It is estimated that Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of BTC, will become the world's richest person if the price of Bitcoin (BTC) hits approximately $182,000.
As of March 2021, Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is the richest person on earth with a net worth of $181.6 billion.
Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, is a close second at $163.7 billion, owning more than 20% of the electric car maker.
How much BTC does Satoshi Nakamoto have?
Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, released the Bitcoin whitepaper in October 2008 under a public MIT license.
On Jan. 3, 2009, Bitcoin's first block, known as the "genesis block," was mined. This marked the launch of the Bitcoin network, which kickstarted the cryptocurrency and blockchain movement.
Albeit the exact figures remain unclear, from January to July 2009, Satoshi Nakamoto is estimated to have mined over 1 million BTC. This means that at current Bitcoin prices, it is estimated that Satoshi Nakamoto is worth roughly $54 billion.
In other words, if the price of Bitcoin hits $182,000, this would put Nakamoto's net worth at around $182 billion, which is higher than the current net worth of Bezos.
In 2010, Sergio Demian Lerner, a prominent cryptocurrency researcher, published a research paper estimating the BTC holdings of Satoshi Nakamoto.
By analyzing the early blocks that Satoshi mined, Lerner estimated that 1 million BTC is likely owned by Satoshi. He wrote:
"I estimate at eyesight that Satoshi fortune is around 1M Bitcoins, or 100M USD at current exchange rate. I’m sure there will be plenty of people that will carefully analyze the source data set and come up with the exact figure, which will be very close, but nevertheless they will scream at me again."
Can the price of BTC hit $182,000?
While there are many price models that predict the price of Bitcoin to reach anywhere between $200,000 to $1 million, the most well-known model is the Stock-to-Flow (S2F) model.
The S2F model forecasts the price of Bitcoin to hit $100,000 to a "conservative" $288,000 by the end of 2021, using a formula based on the relationship between the value of Bitcoin versus the existing supply (stock) and the amount of newly mined BTC entering the market (flow).
In November 2020, PlanB, the creator of the S2F model, said:
"People ask if I still believe in my model. To be clear: I have no doubt whatsoever that bitcoin S2FX is correct and bitcoin will tap $100K-288K before Dec 2021."
If Bitcoin rises to as high as $288,000 as per the S2F model, Satoshi's fortune would be worth around $288 billion, which should put the creator far out in front of Bezos and Musk.
Meanwhile, some other Bitcoin price predictions have been even higher for the current bull cycle. For instance, Bloomberg predicted that BTC could reach as high as $400,000 if it becomes a "risk-off" reserve asset.
However, the identity of Satoshi remains a mystery and it isn't known whether the person(s) is even alive today. Industry experts have suggested the likes of Hal Finney, Adam Back, and Paul Le Roux as potential candidates, as well as others presuming that it could have been a group of individuals.