Is the majority of Bitcoin owned by relatively few investors?
Monday, May 3, 2021
By Austin Tannenbaum
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YES
According to Bloomberg, around 2% of Bitcoin addresses own 95% of the cryptocurrency Bitcoin.
The cryptocurrency analyst Glassnode offers the caveat that “one address can hold funds from...millions of users.” In an alternative measure based on Bitcoin ownership brackets, Glassnode found that:
- The largest 2,220 investors (>1,000 Bitcoins) accounted for about a third of the Bitcoin supply.
- 11,500 medium-sized investors (100-1,000 Bitcoins) accounted for about 18%.
- 643,000 small investors (1-100 Bitcoins) accounted for about 22%.
- 22 million "shrimp" investors (<1 Bitcoin) accounted for about 5%.
- The remainder was accounted for by 51,000 Bitcoin miners and 15 exchanges.
While noting that both small and large Bitcoin investment are on the rise, Glassnode concluded that “around 2% of network entities control 71.5% of all Bitcoin” in an upper-bound estimate.
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