TL;DR
- Bitcoin’s rally increased holdings attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto by $15 billion, bringing their total value to $85.82 billion.
- Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to have mined around 1.096 million BTC distributed across approximately 22,000 addresses tracked by Arkham Intelligence.
- A Satoshi-era wallet holding 40 BTC inactive since May 2012 recorded an estimated gain of 1,535,911%.
The recent rally by Bitcoin pushed its price from a low of $62,679 on August 17 to a high of $81,265 on Tuesday, accumulating a gain of nearly 22% in seven days. The surge had a direct impact on the value of the holdings attributed to the protocol’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, whose estimated portfolio grew by around $15 billion during that period.
According to Arkham Intelligence data, Satoshi Nakamoto would control approximately 1.096 million BTC distributed across some 22,000 addresses. With Bitcoin’s price currently sitting around $78,280, the total value of those holdings reached $85.82 billion, up from $71 billion recorded before the rally began. At the peak of $81,000, the figure came close to $87 billion. The coins have remained unmoved since the network’s early years, making Nakamoto one of the largest individual holders of the cryptocurrency.
🌚 Awakened — dormant 14+ years
40.00 BTC ($3.14M) untouched since first received 2012-05-28 (14.2y ago) — just moved in block 964127Address: 1MZX6ExdDzWefGbD6Dc4bShdBRoNA3ijLF
Sender Attribution: none in our DB
Recipient Attribution: Boerse Stuttgart Digital💰 Realized PnL:…
— Galaxy Research (@glxyresearch) August 26, 2026
Dormant Wallets From Bitcoin’s Early Years
Recent weeks were also marked by the awakening of wallets that had been inactive for a long time, some of them linked to the period when Satoshi Nakamoto was still actively participating in the community. The most recent case involves an address that kept 40 BTC without movement since May 28, 2012, for a span of approximately 14.2 years.
Galaxy Research identified the recipient of the transferred funds as Boerse Stuttgart Digital, a German crypto custody services provider. At the time of their original acquisition, the 40 BTC were worth around $200, when the asset’s price was hovering around $5 per unit. At the time of the last transaction, those coins were worth approximately $3.14 million. The firm estimated the realized gain at roughly $3.16 million, representing a return of 1,535,911%.
The reactivation of funds with years or decades of inactivity has become a recurring pattern during periods of sustained appreciation in the market and in Bitcoin, and this cycle was no exception.
