spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) to market.
The latest transaction increased the value of the bitcoin held in the Genesis wallet, which initially held the 50 bitcoin created from the first bitcoin block and hasn’t sent any bitcoin since Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared, to just under 100, worth around $4 million.
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The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, who disappeared in late 2010 after publishing bitcoin’s white paper in 2008, has become the subject of fierce debate as the price of bitcoin has surged with the name linked to various coders, developers and so-called cyberpunks over the years.
If Satoshi Nakamoto is still alive—though it’s not even known whether they are an individual or a group—they are thought to control over 1 million bitcoin, currently worth almost $50 billion, putting them in the top 25 world’s richest people, according to Forbes estimates.
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