Back on Oct. 31, 2008, a simple email with a nine-page PDF called Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System was sent to a small cryptography mailing list.
Satoshi Nakamoto is just a pseudonym, and he came up with a new way to send value without trusting a bank. That one upload has since grown into a $2.4 trillion digital market. Financial language is now used by exchanges, ETFs and even whole nations.
The founder’s coins are still untouched. A total of 1.096 million BTC — about $120 billion — have been sitting there since 2010. Over the past 24 hours, the value of these coins dropped about $5 billion following a minor dip, showing how big the still-dormant fortune is.
$13.4 billion in BTC and ETH options to expire on Halloween
Halloween has become Bitcoin’s holiday, a day when traders mark their calendars — not for costumes, but for context, the moment the code religion began. This year, the anniversary coincides with a major market expiry: $13.4 billion in BTC and $2.5 billion in ETH contracts are set to clear by midnight.
This creates a liquidity storm with strikes around $113,000 and $4,100. Bitcoin is trading near $110,250, just below its week-long high, and derivatives desks are closely monitoring the November market opening.
Even 17 years later, the Bitcoin whitepaper document is still like a bible for millions of people and proof that code can outlast its author and that an idea born in crisis can keep defining the structure of digital money.
Source: https://u.today/satoshis-120-billion-fortune-drops-5-billion-as-bitcoin-whitepaper-turns-17