The stainless steel statue honoring Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto has been stolen from Lugano, Switzerland, triggering a community-backed reward for its retrieval.
Crypto art platform Satoshigallery has offered a 0.1 BTC bounty, equivalent to over $11,000, for information leading to the statue’s recovery. The artwork symbolized Bitcoin’s core principles of decentralization and anonymity, bearing the inscription ‘we are all Satoshi’ to represent the collective spirit of the cryptocurrency movement.
Measuring 180 centimeters in height, the statue was constructed from laser-cut 304 stainless steel and corten blocks. It was first unveiled at Lugano’s Parco Ciani during the Plan B Forum in October 2024. This theft marks the second removal of a public Satoshi tribute, following a similar monument installed in Budapest, Hungary in 2021.
Satoshi Nakamoto remains theoretically among the world’s wealthiest individuals, with an estimated 1.096 million Bitcoin holdings valued above $131 billion. The statue’s disappearance has sparked widespread discussions about preserving crypto heritage and public art installations within the digital asset ecosystem.