Author: Finn Grant Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow From Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto to unfortunate cryptocurrency losers Rain Lohmus and James Howells, this is a roundup of the ten richest people on the blockchain globally. Satoshi Nakamoto is the world's richest cryptocurrency holder, with an on-chain net worth of $115 billion (estimated at the time of writing). This enormous wealth comes entirely from Bitcoins he mined between 2009 and 2010, which are distributed across 22,000 addresses. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Satoshi Nakamoto's wealth places him among the 20 richest people in the world. Satoshi Nakamoto's 22,000 Bitcoin wallets are among the most closely watched assets in the industry, and any flow of funds from these wallets could cause a huge shock to the entire cryptocurrency industry. The following is a list of the world's richest on-chain individuals compiled based on Arkham data, starting with Satoshi Nakamoto's enormous wealth and listing holders ranging from billions of dollars to millions of dollars. 1. Satoshi Nakamoto – $115 billion As mentioned earlier, Satoshi Nakamoto's wealth far exceeds $100 billion. However, whether he should be included on this list is debatable, as no one knows for sure whether Satoshi Nakamoto is a single person or a team. 2. Justin Sun – $1.9 billion Justin Sun is a Chinese entrepreneur and a pioneer in the cryptocurrency field. He is best known for founding the blockchain platform TRON, which focuses on decentralized applications and digital content sharing. He is also 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 his net worth to be between $5 billion and $6 billion. To read our full research report on Justin Sun's estimated net worth in 2025, please click here. Justin Sun holds multiple cryptocurrency assets. Recently, Justin Sun has come into the spotlight due to his involvement in a dispute with World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a cryptocurrency project backed by Trump. After acquiring a significant stake in WLFI, Sun's WLFI wallet was blacklisted by the project team for transferring approximately $9 million worth of WLFI tokens to exchanges. 3. Rain Lohmus – $886 million Rain Lohmus is one of the most famous cautionary tales in the cryptocurrency world. This Estonian banker, co-founder of LHV Bank, was an early supporter of Ethereum and participated in its initial coin offering (ICO) in 2014. He invested approximately $75,000 and received a staggering 250,000 ETH. However, Lohmus later lost the private key to the wallet storing these assets. Although the assets were visible and verifiable on the blockchain, he was unable to access or transfer them. His billions of dollars were thus locked up, serving as a stark illustration of the importance of key management in the world of digital assets and the unique risks of self-custody. Currently, Lohmus's ETH assets are valued at $854 million. 4. Vitalik Buterin – $867 million Following only Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik Buterin is perhaps one of the most well-known individuals on this list. This visionary programmer was one of the co-founders of Ethereum and received an allocation of ETH in the early stages of the project. Buterin's on-chain wealth largely stems from his ETH holdings, which have seen significant value growth since the Ethereum network launched in 2015. He is also known for receiving large amounts of tokens from memecoin projects (such as Shiba Inu) to his public address in an attempt to gain legitimacy, a practice he did not voluntarily accept. 5. James Howells – $838 million James Howells, like Rain Lohmus, is another cautionary tale in the cryptocurrency space. This Welsh IT worker became one of the early pioneers of Bitcoin mining in 2010, mining approximately 8,000 BTC using his personal laptop. However, during a cleanup in 2013, he accidentally discarded the hard drive containing the private keys to his Bitcoin accounts. Today, the hard drive lies buried under thousands of tons of garbage in a local landfill. Despite Howells' repeated attempts to persuade the Newport City Council to allow him to excavate the landfill, offering a portion of his wealth in return, his requests have consistently been denied. Through Arkham data, Howells' enormous wealth is visible to anyone, but currently unrecoverable for him. 6. Stefan Thomas – $734 million Stefan Thomas is a German-born programmer and an early developer of Bitcoin. His substantial on-chain wealth is also locked. In 2011, he received 7,002 BTC as payment for creating an animated video explaining how Bitcoin works. To protect these Bitcoin private keys, he stored them in a highly secure IronKey hardware wallet, which encrypts the contents. Unfortunately, Thomas lost the note containing the wallet's password. The IronKey device allows users to try the password ten times before the data is permanently deleted. Thomas has already tried eight times and has only two chances left to remember the password and unlock his fortune, which is worth over $700 million. 7. Clifton Collins – $629 million Clifton Collins, an Irish drug dealer, used the proceeds from selling cannabis between 2011 and 2012 to buy 6,000 bitcoins, when bitcoins were worth about $5 each. However, Collins' story also serves as a cautionary tale about the loss of cryptocurrency wealth. He stored his Bitcoin private key on a piece of paper and hid it inside a fishing rod. When he was later arrested, the fishing rod was also lost. Although the Irish government formally confiscated the asset, the vast fortune was permanently locked in multiple separate wallets and could not be retrieved because the private key could not be recovered. 8. Owen Gunden – $561 million Owen Gunden is an early Bitcoin arbitrage trader who traded on exchanges such as Mt. Gox and Tradehill. He traded tens of thousands of Bitcoins during Mt. Gox's operation and amassed a significant amount of assets in the early stages of Bitcoin's development. Gunden later transitioned from trading to investing and took on executive roles. He was a board member of LedgerX, the first federally regulated digital currency physically settled swaps and options trading platform in the United States. Although he has been inactive on his X (formerly Twitter) account since 2018, his crypto wallet has remained operational. He used services such as 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 begun transferring Bitcoin to a Kraken address, possibly for sale. In the past week, he has transferred 1,800 BTC (worth approximately $200 million) to Kraken. Although he may still hold these Bitcoins, his asset movement has dropped him to eighth place on the on-chain crypto wealth ranking. 9. Mao Shixing (DiscusFish) – $275 million Mao Shixing (nickname DiscusFish) is the co-founder and CEO of Cobo.com, a leading provider of cryptocurrency wallets and custody solutions. He is also the founder of F2Pool, China's first Bitcoin mining pool. Mao Shixing's on-chain wealth stems primarily from his pivotal role in building this crucial crypto infrastructure, as well as his long-standing status as a significant crypto investor and whale. Mao Shixing's holdings are spread across multiple cryptocurrencies, primarily including: 10. Patricio Worthalter – $226 million Patricio Worthalter is an Argentinian 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 cryptographic badges (NFTs) to participants, thereby creating verifiable records of life experiences. As the founder of a successful project deeply integrated into Web3 infrastructure, Worthalter's on-chain wealth stems from the success of his project and his early and ongoing involvement in the crypto space. Worthalter's holdings are spread across multiple cryptocurrencies, primarily including: Once ranked among the top ten crypto billionaires James Fickel – $203 million James Fickel is a well-known cryptocurrency investor and trader. His crypto wealth journey began in 2016 when he invested $400,000 in Ethereum at a price of approximately $0.80 per coin. As of this writing, Fickel still holds more than 57,000 ETH, worth approximately $203 million. Last year, Fickel lost $43 million betting against the price of ETH against BTC, an event that garnered widespread attention. Despite this, he remains one of the most significant Ethereum whales and one of the world's wealthiest individual cryptocurrency holders. 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 CTO of Gnosis, an Ethereum-based ecosystem focused on developing infrastructure for decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Gnosis is known for developing prediction markets, and its most famous product is Gnosis Safe (now called "Safe"), a multi-signature smart contract wallet that has become the industry standard for DAOs and crypto companies to protect their vault assets. George's on-chain wealth primarily stems from his founding role in Gnosis, including holding the project's native token GNO, as well as other assets accumulated during the project's development.Author: Finn Grant Compiled by: Deep Tide TechFlow From Bitcoin founder Satoshi Nakamoto to unfortunate cryptocurrency losers Rain Lohmus and James Howells, this is a roundup of the ten richest people on the blockchain globally. Satoshi Nakamoto is the world's richest cryptocurrency holder, with an on-chain net worth of $115 billion (estimated at the time of writing). This enormous wealth comes entirely from Bitcoins he mined between 2009 and 2010, which are distributed across 22,000 addresses. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, Satoshi Nakamoto's wealth places him among the 20 richest people in the world. Satoshi Nakamoto's 22,000 Bitcoin wallets are among the most closely watched assets in the industry, and any flow of funds from these wallets could cause a huge shock to the entire cryptocurrency industry. The following is a list of the world's richest on-chain individuals compiled based on Arkham data, starting with Satoshi Nakamoto's enormous wealth and listing holders ranging from billions of dollars to millions of dollars. 1. Satoshi Nakamoto – $115 billion As mentioned earlier, Satoshi Nakamoto's wealth far exceeds $100 billion. However, whether he should be included on this list is debatable, as no one knows for sure whether Satoshi Nakamoto is a single person or a team. 2. Justin Sun – $1.9 billion Justin Sun is a Chinese entrepreneur and a pioneer in the cryptocurrency field. He is best known for founding the blockchain platform TRON, which focuses on decentralized applications and digital content sharing. He is also 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 his net worth to be between $5 billion and $6 billion. To read our full research report on Justin Sun's estimated net worth in 2025, please click here. Justin Sun holds multiple cryptocurrency assets. Recently, Justin Sun has come into the spotlight due to his involvement in a dispute with World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a cryptocurrency project backed by Trump. After acquiring a significant stake in WLFI, Sun's WLFI wallet was blacklisted by the project team for transferring approximately $9 million worth of WLFI tokens to exchanges. 3. Rain Lohmus – $886 million Rain Lohmus is one of the most famous cautionary tales in the cryptocurrency world. This Estonian banker, co-founder of LHV Bank, was an early supporter of Ethereum and participated in its initial coin offering (ICO) in 2014. He invested approximately $75,000 and received a staggering 250,000 ETH. However, Lohmus later lost the private key to the wallet storing these assets. Although the assets were visible and verifiable on the blockchain, he was unable to access or transfer them. His billions of dollars were thus locked up, serving as a stark illustration of the importance of key management in the world of digital assets and the unique risks of self-custody. Currently, Lohmus's ETH assets are valued at $854 million. 4. Vitalik Buterin – $867 million Following only Satoshi Nakamoto, Vitalik Buterin is perhaps one of the most well-known individuals on this list. This visionary programmer was one of the co-founders of Ethereum and received an allocation of ETH in the early stages of the project. Buterin's on-chain wealth largely stems from his ETH holdings, which have seen significant value growth since the Ethereum network launched in 2015. He is also known for receiving large amounts of tokens from memecoin projects (such as Shiba Inu) to his public address in an attempt to gain legitimacy, a practice he did not voluntarily accept. 5. James Howells – $838 million James Howells, like Rain Lohmus, is another cautionary tale in the cryptocurrency space. This Welsh IT worker became one of the early pioneers of Bitcoin mining in 2010, mining approximately 8,000 BTC using his personal laptop. However, during a cleanup in 2013, he accidentally discarded the hard drive containing the private keys to his Bitcoin accounts. Today, the hard drive lies buried under thousands of tons of garbage in a local landfill. Despite Howells' repeated attempts to persuade the Newport City Council to allow him to excavate the landfill, offering a portion of his wealth in return, his requests have consistently been denied. Through Arkham data, Howells' enormous wealth is visible to anyone, but currently unrecoverable for him. 6. Stefan Thomas – $734 million Stefan Thomas is a German-born programmer and an early developer of Bitcoin. His substantial on-chain wealth is also locked. In 2011, he received 7,002 BTC as payment for creating an animated video explaining how Bitcoin works. To protect these Bitcoin private keys, he stored them in a highly secure IronKey hardware wallet, which encrypts the contents. Unfortunately, Thomas lost the note containing the wallet's password. The IronKey device allows users to try the password ten times before the data is permanently deleted. Thomas has already tried eight times and has only two chances left to remember the password and unlock his fortune, which is worth over $700 million. 7. Clifton Collins – $629 million Clifton Collins, an Irish drug dealer, used the proceeds from selling cannabis between 2011 and 2012 to buy 6,000 bitcoins, when bitcoins were worth about $5 each. However, Collins' story also serves as a cautionary tale about the loss of cryptocurrency wealth. He stored his Bitcoin private key on a piece of paper and hid it inside a fishing rod. When he was later arrested, the fishing rod was also lost. Although the Irish government formally confiscated the asset, the vast fortune was permanently locked in multiple separate wallets and could not be retrieved because the private key could not be recovered. 8. Owen Gunden – $561 million Owen Gunden is an early Bitcoin arbitrage trader who traded on exchanges such as Mt. Gox and Tradehill. He traded tens of thousands of Bitcoins during Mt. Gox's operation and amassed a significant amount of assets in the early stages of Bitcoin's development. Gunden later transitioned from trading to investing and took on executive roles. He was a board member of LedgerX, the first federally regulated digital currency physically settled swaps and options trading platform in the United States. Although he has been inactive on his X (formerly Twitter) account since 2018, his crypto wallet has remained operational. He used services such as 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 begun transferring Bitcoin to a Kraken address, possibly for sale. In the past week, he has transferred 1,800 BTC (worth approximately $200 million) to Kraken. Although he may still hold these Bitcoins, his asset movement has dropped him to eighth place on the on-chain crypto wealth ranking. 9. Mao Shixing (DiscusFish) – $275 million Mao Shixing (nickname DiscusFish) is the co-founder and CEO of Cobo.com, a leading provider of cryptocurrency wallets and custody solutions. He is also the founder of F2Pool, China's first Bitcoin mining pool. Mao Shixing's on-chain wealth stems primarily from his pivotal role in building this crucial crypto infrastructure, as well as his long-standing status as a significant crypto investor and whale. Mao Shixing's holdings are spread across multiple cryptocurrencies, primarily including: 10. Patricio Worthalter – $226 million Patricio Worthalter is an Argentinian 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 cryptographic badges (NFTs) to participants, thereby creating verifiable records of life experiences. As the founder of a successful project deeply integrated into Web3 infrastructure, Worthalter's on-chain wealth stems from the success of his project and his early and ongoing involvement in the crypto space. Worthalter's holdings are spread across multiple cryptocurrencies, primarily including: Once ranked among the top ten crypto billionaires James Fickel – $203 million James Fickel is a well-known cryptocurrency investor and trader. His crypto wealth journey began in 2016 when he invested $400,000 in Ethereum at a price of approximately $0.80 per coin. As of this writing, Fickel still holds more than 57,000 ETH, worth approximately $203 million. Last year, Fickel lost $43 million betting against the price of ETH against BTC, an event that garnered widespread attention. Despite this, he remains one of the most significant Ethereum whales and one of the world's wealthiest individual cryptocurrency holders. 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 CTO of Gnosis, an Ethereum-based ecosystem focused on developing infrastructure for decentralized finance (DeFi) and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). Gnosis is known for developing prediction markets, and its most famous product is Gnosis Safe (now called "Safe"), a multi-signature smart contract wallet that has become the industry standard for DAOs and crypto companies to protect their vault assets. George's on-chain wealth primarily stems from his founding role in Gnosis, including holding the project's native token GNO, as well as other assets accumulated during the project's development.