Original Title: The 10 Richest Crypto Holders

Original Source: ARKHAM

Original Translation: Deep Tide TechFlow

From Bitcoin's creator Satoshi Nakamoto to the unfortunate cryptocurrency failures Rain Lohmus and James Howells, here is a summary of the ten wealthiest individuals on the blockchain globally.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the wealthiest cryptocurrency holder in the world, with an on-chain net worth of $115 billion (as of the time of writing). This immense wealth comes entirely from the Bitcoin he mined between 2009 and 2010, which is dispersed across 22,000 addresses.

According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Nakamoto's wealth places him among the top 20 richest people in the world.

The 22,000 Bitcoin wallets held by Nakamoto are among the most closely watched assets in the industry, and any movement of funds from these wallets could cause significant tremors throughout the cryptocurrency sector.

Below is a list of the wealthiest individuals on-chain globally, organized based on Arkham data, starting with Nakamoto's immense wealth and gradually listing holders from billions to millions.

1. Satoshi Nakamoto — $115 billion

As mentioned, Nakamoto's wealth far exceeds $100 billion. However, there may be controversy over whether he should be included on this list, as no one knows for certain whether Nakamoto is an individual or a collective of people.

2. Justin Sun — $1.9 billion

Justin Sun is a Chinese entrepreneur and a pioneer in the cryptocurrency space. He is known for founding the blockchain platform TRON, which focuses on decentralized applications and digital content sharing. Additionally, he is the CEO of BitTorrent and owns two cryptocurrency exchanges.

According to Arkham data, Justin Sun's on-chain wealth is approximately $1.9 billion. However, Arkham estimates that Justin Sun's net worth is between $5 billion and $6 billion.

Justin Sun holds various cryptocurrency assets.

Recently, Justin Sun has been in the spotlight due to his involvement in the controversial Trump-backed cryptocurrency project World Liberty Financial (WLFI). After acquiring a significant stake in WLFI, Justin Sun's WLFI wallet was blacklisted by the project for transferring about $9 million worth of WLFI tokens to an exchange.

3. Rain Lohmus — $886 million

Rain Lohmus is one of the most famous cautionary tales in the cryptocurrency space. This Estonian banker, who is also a co-founder of LHV Bank, was an early supporter of Ethereum and participated in the 2014 Ethereum Initial Coin Offering (ICO). He invested about $75,000 at the time and received an astonishing 250,000 ETH.

However, Lohmus later lost the private key to the wallet storing these assets. Although these assets are visible and verifiable on the blockchain, he cannot access or transfer them. His billions in wealth are thus locked away, serving as a stark example of the importance of key management and the unique risks of self-custody in the digital asset world.

Currently, Lohmus's ETH assets are valued at $854 million.

4. Vitalik Buterin — $867 million

Second only to Nakamoto on this list, Vitalik Buterin is perhaps one of the most well-known individuals. This visionary programmer is one of the co-founders of Ethereum and received an ETH allocation during the project's early stages.

Buterin's on-chain wealth primarily comes from his ETH holdings, which have significantly increased in value since the Ethereum network launched in 2015. Additionally, he is known for receiving large amounts of tokens from meme coin projects (such as Shiba Inu) sent to his public address, as these projects attempted to gain legitimacy through this method, which Buterin did not voluntarily accept.

5. James Howells — $838 million

James Howells, like Rain Lohmus, is another cautionary tale in the cryptocurrency space. This IT worker from Wales was one of the early pioneers of Bitcoin mining in 2010, having mined about 8,000 BTC using his personal laptop.

However, during a cleanup in 2013, he accidentally discarded the hard drive that stored the private keys to these Bitcoins. Today, that hard drive is buried under thousands of tons of garbage in a local landfill. Despite Howells' multiple attempts to persuade the Newport City Council to allow him to excavate the landfill, offering to share a portion of his wealth in return, his requests have consistently been denied.

According to Arkham data, Howells's immense wealth is visible to anyone, but he currently cannot retrieve it.

6. Stefan Thomas — $734 million

Stefan Thomas is a German-born programmer and an early developer of Bitcoin. His on-chain wealth is also locked away. In 2011, he was rewarded with 7,002 BTC for creating an animated video explaining how Bitcoin works.

To protect the private keys to these Bitcoins, he stored them in a highly secure IronKey hardware wallet, which encrypts the contents. Unfortunately, Thomas lost the paper where he recorded the wallet password. The IronKey device allows users to attempt the password ten times, and after that, the data will be permanently erased. Thomas has already attempted the password eight times, leaving him with only two chances to recall the password and unlock this wealth worth over $700 million.

7. Clifton Collins — $629 million

Clifton Collins is an Irish drug dealer who purchased 6,000 Bitcoins with profits from selling marijuana between 2011 and 2012, when Bitcoin was priced at about $5. However, Collins's story is also a cautionary tale of lost cryptocurrency wealth. He stored the Bitcoin private key on a piece of paper and hid it in a fishing rod. After he was later arrested, the fishing rod was lost as well. Although the Irish government officially confiscated this asset, the immense wealth remains permanently locked in multiple independent wallets due to the inability to recover the private key.

8. Owen Gunden — $561 million

Owen Gunden is an early Bitcoin arbitrage trader who traded on platforms like Mt. Gox and Tradehill. He traded thousands of Bitcoins during Mt. Gox's operation and accumulated significant assets in the early stages of Bitcoin's development.

Later, Gunden shifted from trading to investing and held executive positions. He was a board member of LedgerX, the first federally regulated digital currency physical delivery swap and options trading platform in the U.S.

Although he has not been active on his X (formerly Twitter) account since 2018, his crypto wallet has remained operational. He used services like BlockFi and Genesis Trading, which later went bankrupt. As a creditor in the Genesis bankruptcy distribution, he received over 600 BTC.

Previously, Owen Gunden ranked third on this list, but in recent days he has started transferring Bitcoin to Kraken addresses, possibly for sale. In the past week, he has transferred 1,800 BTC (worth about $200 million) to Kraken. Although he may still hold these Bitcoins, due to the asset movement, he has dropped to eighth place on the on-chain crypto wealth list.

9. DiscusFish — $275 million

DiscusFish is the co-founder and CEO of Cobo.com, a well-known cryptocurrency wallet and custody solution provider. He is also the founder of F2Pool, China's first Bitcoin mining pool. DiscusFish's on-chain wealth primarily stems from his central role in establishing this critical crypto infrastructure and his long-standing status as a significant crypto investor and whale.

DiscusFish's holdings are distributed across various cryptocurrencies, primarily including:

10. Patricio Worthalter — $226 million

Patricio Worthalter is an Argentine entrepreneur and the founder of POAP (Proof of Attendance Protocol). POAP is a widely used protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem that allows event organizers to distribute crypto badges (NFTs) to participants, creating verifiable records of life experiences.

As a successful project founder deeply integrated into Web3 infrastructure, Worthalter's on-chain wealth comes from the success of his project and his early and ongoing involvement in the crypto space.

Worthalter's holdings are distributed across various cryptocurrencies, primarily including:

Former Top Ten Crypto Tycoons:

James Fickel — $203 million

James Fickel is a well-known cryptocurrency investor and trader. His journey into crypto wealth began in 2016 when he invested $400,000 to purchase Ethereum (ETH) at approximately $0.80 per coin.

As of the time of writing, Fickel still holds over 57,000 ETH, valued at about $203 million.

Last year, Fickel lost $43 million by betting on the price of ETH compared to BTC, an event that garnered widespread attention. Nevertheless, he remains one of the significant Ethereum whales and one of the wealthiest individual cryptocurrency holders in the world.

Currently, Fickel's main focus is on The Amaranth Foundation, a neuroscience and longevity foundation he founded.

Stefan George — $106 million

Stefan George is the co-founder and Chief Technology Officer of Gnosis. Gnosis is an Ethereum-based ecosystem focused on developing infrastructure for decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Gnosis is known for developing prediction markets, with its most famous product being Gnosis Safe (now known as "Safe"), a multi-signature smart contract wallet that has become the industry standard for protecting treasury assets for DAOs and crypto companies.

George's on-chain wealth primarily comes from his founding role at Gnosis, including holding the project's native token GNO and other assets accumulated during the project's development.

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