Symbolic Milestone: Satoshi Nakamoto Turns 50 as Bitcoin Achieves US Reserve Status

For Bitcoin’s anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, his 50th birthday marks a major milestone in his creation’s move toward legitimacy and acceptance. From being associated with technocrats and off-beat industries to becoming a national strategic reserve asset, Bitcoin has seen a progression that few could have imagined when the cryptocurrency was introduced in 2008. While Bitcoin is far from the first attempt at digital money, it was the first that found an audience beyond its enthusiast base and – in doing this – created a new way of understanding finances and technology.

Today digital assets are bought and sold every second all over the world. Global exchanges, like Binance, display thousands of new and top gaining cryptocurrencies prices in real time for traders and investors to analyze for the next biggest asset. While every great invention start at humble beginnings, Nakamoto’s has truly grown up to change the world as we know it.

The Enigma at 50

According to his P2P Foundation profile, Nakamoto once claimed to be a 37-year-old man living in Japan with a birthdate of April 5, 1975. While this self-reported information obviously cannot be confirmed, the crypto community has embraced this date as Nakamoto’s symbolic birthday. The timing of his fiftieth birthday carries profound symbolic weight, as intergovernmental blockchain expert Anndy Lian said to Cointelegraph, “Fifty feels symbolic — half a century of life, mirrored by Bitcoin’s journey from a white paper to a trillion-dollar asset.”

The numerical significance extends beyond mere coincidence. The date April 5 itself has historical resonance, as it marks the anniversary of Executive Order 6102 in 1933, when the U.S. government prohibited private gold ownership. This historical parallel seems deliberate, reflecting Bitcoin’s philosophical underpinnings as a decentralized alternative to government-controlled currencies.

Nakamoto’s fortune of approximately 1.1 million Bitcoin, now worth over $91 billion, continues to fascinate. These coins have remained dormant since he stepped away from public involvement with Bitcoin in 2010, despite the cryptocurrency’s meteoric rise from worthless to a peak of nearly $109,000 in January 2025. By one estimate, this will make Nakamoto the 16th richest person in the world.

From Cypherpunk Vision to National Asset

The establishment of the U.S. Strategic Bitcoin Reserve marked a complete shift in the federal government’s attitude to cryptocurrency and cryptocurrency’s wider acceptance in society. On March 6, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order creating both a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and a Digital Asset Stockpile. According to White House crypto czar David Sacks, the reserve will be funded with Bitcoin seized in criminal and civil forfeiture proceedings, which he estimates at approximately 200,000 BTC.

The order defines Bitcoin as “the original cryptocurrency” and acknowledges that “because there is a fixed supply of BTC, there is a strategic advantage to being among the first nations to create a strategic bitcoin reserve”. This language marks a dramatic shift in how governments view digital assets – particularly Bitcoin. This is striking as Bitcoin was specifically designed as an alternative to state-controlled financial systems.

In what can be seen as a divorcing from Nakamoto’s original vision, Nakamoto’s 50th birthday celebration coincides with this first major step toward integrating Bitcoin into the U.S. financial system. The creator’s vision of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system has evolved far beyond its initial scope, now entering the halls of power and traditional finance.

Market Impact and Price Movements

Despite the apparently bullish developments, Bitcoin’s price has responded unpredictably to the Strategic Reserve announcement. Bitcoin experienced significant volatility in the days following the official establishment of the reserve.

The price of Bitcoin dropped approximately 6% after Trump signed the strategic crypto reserve order, contrary to what many market participants expected. The decline was attributed to news that the reserve would only utilize existing government-held Bitcoin rather than actively purchasing more on the open market.

As of mid-April 2025, Bitcoin’s price has stabilized somewhat, with analysts expecting the value to trade in the range of $84,000 to $126,000 throughout the month. However, the long-term implications of government strategic reserves for Bitcoin’s valuation remain subject to intense debate among cryptocurrency experts.

Identity Theories Persist

As with every Bitcoin milestone, Nakamoto’s birthday has rekindled speculation about the creator’s identity. Numerous candidates have been proposed over the years, from cryptographers like Adam Back and Nick Szabo to broader theories involving government agencies, as detailed in the evolving Wikipedia entry on Nakamoto. In 2024, a UK court dismissed Craig Wright’s claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto, describing his evidence as forgeries and stating that Wright had “lied to the court extensively and repeatedly.”

More recently, an HBO documentary suggested Canadian developer Peter Todd might be Nakamoto, though he quickly denied the association. Other theories have implicated Hal Finney, who received the first Bitcoin transaction, as well as Jack Dorsey, though no concrete evidence supports these claims.

The anonymity that shrouds Nakamoto’s identity has become integral to Bitcoin’s ethos and success. By remaining unknown and inactive, Nakamoto has helped preserve Bitcoin’s decentralized nature, ensuring it has no figurehead or central authority – a principle that ironically contrasts with the centralized nature of governmental reserves. In effect, there is no way – at this point – that a person can positively prove that he/she/it is Satoshi Nakamoto, short of providing the private keys to his Bitcoin wallets.

A Legacy in Motion

As a birthday without its guest of honor would be too great a distraction to ignore, the absence of Nakamoto on the eve of his creation’s grand entrance onto the world stage is equally notable. From being an idea on a whitepaper passed around on cryptography chatrooms in 2008 to being a key factor in national fiduciary strategies, this rebel-punk idea held by a handful of anti-establishment programmers has become something that has transcended the loftiest dreams of its creator. It is also likely that if Nakamoto is still with us, he would see these developments as everything he feared: a new way for the banks to channel and focus its wealth while increasingly centralizing the decentralized framework cryptocurrency was built on.

Whether Nakamoto is aware of these developments remains unknown. His wallets have stayed dormant through all market cycles, leaving the world to wonder if they are watching silently, unable to access their fortune, or simply no longer with us. Regardless, the symbolic coincidence of Nakamoto’s milestone birthday with Bitcoin’s emergence as a strategic national asset underscores how thoroughly the creation has grown beyond its creator, becoming a force that not even the world’s most powerful governments can ignore.