The 10 Richest Crypto Holders

Satoshi Nakamoto is the richest holder of crypto in the world, with an on-chain net worth of $123 billion dollars (at the time of writing). The entirety of this is from the Bitcoin he mined from 2009 and 2010 and is stored across 22,000 addresses. 

According to the Bloomberg Billionaire’s Index, this puts Satoshi Nakamoto in the top 20 richest people in the world.

Nakamoto’s various 22,000 Bitcoin wallets are some of the most scrutinised holdings around. Any movement from these wallets would likely send huge shockwaves throughout the industry. 

The following is a list of all the richest on-chain individuals according to Arkham data, beginning with Satoshi Nakamoto’s huge fortune and working downwards from multi-billionaires to multi-millionaires. 

1. Satoshi Nakamoto 

As mentioned already, Satoshi Nakamoto’s fortune is well over $100 billion. However, his inclusion on this list is potentially controversial as nobody knows for sure whether he is really an individual, or a collection of individuals. 

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2. Justin Sun ($2.3 billion)

Justin Sun is a Chinese entrepreneur and cryptocurrency pioneer best known as the founder of TRON, a blockchain platform focused on decentralized applications and digital content sharing. He is also the CEO of BitTorrent and the owner of two crypto exchanges. 

According to Arkham data, Justin Sun has amassed an on-chain fortune of roughly $2.3 billion. 

Sun has substantial holdings in several different cryptocurrencies:

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Justin Sun has lately been at the center of a controversy involving World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a Trump-affiliated crypto project. After acquiring a large stake in WLFI Sun’s WLFI wallet was blacklisted by the project when around $9 million worth of WLFI tokens were transferred to exchanges.

3. Owen Gunden ($1.3 billion)

Owen Gunden was an early Bitcoin arbitrage trader on exchanges like Mt. Gox and Tradehill. He traded tens of thousands of Bitcoin through Mt. Gox while it was operational, building a significant position in the asset's early days.

He later transitioned from trading to investing and took on executive roles. Gunden served on the board of LedgerX, the first federally regulated U.S. platform for physically settled digital currency swaps and options.

Though he has not been active on his X account since 2018, his crypto wallets have been. He used services like BlockFi and Genesis Trading, both of which later went bankrupt. As a creditor, he received over 600 BTC from the Genesis bankruptcy distribution.

Today, addresses identified by Arkham as belonging to Gunden hold more than 11,000 BTC. This makes him one of the largest individual holders of Bitcoin.

4. Rain Lohmus ($1.1 billion)

Rain Lohmus represents one of crypto's most famous cautionary tales. The Estonian banker and co-founder of LHV Bank was an early believer in Ethereum, participating in its 2014 ICO. He invested approximately $75,000 and received a staggering 250,000 ETH.

However, Lohmus has since lost the private keys to the wallet holding these assets. While his holdings are visible and verifiable on the blockchain, he has no way to access or move them. His billion-dollar fortune is therefore trapped, serving as a stark reminder of the importance of key management and the unique risks of self-custody in the digital asset world.

Lohmus’ ETH holdings are now worth $1.05 billion.

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5. Vitalik Buterin ($1.1 billion)

Perhaps the most famous individual on this list after Satoshi, Vitalik Buterin is the visionary programmer who co-created Ethereum. As one of the project's co-founders, he received an allocation of ETH at its genesis.

The overwhelming majority of Buterin's on-chain wealth consists of his ETH holdings, which have appreciated enormously since the network's launch in 2015. He is also known for being the unwilling recipient of trillions of tokens from meme coin projects (like Shiba Inu) attempting to gain legitimacy by sending them to his public address. 

You can read our full analysis of Vitalik’s net worth, featuring on-chain and off-chain investments, here. 

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6. James Howells ($905 million)

James Howells, like Rain Lohmus, is another one of crypto’s cautionary tales. An IT worker from Wales, he was an early pioneer of Bitcoin mining in 2010, using his personal laptop to mine approximately 8,000 BTC.

In 2013, during a clean-out, he accidentally threw away the hard drive containing the private keys to his Bitcoin fortune. That hard drive is now buried under thousands of tonnes of rubbish in a local landfill. Despite numerous and ongoing attempts to persuade the Newport City Council to allow him to excavate the site - even offering a significant percentage of the fortune - he has been denied permission.

Using Arkham, Howells huge fortune is visible to anyone but, for him, it is currently irretrievable. 

7. Stefan Thomas ($792 million)

Stefan Thomas, a German-born programmer and early Bitcoin developer, is another individual whose vast on-chain wealth is locked away. In 2011, he was paid 7,002 BTC for creating an animated video explaining how Bitcoin worked.

He secured the private keys on a highly secure IronKey hardware wallet, which encrypts its contents. Unfortunately, Thomas lost the piece of paper on which he wrote the wallet's password. The IronKey device gives a user ten password attempts before it permanently wipes its data. Thomas has used eight of his ten guesses, leaving him just two chances to recall the password and unlock a fortune worth nearly $800 million.

8. Patricio Worthalter ($283 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 organisers to distribute crypto-badges (NFTs) to attendees, creating a verifiable record of life experiences.

As the founder of a successful and integrated piece of Web3 infrastructure, Worthalter's on-chain wealth is a result of the success of his project and his early and continued involvement in the crypto space.

Worthalter’s holdings are spread across several different cryptocurrencies, the main ones being:

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9. James Fickel ($240 million)

James Fickel is a prominent cryptocurrency investor and trader. His journey to the crypto rich list started in 2016 when he invested $400,000 in Ethereum when the token was trading at around $0.80.

Fickel still holds over 57k ETH worth $240 million at the time of writing. 

Fickel was in the news last year after he lost $43 million betting on ETH’s price against BTC. Despite this, he remains a significant ETH whale and one of the richest individual crypto holders in the world. 

Nowadays, Fickel’s main focus is on the neuroscience and longevity fund he founded: The Amaranth Foundation.

10. Stefan George ($130 million)

Stefan George is the co-founder and CTO of Gnosis - the Ethereum-based ecosystem focused on decentralized infrastructure for DeFi and DAOs. Gnosis is known for developing prediction markets and, most famously, the Gnosis Safe (now "Safe"), the multi-signature smart contract wallet that has become the standard for securing treasury assets for DAOs and crypto companies.

George's on-chain wealth is derived from his foundational role at Gnosis, including his holdings of the project's native GNO token and other assets accumulated through the project's history in the space.