The global cryptocurrency is now worth over $ 1 trillion, with bitcoin accounting for the vast majority of the value. The price of the oldest virtual currency has risen to almost $ 40,000, bringing the value of all bitcoin in circulation to more than $ 700 billion.
Ether, the Ethereum network cryptocurrency, is now worth more than $ 140 billion. Then there’s a long list of less valuable cryptocurrencies, including Tether with $ 22 million, Litecoin with $ 11 million and Bitcoin Cash with $ 8 billion.
Bitcoin creator Satoshi Nakamoto is believed to own about 1 million bitcoins. Most of them were mined in the first two years of Bitcoin’s existence, when there was little competition. If he still has copies of the private keys that control these currencies, that would give him a net worth of almost $ 40 billion – enough to make him one of the 40 richest people on the planet. Nakamoto has never publicly revealed his true identity and has not communicated publicly since 2014.
Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, brothers who became famous for their legal battle with Mark Zuckerberg over the origins of Facebook, are also big holders of bitcoins. At the peak of the last bitcoin boom in 2017, the Winklevoss brothers had $ 1.3 billion in bitcoin, according to The New York Times. That same stock of bitcoins would be worth $ 2.6 billion today.