According to crypto analytics platform CoinGlass, there is currently more than 1.1 million BTC in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs, which is more than the amount allegedly held by the cryptocurrency’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

This makes U.S. BTC ETFs the largest source of Bitcoin assets on Earth.

More than half of that total, about 521,000, is held by BlackRock’s IBIT ETF, with Grayscale’s GBTC and Fidelity’s FBTC in third place with about 214,000 and 199,000 BTC, respectively.

The ETFs’ combined holdings surpassed Satoshi Nakamoto’s alleged holdings on Thursday last week after 7,800 BTC worth about $766,000 were added to the funds.

Bloomberg Senior ETF Analyst Eric Balchunas wrote in a post on X that U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs are now the “king of the hill” in terms of the largest BTC holders, surpassing Satoshi’s estimated holdings.

Balchunas described the ETFs’ performance since launch as “astounding,” adding that the funds are “not even a year old, they’re literally babies.”

Since their launch in January of this year, the surge in U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs has resulted in total inflows of more than $33 billion since January, with nearly $2.4 billion added to the total in the last week alone.

And let’s not forget that much of 2024 has been bearish in crypto markets. It will be interesting to see how much capital flows into these funds during a full-blown bull market.

How can we know how much BTC Satoshi has?

Estimates of the size of Satoshi’s BTC wallet come from researchers like Sergio Demian Lerner, who have carefully analyzed early Bitcoin mining patterns. These researchers identified a pattern of miner behavior known as the “Patoshi Pattern,” which allowed them to determine with some confidence which blocks Satoshi likely mined.

Based on this analysis, most researchers agree that Satoshi likely mined at least 22,000 blocks — back then, each block earned you 50 BTC — so simply multiplying the number of blocks by the block reward gives us an estimated net worth of 1.1 million BTC. All of these BTC have remained unspent since they were mined, further supporting the idea that they belong to Satoshi.

Of course, it’s possible that Satoshi is not just one person, but a group of Bitcoin founders, so this fortune could be split between multiple individuals.

The other largest holders of BTC at the moment (excluding ETFs) are cryptocurrency exchange Binance (633,103 BTC), Michael Saylor's MicroStrategy (402,100 BTC), and, surprisingly, the US government (198,109 BTC).

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