Bitcoin statue unveiled at New York Stock Exchange, marking crypto’s cultural arrival on Wall Street
Italian artist Valentina Picozzi's Satoshi Nakamoto sculpture is the sixth in a series of 21 planned pieces, installed to coincide with Twenty One Capital's NYSE listing.
A statue of Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator now stands inside the most iconic trading floor in global finance.
Italian artist Valentina Picozzi unveiled a sculpture of Satoshi Nakamoto at the New York Stock Exchange on December 10, 2025. The installation landed one day after Twenty One Capital, a Bitcoin treasury firm led by Jack Mallers, began trading on the NYSE under the ticker XXI.
The NYSE described the statue as a bridge between emerging systems and established institutions.
The sculpture and its deeper symbolism
The Nakamoto statue is the sixth piece in Picozzi’s planned series of 21 sculptures. The number is deliberate. Bitcoin’s protocol caps its total supply at 21 million coins, a design choice Nakamoto hardcoded to create digital scarcity. Each sculpture in the series is meant to reflect that ethos of finitude and decentralization.
Previous installations have appeared across the globe, in locations including Miami, El Salvador, Vietnam, and Japan.
Picozzi called the placement “mind-blowing” and described it as an incredible achievement. The artist has framed the broader series as an exploration of how new ideas intersect with shared history.
The timing carried its own weight. December 10 marks the anniversary of the Bitcoin developer mailing list, which Nakamoto launched on that date in 2008. That mailing list was the first public space where the Bitcoin whitepaper circulated among cryptographers and developers.
Twenty One Capital and the NYSE connection
The statue’s arrival was not coincidental. Twenty One Capital, the Bitcoin treasury company founded by Jack Mallers, began its first day of public trading on December 9, 2025, under the ticker XXI. The sculpture unveiling the following day served as both a cultural statement and a strategically timed piece of corporate theater.
A Bitcoin treasury firm operates similarly to companies like MicroStrategy. The core business thesis is accumulating and holding Bitcoin on behalf of shareholders, essentially turning a publicly traded stock into a proxy for Bitcoin exposure. Mallers previously gained prominence as the CEO of Strike, a Bitcoin payments company.
What this means for investors
Bitcoin’s trajectory over the past two years has been defined by its slow absorption into the traditional financial system. The approval of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US opened the floodgates for institutional money. Companies adding Bitcoin to their balance sheets became a recognizable playbook.
Twenty One Capital’s debut under the XXI ticker gives public market investors another vehicle for Bitcoin exposure alongside existing ETFs and treasury companies.
The Nakamoto statue will eventually leave the NYSE. Picozzi’s series is described as a “disappearing” collection, meaning each installation is temporary.