Money Leaves Clues

The 10 Richest Individual Crypto Holders

Moneyleaveclues — Thu, 13 Aug 2026 13:57:48 GMT

1) Satoshi Nakamoto ($73 billion)

Satoshi Nakamoto’s fortune is worth around $89 billion. Well he is one of the richest man on earth for sure, but the problem is :

We don’t the real identity.

The are many theories on who this person is, but we can’t know for sure ( if you want to know about these theories don’t worry i will talk about them in the next articles). He has a fortune over 1,1 milion bitcoins, making Nakamoto one of the top 25 richest person on earth.

2)Justin Sun ($2.7 billion+)

Justin Sun is one of the most controversial entrepreneurs in crypto.

He is known as the founder of TRON, the blockchain network focused on decentralized applications, stablecoins and digital transactions.

He also became involved with BitTorrent and several major crypto businesses.

But Sun isn’t just a founder.

He is also a crypto whale.

His publicly visible wallets have contained huge amounts of TRX, Ethereum-related assets, Bitcoin and stablecoins.

His real net worth could be significantly higher because on-chain data only shows what can be connected to known public wallets.

Justin Sun is basically the perfect example of something important when looking at crypto billionaires:

Visible wallet balance ≠ total net worth.

3) James Howells ($530 million)

He started mining Bitcoin around 2010.

Back then, Bitcoin was basically an internet experiment and almost nobody imagined that a single BTC would eventually become worth tens of thousands of dollars.

Howells reportedly mined around 8,000 BTC.

But there was only one problem.

He threw away the hard drive containing the private keys.

In 2013, the hard drive was accidentally discarded and eventually ended up inside a landfill in Newport, Wales.

Today, those Bitcoins are worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Howells has spent years trying to obtain permission to search the landfill, even proposing expensive excavation plans and offering part of the recovered fortune.

But the hard drive remains buried.

Imagine knowing that the key to your success is under a landfill and you can’t access it because the landfill’s city denied the access ( for security and environment causes)

You know approximately where it is and you know how much it’s worth.

But you can’t touch it.

That might be worse than never owning Bitcoin at all.

4) Rain Lõhmus ($484 million)

Rain Lõhmus is another example of why crypto self-custody can be both incredibly powerful and incredibly dangerous.

Lõhmus is an Estonian banker and one of the co-founders of LHV Bank.

In 2014, he participated in Ethereum’s ICO.

His investment?

Around $75,000.

In return, he received approximately 250,000 ETH.

The problem is that he reportedly lost access to the private keys. CRAZY

The wallet is visible on the blockchain.

Without the private key he can’t access the wallet in any way, the possibility is 0,0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000086% of guessing it.

If they are your keys…

don’t lose them.

5) Stefan Thomas ($464 million)

Stefan Thomas has one of the most stressful passwords in human history.

Thomas is an early Bitcoin developer who received 7,002 BTC after creating an animated educational video explaining Bitcoin.

He stored the private key on an IronKey encrypted device.

Very secure.

Maybe a little too secure.

Thomas lost the paper containing the password.

The IronKey allows only a limited number of password attempts before permanently encrypting or destroying access to the information stored on it.

Thomas reportedly used most of those attempts trying to remember the password.

Meaning that somewhere inside a tiny device sits access to hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin.

And one wrong password could make it disappear forever.

So the next time you’re annoyed because a website asks you to reset your password…

remember Stefan Thomas.

6) Vitalik Buterin ($437 million)

Vitalik Buterin is probably the most recognizable face behind Ethereum, come on i am sure you have seen him on social media!

Buterin co-founded Ethereum after publishing its original white paper while still extremely young.

Ethereum launched in 2015 and eventually became the foundation for:

DeFi.

NFTs.

Stablecoins.

DAOs.

Memecoins.

And thousands of decentralized applications.

Naturally, Vitalik accumulated a substantial amount of ETH.

7) Clifton Collins ($298 million)

Clifton Collins has one of the strangest Bitcoin stories on this list.

The Irish cannabis dealer reportedly used money from his business to purchase around 6,000 BTC during the early 2010s.

Bitcoin was worth only a few dollars at the time.

That decision eventually transformed a relatively small amount of money into an enormous fortune.

But then things became complicated.

Collins reportedly stored information needed to access his Bitcoin on a piece of paper hidden inside a fishing rod. Damn!

After his arrest, the fishing equipment was apparently disposed of.

And the keys disappeared.

The Irish authorities seized the Bitcoin legally…

but controlling Bitcoin on paper doesn’t necessarily mean controlling it cryptographically.

Without the keys, nobody could easily move the funds.

8) Ansem — Zion Thomas ($139 million)

Ansem, whose real name is Zion Thomas, became one of the most recognizable traders on Crypto Twitter.

His reputation exploded thanks to his early conviction around the Solana ecosystem and his ability to identify narratives before they became mainstream.

He became especially associated with the rise of Solana memecoins such as Dogwifhat (WIF).

And unlike many people on this list, Ansem didn’t become wealthy because he created a foundational blockchain.

He became wealthy by being early to narratives ( that’s exactly the key in memecoins).

That distinction is important.

Crypto creates completely different types of fortunes.

You have developers like Vitalik.

Founders like Justin Sun.

Early miners like Satoshi.

Early ICO investors like Rain Lõhmus.

And traders like Ansem.

9) Patricio Worthalter ($107 million)

Patricio Worthalter is the founder of POAP — Proof of Attendance Protocol.

If you’ve spent enough time inside Ethereum communities, you have probably seen a POAP before.

They are essentially digital collectibles that prove you attended an event or participated in a specific experience.

Think of them as:

Digital memories that live on the blockchain.

Worthalter became deeply involved in Ethereum during its early years and accumulated a substantial crypto portfolio.

His known holdings have included tens of thousands of ETH and other Ethereum ecosystem assets.

And his story shows another route to becoming wealthy in crypto:

He didn’t create Ethereum.

He didn’t invent Bitcoin.

But he built something that became integrated into Ethereum culture and benefited from being extremely early to the ecosystem.

10) Stefan George ($77 million)

Stefan George is one of the co-founders of Gnosis, one of Ethereum’s most important infrastructure projects.

You might not immediately recognize the name Gnosis.

But you probably know one of the products that came from its ecosystem:

Safe.

Formerly known as Gnosis Safe, Safe is a multi-signature wallet widely used by DAOs, companies, investment funds and crypto teams to protect their assets.

Instead of one private key controlling everything, multiple signatures can be required before funds move.

Basically:

It solves exactly the kind of problem that destroyed several fortunes earlier on this list.

George’s wealth comes from his early involvement in Gnosis, his exposure to the GNO token and years spent building inside Ethereum.

He may receive much less mainstream attention than Vitalik or Justin Sun.

But inside crypto infrastructure, his influence is enormous.

If you enjoyed this article, subscribe.

Every week new articles will be relased so you can know the crypto ecosystem better and understand how it works

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Why $CATE Exploded: The Anatomy of a Nearly Perfect Memecoin Narrative

Moneyleaveclues — Fri, 07 Aug 2026 18:36:22 GMT

Why $CATE Exploded: The Anatomy of a Nearly Perfect Memecoin Narrative

Every cycle produces one memecoin that seems impossible to ignore.

This time, I think $CATE earned that position not because of technology, utility, or even fundamentals—but because several powerful narratives aligned at exactly the right moment.

Here's what I think happened.

---

1. A Narrative Anyone Can Understand

Everything began when Atsuko Sato, the owner of Kabosu—the Shiba Inu behind the original DOGE meme—announced that she had adopted a new cat named Rika-chan.

Crypto did what crypto always does.

Within hours, the story became:

«"Doge's sister."»

That's it.

No AI.

No utility.

No complicated tokenomics.

No roadmap.

Just a story that anyone can understand in seconds.

The biggest memecoins usually follow this pattern.

DOGE.

PEPE.

And now, potentially, $CATE.

The simpler a meme is, the easier it spreads.

---

2. A Narrative Rooted in Reality

Most memecoins invent their own lore.

$CATE didn't have to.

The catalyst came from a genuine real-world event.

Atsuko Sato really did adopt a cat.

She has no connection to the token itself, but that almost doesn't matter.

What matters is that the community received a real story it could build around.

In crypto, narratives connected to actual events often generate stronger emotional engagement than completely fictional ones.

---

3. When Legal Drama Becomes Marketing

In my opinion, this was the biggest catalyst.

CateCoin on BNB submitted trademark-related complaints against Pump.fun and other platforms.

The Solana token faced temporary restrictions.

Normally, that would be bearish.

Instead, it created one of the biggest conversations on Crypto Twitter.

Two camps quickly formed.

The BNB side argued:

- We've been building this brand for years.

- We own the trademark.

- We're protecting what we created.

The Solana side argued:

- Different branding.

- Different artwork.

- Different website.

- Only the name and ticker overlap.

Regardless of who was right, thousands of people who had never heard of $CATE suddenly wanted to understand the controversy.

And attention is the most valuable currency in memecoins.

---

4. The Market Didn't Care Who Was Right

Legally, the discussion is more nuanced than many people realize.

CateCoin on BNB does own a registered trademark.

The debate is about how broadly that protection applies.

The Solana community believes the trademark mainly protects the existing project's branding.

The BNB community believes it protects years of work and deserves enforcement.

But markets rarely wait for legal conclusions.

They reward whatever dominates the conversation.

For several days, that conversation was $CATE.

---

5. The Underdog Effect

One of the strongest psychological forces in crypto is the David vs. Goliath narrative.

Whenever a newer project appears to be challenged by a larger or older one, many traders instinctively side with the newcomer.

Whether that perception is objectively correct isn't really the point.

Narratives don't need to be legally perfect.

They only need to be emotionally compelling.

That perception strengthened conviction, encouraged holders to stay, and attracted new participants who simply wanted to support the underdog.

---

6. A Community That Actually Showed Up

Narratives eventually fade.

Communities determine whether momentum survives.

This is one of the aspects I found most interesting.

Throughout the attention spike:

- Holder count continued growing.

- Early sellers were absorbed by new buyers.

- Telegram remained highly active.

- Community leaders kept producing content.

That suggested this wasn't simply a one-day influencer pump.

The community was actively reinforcing the story.

---

7. KOLs Accelerated the Fire

Influencers didn't create the narrative.

They amplified it.

After the trademark controversy exploded, accounts like @PoorGoat_ helped keep $CATE at the center of Crypto Twitter instead of letting the discussion disappear.

As more large accounts joined in, the effect compounded.

Inside the Economics of Pump.fun Call Channels.

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 16:50:07 GMT

Today we will analyse a call channel in telegram. If you are in the crypto space, especially memecoin, you probably have seen these.They promise incredible results that seems to beat the market, but are these real?

So we decided to break down an on-chain investigation of 770 public Pump.fun calls and more than 2.4 million trade records.

We wanted to answer three questions:

What could a normal public subscriber realistically earn?
Which wallets repeatedly bought before the Telegram posts?
Does the pattern look more like privileged access, automated sniping or momentum detection?

The investigation started with 8,118 signals

The Telegram export covered the period from January 22 to March 9, 2025.

It contained:

144,913 total messages
8,118 signal messages
8,102 unique token contracts
3,524 promotional profit updates

We saw a multiplier as big as 7,086.5x !. This multiplier would be enough to become a crypto millionaire, but the truth is far from that.

Remember that a token touched an extraordinary peak does not mean a subscriber really profited from that

In fact maximum upside ignores:

the delay between the trade and the public message;
the subscriber’s reaction time;
available liquidity;
slippage;
transaction priority;
competition from bots;
and the difficulty of selling before everyone else tries to exit.

We started with just 50 calls to create an investigative plan.

Then we expanded investigation collecting 770 calls, of which 767 were completed successfully. The resulting dataset contained 2,411,719 trade records and 79,415 early-buyer events. Usable performance curves were available for 375 calls.

Now the central question are simple:

Does following a bot really give an advantage in the memecoin market?

The first result looked bullish—until time entered the calculation

In the initial 50-call test twenty-two reached at least +20%.

On the surface that could look like a 56.4% win rate.

But to make money a subscriber would have needed to enter quickly, recognize the peak and sell at exactly the right moment. This is an ideal situation so we added a realistic delay and the advantage deteriorated.

With a 30-second entry delay, the percentage of calls that subsequently reached +20% fell from 56.4% to 31.4%.

Fixed-time exits were already negative at the median:

approximately −6.2% after one minute;
−10.5% after five minutes;
−10.7% after ten minutes.

Entering 15 seconds after the signal and exiting at 30 seconds produced a median gross return of just +0.2%.

You might think: Oh well, 0,2% profit per token isn’ that bad!.

Wrong! if you add slippage, fees, price impact, failed transactions and real execution latency the profit disappears.

Also:

At three minutes, the median result was already deeply negative.
At five minutes, a subscriber entering 30 seconds after the call faced a median loss of 27.6%.

The averages tell the wrong story

Memecoin data is perfectly structured to mislead anyone who looks only at averages.

In one idealized scenario—buying at the exact moment of the call and selling 30 seconds later—the average return was +552.2%.

The median was −4.0%.

Both numbers can be mathematically correct.

Only one describes the typical experience.

No retail trader can profit from this channel only high frequency bots can profit from these because they have milliseconds latency

The vip program

In the channel there is the option to pay for vip gaining some “advantage”. So we identified wallets that purchased called tokens during the five minutes before the corresponding public Telegram post.

The preliminary ranking considered:

how frequently the wallet anticipated calls;
whether it sold after the same call;
whether it appeared among the first ten non-creator buyers;
whether its lead time fell within a 10-to-120-second window.

We found some interesting wallets.

One wallet, abbreviated dc5d…6X2K, bought before 146 calls with a median lead time of 99.5 seconds.

It subsequently sold after the same call in 72.6% of those cases.

Two others, zero…av7C and AtTj…a1oy, combined high pre-signal frequency with repeated post-call selling.

Another wallet, o7RY…Wcvc, appeared among the first ten non-creator buyers of 132 called tokens.

That final wallet looks like a sniper rather than a vip wallet.

A wallet appearing before many signals is evidence of temporal correlation but it is not proof that the wallet belongs to:

an administrator;
a VIP member;
a channel operator;
or an insider.

The missing metric is precision:

Of every token purchased by the wallet, how many were subsequently called by the group?

A wallet that anticipates 100 calls while buying 50,000 launches is less informative than a wallet that anticipates 30 calls from only 40 total purchases.

the program we used

The group is hunting tokens that are only minutes old

The called tokens were extraordinarily young.

The median token age at the time of the Telegram post was 2.9 minutes.

A quarter were called within 51 seconds of creation.

Three-quarters were called within 9.1 minutes.

And 90% were called within 28.2 minutes.

This places the group inside the most strange of a token’s life cycle: the period when liquidity is limited, automated buyers are active and a relatively small wave of demand can move the price sharply.

The creator data weakens one simple explanation.

Across 767 token origins, the investigation identified 720 distinct creators.

Only 29 creators appeared more than once, accounting for 76 tokens in total.

That does not look like a single, small token factory feeding every launch to the channel.

The early-buyer data points somewhere else.

Certain non-creator wallets repeatedly appeared within the first seconds of token creation.

One appeared among the first ten buyers of 132 called tokens.

Others appeared in 119, 108 and 90.

That is the signature of automation.

It could represent:

universal launch monitoring;
bundled execution;
sniper infrastructure;
automated trading services;
or systems shared across many unrelated tokens.

It could also coexist with private information.

We followed the funding trail—and found a network-shaped ambiguity

The creator-funding dataset contained 18,046 candidate SOL movements associated with creator wallets.

Many were small transfers or technical artifacts.

After applying a minimum threshold of 0.01 SOL, 7,316 movements remained, involving 695 creators and 743 candidate fee payers.

Some fee payers appeared across dozens of distinct creators.

Two appeared across 50 creators and 50 tokens each.

Another appeared across 36.

That looks network-like.

But the label matters.

A common fee payer could be:

an exchange;
a centralized funding service;
shared infrastructure;
an automated deployment service;
or an operational wallet used by multiple unrelated parties.

Three explanations fit the evidence

The data currently supports three possible models.

1. A momentum scanner

The group may be detecting tokens that are already accelerating in their first minutes.

The tokens are extremely young.

The public-trader result deteriorates rapidly.

Recurring automated buyers are already active before the call.

This is the explanation best supported by the available evidence.

2. A private signal layer

Some recurring wallets buy before the public calls and sell afterward.

That is consistent with the possibility that calls circulate earlier in a private channel.

But consistency is not proof.

We still lack:

each wallet’s complete purchase history;
its precision outside the called sample;
its performance on tokens that were never promoted;
and direct evidence that a signal was distributed privately before it became public.

A private layer remains possible.

It is not demonstrated.

3. Connected creators or funders

A minority of creators recur, and some candidate fee payers touch many creator wallets.

This could indicate connected subgroups.

But it does not appear dominant across the full sample, and common service providers could generate a similar structure.

The most defensible conclusion is therefore a combination:

The channel appears to select extremely young tokens already showing momentum, inside a market saturated with persistent automated infrastructure.

A private or economically connected component may exist in some cases.

What the data does not prove

This investigation has important boundaries.

Only 375 of the 770 collected calls had usable performance curves.

The calculated returns are gross.

They do not yet fully account for:

slippage;
price impact;
Pump.fun or decentralized-exchange fees;
priority fees;
transaction failures;
position size;
or whether the entire position could actually be sold It is not a verified identity.

The real product may be timing

The visible product of the public channel is the call:

A token name.

A contract address.

A promised opportunity.

But the data suggests that the scarcer product is timing.

The actors who arrive first can purchase before attention concentrates.

The public subscriber receives the signal while the window is already closing.

If the public post generates new demand, earlier buyers possess something the late buyer does not:

Optionality.

They can hold.

They can sell into the incoming flow.

Or they can exit before the median trade becomes sharply negative.

This does not prove that the group intentionally uses public subscribers as exit liquidity.

It demonstrates the economic structure that can produce the same outcome even without explicit coordination.

By the time the opportunity becomes visible to everyone, its most valuable part may already belong to someone else.

What comes next

The next phase must separate general bots from genuinely informed actors.

That requires reconstructing the complete purchase history of the highest-ranked wallets—including every token they bought that the Telegram group never called.

This will reveal:

precision;
persistence across different days;
realized profit;
the number of false positives;
and whether the apparent pre-signal advantage is selective or merely the result of monitoring everything.

A matched control group of uncalled Pump.fun tokens should then be created.

Those tokens must be aligned by:

creation time;
age;
market capitalization;
volume;
and market conditions.

Without that comparison, characteristics common to the entire Pump.fun market could be incorrectly attributed to the Telegram group.

Finally, candidate fee payers and funders must be labeled transaction by transaction to distinguish exchanges and shared infrastructure from direct economic relationships.

The unanswered question is no longer whether some wallets arrive before the public.

They do.

The unanswered question is why.

This article presents technical and investigative analysis. It is not financial advice, does not identify the owners of the wallets discussed and does not allege illegal conduct.

Money Leaves Clues follows incentives, ownership and financial trails hidden beneath public narratives.

Subscribe for the next phase of this investigation.

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Welcome to Money Leaves Clues

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 22:15:36 GMT

Welcome to Money Leaves Clues, an investigative newsletter about everyday businesses, crypto, politics, and public money.

Companies, crypto projects, and public institutions all tell stories about what they do.

Money often tells a more revealing one.

Behind an ordinary subscription, a viral token, or a government contract, there are always incentives, owners, fees, winners, and risks.

This newsletter follows those clues to answer three basic questions:

Where did the money come from?
Where did it go?
Who benefited?

You will not need a finance degree to follow along. The goal is to make hidden or confusing money stories understandable, useful, and interesting.

Who Is Money Leaves Clues For?

Money Leaves Clues is for people who are curious about the systems operating beneath everyday life.

Curious consumers

You want to understand how ordinary businesses really make money, why certain services are expensive, and what companies gain from the way their products are designed.

Crypto participants

You want to look beyond price charts, hype, and promises to understand token ownership, wallets, insiders, fees, and incentives.

Readers interested in politics and public money

You want to know how public money is spent, which companies receive contracts, who funds political activity, and who benefits from government decisions.

You do not need professional experience in economics, finance, or investigations.

You only need curiosity and a willingness to look beyond the headline.

The Biggest Problems With Following Money

Financial information is everywhere, but understanding it is much harder.

Here are some of the problems this newsletter will help you navigate.

The real business model is often hidden
A company may promote one product while making most of its money through subscriptions, advertising, fees, customer data, financing, or another activity.
Headlines rarely explain the incentives
A decision can appear irrational until you identify who benefits financially from it.
Crypto is transparent—but difficult to interpret
Transactions may be public, but wallet ownership, token concentration, insider activity, and coordinated promotion are not always obvious.
Public spending is fragmented
Contracts, subsidies, political donations, grants, lobbying records, and ownership information are often spread across different documents and databases.
Marketing language hides important details
Words such as “free,” “decentralized,” “community-owned,” “risk-free,” and “public-private partnership” can obscure how the system actually works.
Suspicion is often confused with proof
An unusual transaction may deserve investigation, but it does not automatically prove fraud or misconduct.
Important financial stories are often written for experts
Jargon can make simple questions feel unnecessarily complicated.

Money Leaves Clues exists to make these stories easier to examine and understand.

What You Will Receive

Each edition will provide one clear investigation, breakdown, or explainer focused on a specific money trail.

The repeatable promise is simple:

One story. One money trail. A clear explanation of who benefited and why.

The newsletter will cover three main areas.

Everyday business investigations

How does this business really make money?

Subscriptions, hidden fees, loyalty programs, delivery platforms, private-equity ownership, and familiar businesses whose real incentives are not always obvious.

Crypto investigations

Who controlled the supply, and who benefited?

Wallet activity, token allocations, insiders, memecoin launches, hacks, influencer promotions, and failed or abandoned projects.

Politics and public money

Where did the public money go?

Government contracts, political donations, lobbying, subsidies, consultants, private contractors, and public projects.

Each investigation will aim to provide:

A clear explanation of what happened
The relevant money trail
The main people or organizations involved
The incentives behind their decisions
Links to useful evidence
A distinction between facts, interpretations, and unanswered questions

The goal is not only to show you a conclusion.
It is to help you become better at following the money yourself.

Who Am I?

I’m an economics university student with a strong interest in the hidden side of money: unfamiliar economic systems, questionable business models, financial schemes, and fraud.

My interest in financial investigations began with memecoins.

After repeatedly losing money on them, I wanted to understand what was actually happening behind the price charts.

Who created the tokens? Who owned most of the supply? Which wallets bought early? Who was promoting them? And who was selling while everyone else was buying?

That curiosity led me to on-chain analysis and taught me an important lesson:

Following hype is easy. Following the money often reveals a very different story.

Money Leaves Clues is where I document what I learn and investigate the money behind crypto projects, everyday businesses, politics, and public spending.

I am not presenting myself as someone who already has every answer.

I am building my investigative skills, examining publicly available evidence, and sharing the clearest and most interesting findings with readers along the way.

My goal is simple: understand how the system works, identify who benefits, and make the investigation accessible to anyone curious enough to look beneath the surface.

Where to Start

Money Leaves Clues is new, so there is not yet a large archive of popular posts.

The first investigations will be organized around recurring formats such as:

How This Business Really Makes Money

A breakdown of the economics and incentives behind a familiar company, product, or industry.

The Wallet Trail

An investigation into token ownership, wallet activity, project funds, insiders, or suspicious crypto movements.

Follow the Public Money

An examination of a government contract, public project, political donation, subsidy, or spending decision.

Who Benefited?

A look at the companies, founders, investors, contractors, politicians, advisers, or intermediaries that gained from a decision.

Does the Evidence Match the Claim?

A fact-based examination of a popular financial, corporate, political, or crypto claim.

As the archive grows, this section will be updated with the best investigations for new readers.

Subscribe and Follow the Money

Every investigation begins with three questions:

Where did the money come from?
Where did it go?
Who benefited?

Subscribe to receive clear, accessible investigations into:

The businesses you use
The crypto projects competing for your money
The public institutions spending it

Because the public explanation may be incomplete.

But money leaves clues.

Subscribe now

Money Leaves Clues publishes research, commentary, and educational information. It does not provide personalized financial, investment, legal, or tax advice.