Bitcoin Forum

The number of bitcoin holders has just surpassed 2 million mark! The growth is happening in the smaller holdings.

note: This is NOT based on blockchain analysis but is an independent methodology!!

Methodology and discussion of 27 Jan results (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316297.msg4779800#msg4779800).


27. Jan 2014

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
46	BTC10k+	3.6M
820	BTC1k-10k	2.4M
10k	BTC100-1k	2.8M
68k	BTC10-100	2.0M
250k	BTC1-10	0.8M
550k	BTC0.1-1	0.2M
690k	BTC0.01-0.1	0.0M
430k	BTC0.001-0.01	0.0M

Total: 11.8M bitcoins (0.5M bitcoins assumed lost)

There is less holders than before in the category of BTC70+. The number of holdings smaller than this increased.

The number of bitcoin millionaires, previously estimated 930, decreased to 790 (-15%). Their combined wealth is 5.9M bitcoins, which is 50% of all bitcoins.

Speculation not profitable?

What is interesting that during the downtrend, Bitcoin usercount has grown by 66%.

(Bitcoin's organic growth rate is 53% per 2 months, however)

Well with the current prices its kind of natural that small holders will increase since it's a lot more expensive now.

Good list btw

So, way less than 10k people are Bitcoin richer than me :D

Though this analysis is not completely true as many people, as I do, have Bitcoins in multiple wallets, exchanges etc..

Yeah, I have Bitcoin in Bitstamp, Kraken, Bitcoin Qt, Cryptsy, Primedice, and Dgex.

That holds true for most of the forum frequents :)

All of that was taken into consideration, as was the Pareto Principle, similarity to buyers of silver, etc.  Trust me, we went at this thing from as many angles as we could think of.  I, for one, believe it to be pretty accurate given that we kept coming up with similar numbers from different angles.

It'll even itself out over time. At least those 790 people can't print more Bitcoins at will.  :D

Interesting and probably accurate within 10-20%, but there are more 10-100 BTC owners for sure.
17BTC wallet ranks at 81K at http://btc.ondn.net/search, but should have rank significantly less than ~78K according to the table.

checking bitcoinrichlist.com/top100 positions 80 (also maybe 79) to 98 have the same last transaction in on Dec 25, 2013 11:26:40 PM. Each address holds about 10,000 coins.

So somebody owns about 180,000 coins = $145,800,000

Probably ArtForz, that dirty bugger.

Someone is trolling the top addresses by sending .000666 coins to them.

It certainly does not mean that each of those addresses are controlled by the same individual.

LOL.

Or not, don't generated unspent blocks all have their own address and are untraceable as long as they aren't spent?

the bitcoin wealth distribution will decrease as the value of each bitcoin goes up. This is because money has marginal utility like anything else does. It's why billionaires become philanthropists. When you have far more of something than you need, each unit of that thing becomes less valuable than the previous unit.  If you have everything in the world that you want except a good reputation, you will likely trade your money for a good reputation, even if you think it's being more productively used where it's at. It's called sanitizing your wealth and it's the smart move to protect yourself from envious people.

0.5m BTC lost is VERY conservative imo. I think it's way greater than that (4m+).

Did you think about those people wanting to spread their money on different exchanges, wallets (offline and online, for hodling and spending/exchanging/trading) plus people mining, having coins on a pool? I did spread my coins pretty much but dont own any less

I think that was the guy who claimed to have tracked down the Sheep Marketplace thief, but he had actually found a BTC-e wallet instead.

He thought that sending 666 satoshis to his wallet would mean that mixers don't work anymore.

World'st richest 85 people hold as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion - so your theory doesn't exactly apply to the real world. Also its much easier to grow your stash when you have shitloads of capital and the power/connections that come with it...

The current world elite is asinine and corrupt. Let's hope for a moment that bitcoin would rise to high value so quickly that many of the coins would still be in hands of the enlightened people.. even then we would not see that they willingly give up much of their wealth. Why should they, since surely they are the best guardians of their own money??

People only give out wealth during their lifetime if they think that the recipient can better utilize it. The reason that old, rich people put their money in foundations, is to ensure that it will be used for their favorite causes after death. The children would often see the world differently.

A positive thing with "greedy" high-balance holders is that bitcoins are valuable. Without them, the value would plummet to the level of altcoins.

The more valuable bitcoin is regarded by the rich, the more pricey it is, which means that everything denominated in bitcoins is cheap and get cheaper. This is how it should be and currently bitcoin is doing fine.

I don't expect that the number of people holding 50% of the bitcoins issued would go up significantly. These guys know what they do, and it is possible to buy yourself among them for $1M, which is chump change.
 

Ah, here we get to the meat of the matter. It DOES apply to the real world because it shows how income distribution is WORSE when ostensibly egalitarian governments interfere with the free market. Only with government tilting the playing field can concentrations of wealth reach those crazy levels. Bullshit tactics like graduated income taxes do very little when opposed to government monopoly power. Examples are patents, copyrights, and trademarks. Licenses and regulations create barriers to entry in most industries also.
How much would Bill gates have without anti "piracy" enforcement? What would Coca Cola be worth without it's trademarks?  What would books, movies and music make without copyrights? Copying isn't stealing. Making fake crimes makes some wealthy at the expense of many.

Thanks for your analysis.  :)

One thing isn't clear here, did the number decrease because some sold or because bitcoins declined in value? It might make more sense to just refer to the number of hodlers at each coin level rather than dollar level when tracking changes over time.

Im not disagreeing that it is government force (power/connections I was referring to) that is helping the rich get richer, but even widespread adoption of Bitcoin is not going to necessarily kill the government and its brand of rule by decree that seems to extend to every corner of the markets. Now if you're talking about a scenario where we have genuine 'free markets', then I can entertain your idea but even that goes against human nature and the greed that is instilled in each one of us, whether 'enlightened' or not.

I appreciate your feedback.

Absent coercion there is nothing wrong, nothing immoral or nothing unnatural in ultimate concentrations of wealth.

When there is no coercion, industrious people have the license to strive for more riches. Currently such license does not exist. One banker entity controls 80% of the largest companies and helds sway over most of the governments that collect 50% of the yearly produce, is in direct control of the military that equals the rest of the world combined, has perverted the laws in most countries to make decent and productive living impossible, and the media so that a tiny % of people have any idea of the woefulness of the situation.

In the world without coercion, the changes in bitcoin ownership happen slowly. The marketplace is very competitive so that you cannot make monopoly profits. Even if you had relatively many bitcoins (Satoshi), they don't disturb the market any more than the huge holds of gold disturb the gold market.

I mostly track the changes in coin levels, as you suggested.

The reason millionaires (defined as people owning bitcoins equivalent to purchasing power of $1 million) have a special place in my heart is that I believe they have the highest potential to become full-time bitcoin evangelists. So if the number of millionaires grows, the impact to the rest of the world will soon grow also.

Instead of seeing these 790 people with total bitcoin wealth of 5.9 million (USD 4.7 billion, $6M per pop) in a hostile way, we should embrace them, because they are every bit as crucial for bitcoin's success as the midsize holders and small holders, if not more. You can think of Bitcoin economy without millionaires - I would still be working and not posting here for example ;)

This analysis is fascinating; if not slightly scary. It kinda reminds me of the issues throughout history where a very select few hold most of the money. History has shown us what happens in many of these scenarios; but in this new paradigm, can we rebut history?

Admittedly, I understand that balances can still be achieved. Case in point: China owns a near monopoly in the rare earths market (used in much of the electronics market), but other countries have near monopolies on different segments too. Usually, the "damage" comes when powers work in concert. Nonetheless, there isn't inherently necessary. Unfortunately, human nature fails miserably at times...

What I find amazing is you need more than a 1000Bitcoins to be a millionnaire, it seems like a lot. When the dollar will crash (starting at end of 2014?2015?), having bitcoins will be pretty sweet and there will sadly be a lot more of $millionnaires

Heh, I was joking.   However, you're right, unless he consolidated them all into various address for easier offline storage, they would be strewn across a tonne of 50BTC wallets.  Has anybody heard from ArtForz recently?  Any speculation on how many coins he still holds?

But who cares about $ millionaires after hyperinflation?
Not the fiat value of bitcoin counts, the only important thing is purchasing power and that's not coupled with fiat.

Is our friend here, indeed Richard Branson - that Richard Branson of Virgin Atlantic?

Unless he lists the email as @virgin.com purely for jest, he probably is :)


Sir,

In the short term, what counts is the number of your bitcoins, because there is/will only be a certain number of them, regardless how useful/valuable they turn out a few years down the road. By grabbing as many as possible and holding through this "land grab" phase, you withhold the supply and also contribute towards their value increasing, which causes the existing bitcoin millionaires' position to increase in value, and gives them more leverage to develop the Bitcoin economy.

In the long term, what counts is the purchasing power of one bitcoin, because it can be posited that it is either quite low or really high, with no "most probable case" in between. In the "really high" case anyone who has even 1 bitcoin is set for life - there will never be more than 1 million people with more than 1 bitcoin at any one time, it is a corollary of the parameters of the distribution that this thread is all about.

Based on the above, what a rational person who wants Bitcoin to succeed should do, is to work as much as possible and buy as much bitcoins as possible until he cannot reasonably increase his position any more. Then quit his job and become full-time bitcoiner, to leverage both his knowledge of bitcoin, and his time, and his wealth, to make a great impact. This will be a symbiotic act, helping the next generation of bitcoiners and by this doing, protecting the continued appreciation of his own investment, even though the number of coins is in decline.

The dollar value of a bitcoin (or the value of a dollar) is not used except to communicate the values in "2014 units", to make the analysis a little more understandable for people with no mathematical analytic mindset.

If by continuing to work for fiat income I can increase my bitcoin wealth by at least 1 percent, I will probably continue to work. For example, if I hold 100 bitcoins and I can afford to buy 1 bitcoin per month at 800 dollars per bitcoin, I will continue to work. But if the price reaches 4000 dollars per bitcoin, my 800 dollar bitcoin investment would only increase my bitcoin wealth 0.2 percent, so I would not continue working for that wage. But if I only had 1 bitcoin now, 800 dollars per month would increase my bitcoin wealth 20 percent, so I would keep that job.

I would like to hear your thoughts on this.

#people = wallets?

No. Read the OP and the link there.

 

Beautiful!

If that's true, I am more than willing to accept even the tiniest donation of btc on 1Kg9cnA3yyP47s9pThy64M8uwyCqyCnZzT

Show some good reputation :)

I don't find it a good advice for someone to quit his job UNLESS he can do more things than working for sombebody else.

I've seen lots of cases when people quit their job to work for themselves and started getting up at 1pm, sipping coffee and reading press until 2pm and then working a bit (just a bit, 'cause hey, if you're your own boss, who can say something to you?).

They failed miserably. I find working for somebody else more relaxing, 9-18. When I'm working for myself, each day is a Syberian marathon. And my biggest problem is that when I'm working for myself, nobody's there to help. I'm a whole football team.

So, noobs, don't quit your job unless you can and want to do more.

Interesting topic. How was this derived? According to the table, about 329k people hold BTC1+

You bitcoin millionaires should start using your bitcoins for founding bitcoin startups immediately, and also massive amount of ads everywhere.
With all that money you may improve many things in bitcoin itself and related, use stuff like BitHub to encourage more development, or found academic researches.

Don't hold, distribute!

It is not possible to make a distribution with the current model, which would produce such a result. The parameters are there in the original thread (link in the OP). The number of people with BTC1+ will increase for some more time, and start to decrease after a while.

It's obvious that a portion of these 790 people have recently started using their wealth to keep the price stable on a few major exchanges.  Since the price of bitcoin is entirely confidence driven it is easy for the whales to sell anything over 800 and buy anything under 750.  It even generates a profit for them.  Indeed, it is the ONLY way to defend their holdings since they could never liquidate so many coins, and an unstable currency is ultimately worthless.

Almost two million people own all the bitcoins? Two million bitcoin users. Does anyone else find this figure high?

I mean I'd love to but it's a bit risky don't you think. It's still just an experiment..

Not really, there are over 1.1 million blockchain wallet users. And iirc there have been over 5 mill qt downloads. Add coinbase and a bunch of others, divide by users with multiple wallets, 2 million is possibly on the low side.

I mean only quit your job when you have cashed out at least $1M worth of bitcoins, and still keep the majority...  ;D

This is possible now for hundreds of people, but as the price rises, it will soon work out for thousands, 10000s etc.

How many Bitcoin Centers we have in the world now? NY, Montreal, Tel Aviv? I bet there'll be a hundred of them by Christmas.

Do what you like to do, then you'll never want to quit. :)

Hoping that growth continues. But I think it's well possible that we have to wait a bit longer for mass adoption. Accessibility atm is not at a level apt for the average joe.

Thanks for the insightful stats (even if speculative)!

ya.ya.yo!

Hold all your bitcoins, and soon you will need to quit.

I did when I became too rich and too busy to take care of my bitcoins, my mission in life and my job. At this point I could clearly keep only 2, so the job had to go.

You could be right, the price has clearly been extremely stable for a few weeks which is strange

So how many bitcoin do I need to own in order to be able to quit my job within the next 6 - 12 months?

I don't care about big houses, flash clothes or fancy cars, I just want a roof over my head, food on the table and all my free time to focus on music!

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It's mostly but not entirely confidence driven. I have at times looked at bitcoin purchases as similar to putting money in the collection plate at church. I was making a contribution to something I believed could make the world a better place, and if I happened to profit, that was just a bonus.