New technology is upending everything in finance, from saving to trading to making payments.

This article is more than 2 years old.

October 20, 2017 This article is more than 2 years old.

Bitcoin recorded a new high today, hitting $5,991 on the benchmark CoinDesk price index. On major exchanges like Bitfinex and Bitstamp, the price briefly crossed $6,000 intraday.

While bitcoin bulls celebrate yet another milestone for the cryptocurrency, there is one major beneficiary to what has essentially been a nine year-long rally: bitcoin’s inventor, Satoshi Nakamoto. The pseudonymous creator is estimated to own 980,000 bitcoins, amassed from mining the cryptocurrency in its early days. The stash has remained untouched for years.

What is that worth today? At $6,000 a coin, Satoshi would be worth $5.9 billion. That would put him/her/they at number 247 on Forbes’ list of the world’s richest people. Satoshi is just below Wal-Mart heiress Ann Walton Kroenke and Samsung scion Jay Lee; and above Alibaba’s Joseph Tsai and María Asunción Aramburuzabala, who inherited the Corona brewery fortune.

That’s a good return for writing a piece of nine-year-old, open-source software. And arguably, even $5.9 billion is too small a reward for inventing “magic internet money.”

Rank Name Net Worth Age Source 238 Marian Ilitch $6 billion 84 Pizza, sports team 238 Ann Walton Kroenke 6.0 68 Wal-Mart 238 Jay Y. Lee 6.0 49 Samsung 238 Pan Zhengmin 6.0 47 Electronics 238 Finn Rausing 6.0 62 Packaging 238 Kirsten Rausing 6.0 65 Packaging 238 Dennis Washington 6.0 83 Construction, mining 238 Xu Chuanhua 6.0 82 Chemicals, logistics 247 Satoshi Nakamoto 5.9 ❓ Software 247 Francis Choi 5.9 70 Real estate 247 Erivan Haub 5.9 85 Retail 247 Wei Jianjun 5.9 53 Automobiles 250 Gautam Adani 5.8 55 Commodities, ports 250 Mike Adenuga 5.8 64 Telecom, oil 250 Maria Asuncion Aramburuzabala 5.8 54 Beer, investments 250 Daniel Gilbert 5.8 55 Quicken Loans 250 John Gokongwei, Jr. 5.8 91 Food and beverage 250 Gong Hongjia 5.8 52 Investments 250 Charles Johnson 5.8 84 Money management 250 Ian & Richard Livingstone 5.8 – Real estate 250 Hiroshi Mikitani 5.8 52 Online retail 250 Augusto & Giorgio Perfetti 5.8 – Candy 250 Joseph Tsai 5.8 53 E-commerce

Source: Forbes