BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust ETF (IBIT) is on track to surpass Satoshi Nakamoto as the leading holder of the largest cryptocurrency by the end of next summer, according to Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas.
The Bitcoin ETF of the world's leading asset manager currently stands at 636,108 coins.
Based on blockchain forensic analysis, Satoshi's Bitcoin holdings are believed to be somewhere around 1.12 million coins.
Back in 2013, researcher Sergio Demian Lerner estimated that the mysterious Bitcoin creator personally mined more than a million tokens. He managed to determine this by identifying the so-called "Patoshi pattern" after analyzing the nonce values of the specific blocks that were mined during Bitcoin's earliest days.
That said, it should be noted that the aforementioned estimate is only probabilistic.
Even though Satoshi-era Bitcoin holdings are often on the move, the coins linked to the creator of the original cryptocurrency remain untouched. Balchunas believes that these coins are very unlikely to move in the future.
Timeline could be shortened
Balchunas has also noted that Bitcoin surpassing the $150,000 mark could potentially encourage a lot of advisors to pivot to IBIT.
This will "dramatically" shorten the aforementioned timeline since a massive price rally could trigger another wave of inflows, according to the famous ETF analyst.
Even though this type of institutional adoption undermines the libertarian-centric Bitcoin narrative, Balchunas is certain that it will positively affect Bitcoin's staying power.
Dan Burgin
Vladislav Sopov
U.Today Editorial Team