Bitcoin's creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, stays hidden despite owning nearly 1 million BTC worth $19.4 billion. Anonymity protects him from legal trouble and lets Bitcoin work as a trustless system, but experts fear if he ever sold, it could crash the price like dumping rare baseball cards on the market.
Questions this video answers
Just under 1 million BTC.
About $19.4 billion.
44th richest person in the world.
Bernard von Nothaus was charged in 1998 over 'liberty dollars.'
Egold (shut down in 2007).
Chapters
The creator of bitcoin goes by the name Satoshi Nakamoto, and he currently owns just under 1 million Bitcoin, which at its recent peak was worth about $19.4 billion. That would make him Forbes 44th richest person in the world. But there's just one problem. No one knows who this person is. Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym, and his or her identity has remained a mystery for an entire decade. The creator could be a man, a woman, or even a whole group of people, but no one knows. Unlike every other current banking system in the world, no one owns bitcoin. When you sign up for a Bank of America credit card, you have to trust that bank and all of its employees to keep your information safe. In return, they have to trust you to make your payments on time. Bitcoin is different. Bitcoin is based on cryptographic proof, not trust. There's no bank teller, president or CEO to answer to Nakamoto. Being non existent only helps Bitcoin's success as as a genuine peer to peer network. On top of that, the inventor of bitcoin has avoided adverse legal consequences by remaining Anonymous. In 1998, Bernard von Nothaus was charged with violating federal law for his form of currency called liberty dollars. In 2007, one of the first digital currencies, Egold, was shut down on grounds of money laundering. Others have pointed to bitcoin code as an inscrutable execution that nears perfection, citing the anonymity because he or she is the most paranoid, painstaking coder in the world. Matt Green, a cryptocurrency professor at Johns Hopkins University, says Nakamoto has the power to tank the currency if he wants to. He says. To think of bitcoin as rare baseball cards. They're valuable because they're rare. If somebody could dump hundreds or thousands of Mickey Mantle trading cards, rare ones onto the market, they wouldn't be worth so much anymore. If Nakamoto ever sold his or her bitcoin, he or she would flood the market, cause the price of bitcoin to tank, and potentially collapse his or her own creation overnight.
