Pretty bad example, though. Satoshi invented money, he didn't just make an SPV wallet. Sure, he did risk his time and energy, but in a way, he did pay himself.
He spent his time to code and invent Bitcoin. Nobody paid him (assume Satoshi Nakamoto is a male person) for the Bitcoin development but he actually reserved something like mining early Bitcoin blocks and believed Bitcoin will have value some day.Only estimation. How many Bitcoin does its inventor Satoshi Nakamoto still own?
Eventually at most only 21 million coins for 6.8 billion people in the world if it really gets huge.
Right. Otherwise we couldn't have a finite limit of 21 million coins, because there would always need to be some minimum reward for generating. In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for nodes. I'm sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume.
What do we know and have so far?
- Millions of bitcoin probably lost. We don't know the exact number but surely not all 21 million bitcoins in total supply can be spent, some were lost forever.
- The world population in 2024 is more than 6.8B people. It is 8B in 2023. [1]
[1] World population growth over time