After reflecting on this for some time, I’ve decided to write about money, Bitcoin, and my speculation that not a single cent will ever leave the Satoshi Bitcoin wallet or if it does, it will take several decades.

The Satoshi wallet is the most valuable wallet in the world. It holds 1.096 million BTC, worth over $131.5 billion as of July 2025, making its owner the 11th richest person on Earth. What’s even more interesting is that, as cryptocurrency adoption grows, this wallet may one day become the single richest in the world. People often wonder: with such an unimaginable fortune, why has no Bitcoin ever left this wallet? What could its owner still hope to achieve by leaving it untouched?

So first, what is money? How did our world come to be ruled by something that has no inherent value, yet wields such immense perceived value that it shapes the events and circumstances of our daily lives?

The earliest form of money was the barter system , a peer-to-peer exchange model that actually inspired some of Bitcoin’s core principles. In barter, one person trades goods or services for something they need in return. For example, if I want rice but only have bread, I must find someone who not only has rice but also wants bread. No middlemen, no centralized authority.

It worked in small societies, but it was painfully inefficient. Finding matching need could take forever. As societies grew, there was a need to break this limitation. Thus, money was born — anything with a perceived value that can act as:

• A medium of exchange

• A store of value

• A unit of account

This evolution brought cowries, coins, and eventually fiat money.

With money, I simply hand you cash for a product or service, and you can then spend that cash however and whenever you wish. In essence, money is anything a community accepts as a medium of exchange. It could even be a stick or a stone, as long as people agree it has value.

For centuries, gold backed paper money. Until the 1970s, the strength of a country’s currency depended on its gold reserves. More gold meant a stronger currency. But this system had limits: gold is scarce.

After gold was abandoned, a currency’s value came to reflect the strength of its economy. A producing economy with valuable goods and services has a strong currency; a weak economy leads to weaker money. This is why nations like China surged ahead by becoming global producers, pushing the yuan to become highly sought after.

If money can just be printed to cater for everyone why isn’t it? The ability of governments to simply print money at will undermines its perceived value. Inflation erodes trust.

So what is Bitcoin? Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer digital currency (cryptocurrency) that operates without a central authority like banks or governments. Instead of diving into mining, hashing, or nodes, let’s focus on how people see Bitcoin and why it was created.

Satoshi Nakamoto designed Bitcoin to merge the trust of the barter system with the universality of money.

Remember: money is simply anything with perceived value. This is why every May 22nd, the world celebrates Bitcoin Pizza Day — the first real-world transaction using Bitcoin. On May 22, 2010, Laszlo Hanyecz paid 10,000 BTC for two Papa John’s pizzas. A British man bought the pizzas for him in exchange for the bitcoins. Even then, the recipient of the bitcoins got a bargain, paying about $25 for the pizzas, while 10,000 bitcoins were then worth around $41. Today 10,000 bitcoins is worth over a $1 million.

So here’s the question: why hasn’t a single coin moved from Satoshi’s wallet?

If fiat money requires gold, government authority, or a country’s productive capacity to function, then what backs Bitcoin? The answer is a mix of scarcity, utility, decentralization, and trust in the blockchain.

But there’s something more: Bitcoin is backed by the very fact that Satoshi Nakamoto’s wallet, containing 1.096 million untouched bitcoins, has never been spent. That anonymity, restraint, and mystery form one of Bitcoin’s greatest sources of trust and value.

In other words, the untouched Satoshi wallet isn’t just an account, it is the bedrock of Bitcoin’s legitimacy. And for that reason, I believe not a single coin will ever leave it.