The total amount of Bitcoin held by U.S. physical Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) may soon surpass the holdings of Satoshi Nakamoto, the cryptocurrency’s anonymous creator.
Bloomberg ETF analyst Eric Balchunas posted a chart to X on Aug. 13 noting that the ETF currently holds a total of 909,700 Bitcoin (BTC), which at a current price of around $60,500 would make it worth roughly $55.1 billion.
They are closing in on the estimated 1.1 million BTC held by Nakamoto, the mysterious creator who mined the cryptocurrency in its early days and hasn’t touched it since disappearing more than 13 years ago.
On average, the Bitcoin ETF is adding roughly 37,510 BTC to its holdings each month, and at this rate it could surpass Nakamoto’s holdings in January, one year after it first launched.
Balchunas believes the fund could surpass Nakamoto’s as early as October.
sauce: Eric Balchunas
“BlackRock alone is already third and is on pace to become number one by the end of next year, and will likely remain there for quite some time,” Balchunas wrote.
The ETF may already be larger than Nakamoto’s total Bitcoin holdings, which some estimates put at around 600,000 BTC, spread across as many as 20,000 wallets.
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No one knows the exact figure for Nakamoto’s Bitcoin holdings, as the Bitcoin creator used the new wallet to receive a 50 BTC reward for each block he mined in the cryptocurrency’s early days.
Nakamoto was the largest miner at the time, and the process was not as resource-intensive as it is today.
Since January, the 11 bitcoin ETFs have seen a combined net inflow of $17.35 billion, including a net outflow of $19.49 billion from Grayscale’s flagship ETF.
BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) saw the majority of inflows, with $20.33 billion in Bitcoin as of Aug. 12, followed by the FidelityWise Origin Bitcoin Fund (FBTC) with $9.72 billion in inflows. According to To Farside Investors.
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