The smoke from the 2008 financial crisis has yet to clear when a paper signed by Satoshi Nakamoto suddenly appeared—"Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System." This mysterious figure used a brand-new peer-to-peer electronic cash system to directly challenge the traditional financial system.

No one truly knows who Satoshi Nakamoto is. It could be an individual, a research team, or just a pseudonym. Because of this mystery, Bitcoin has been shrouded in legend since its inception.

The core logic in the white paper is actually simple: First, you no longer need banks as intermediaries—decentralized networks can complete transactions. Second, no one can forge or double-spend your money because the entire network maintains the ledger through cryptography and nodes. Most importantly, the total supply of Bitcoin is permanently capped at 21 million coins, giving it the properties of digital gold. Miners maintain the network using computational power, and in return, they receive rewards—this incentive mechanism keeps the entire ecosystem self-sustaining.

In January 2009, the Bitcoin network officially went live. At that moment, the era of blockchain began.

And then came his "disappearance." On April 23, 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto left his last message on a forum and then vanished completely. He handed Bitcoin over to the community, like a director leaving after finishing a film. He has not appeared since.

But that doesn’t mean he has been forgotten. According to analysis, Satoshi Nakamoto holds approximately 1 million Bitcoins. When Bitcoin surpasses $120,000 in 2025, his paper wealth will exceed $134 billion, enough to rank among the top ten richest people in the world. Ironically, the person who rewrote the global financial landscape has long been out of the public eye.