Bitcoin Forum

I learned from the study conducted by the chainalysis that Five million bitcoins (one third of available supply) is controlled by the 1,000 largest long term investors, 7.4 million in total long-term investment. It is also known that at least 2.3 million bitcoins have been lost. The remaining 7.3 million available are used for speculation and transactions by services, such as exchanges, 4 million are not yet mined.

Here are the six largest bitcoin holders:

1. Satoshi Nakamoto - 1 000 000 bitcoins, which are still untouchable. Corrected by  BrewMaster  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=803757):” An estimate not facts. so it cannot be accurate”

2. Roger Ver — about 300 00, which he managed to hold since 2011. Corrected by  Kakmakr  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374061): “Roger Ver said he sold most of his coins”

3. Mt.Gox - 166 000 bitcoins, 34 000 of them were recently sold collapsing the market severely. Corrected by  Kakmakr  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374061): “Most of the Mt Gox coins are being sold now”

4. FBI — they confiscated 144,000 bitcoins from Silk Road. Corrected by  Kakmakr  (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=374061): “Silkroad coins were sold on auction to private dealers”

5. Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss - brothers who owned the idea of Facebook creation, they bought Bitcoins for 11$ million in 2013, when the price was $ 120 per coin. The money for the purchase they seized from the founder of Facebook — Mark Zuckerberg.

6. Tim Draper - bought 30 000 bitcoins in 2014.

Those who got early in the game has a high chance of having thousands of bitcoin on their arsenals, especially if they haven't sold any yet. Interestingly, the numbers of the pioneer investors and enthusiasts has since dwindled, and the wealth has been distributed to the elites of today's age, with only a few percent reaching out the average Joe's and the minnows of the sea. We really can't do anything about the distribution since we don't have enough spending power to buy bitcoins to ourselves, whereas the rich can buy how many bitcoins they want and be richer still.

I think that it's going to be similar to wealth in any other categories, only the upper 1% own more that 90% of the wealth, wouldn't surprise me if bitcoin is similar to that

supply is 17 million. 5/17= 0.29 not one third (just nitpicking though)
and i can't help but notice the numbers you quoted don't even amass to 2 million let alone 5.

i would love to see a list of these 1000 investors and the real evidence that the coins belong to each of them....

now i am confused. you said 5 million now you say 7.4? what am i missing here.

wrong. it is NOT known.
there are a lot of different guesses about it and each of them come up with a different number some small and some way bigger than this.

an estimate not facts. so it can not be accurate.

you started this by calling them "long term investors" how did these two end up being "investors"?

Those aren't the largest holders. They're some of the largest holders. We don't have a precise number of their holdings. Satoshi's 1 million, for example, is a product of speculation more than anything. No one knows how much he actually controls. The FBI are also planning on getting rid of their holdings, or they might have already.

There's no hard data for distribution because anyone can have any number of wallets, and no sane large holder will tell anyone how much they actually own. All we know for sure is the number of coins that have been mined, and the number of what's left to mine. We don't even know the precise number in circulation.

With bitcoin, this will not work. If you keep your coins you can not take them away. In Fiat is inflation which destroys the reserves of people and enables those who controlled the flow of Fiat to always stay on top. The choice is yours. You can never sell your bitcoins and maybe in a few decades to become one of the major owners of bitcoins.

nice

Most of the Mt Gox coins are being sold now and the Silkroad coins were sold on auction to private dealers. Roger Ver said he sold most of his coins, but I seriously doubt it, because he is so full of shit. He did not have to sell his coins to buy Bitcoin Crash, because he got it for free, when the coin forked.  ::)

I do not disagree that there are a lot of early coiners that still have a large chuck of the coins though.  ::)

Yeah came here just to say that the Gox coins are indeed being sold and the Silkroad coins already have been sold.
I also doubt Ver sold all of his coins, but he might have sold the majority.

Shouldn't the list include some of the current exchanges? Or would they not be in the top 5?

Tanks for the constrictive comment, it would be my pleasure to answer it:

You mean the "six largest bitcoin holders don't even amass to 2 million "?  that is the biggest known bitcoins holders that I found in the net, I am sure that there might be bigger holders, but their identity is unknown, I added them just as an interesting fact to know.



One thousand it is the investors which has big amounts of bitcoins in their wallets, they have got 5 million, the rest 2,4 million belongs to small investors, that are holding a little amounts of BTC.



I did not know that, you mean that there in no one address with 1 000 000 bitcoins on it? There is many, which thought to belong to Satoshi?


As a said, I added them because I thought that it is interesting to know.

Thanks for your comment, I did not Know that, especially new thing to me is that most of the Mt Gox coins are being sold now, because I have read some recent article that said about only 34 000 Mt Gox's BTC was sold out, I will search for that information and correct it. If it is true thou it is very great thing, because the dip might be over soon.


I'll correct that.


And that, thanks again.

I do not think that they should be added, because money aren’t theirs, they belong to the traders. But "belong to the traders" it is also might be questionable due to the history of exchanges hacks :)

thank you very much for this

ok that clarifies things. but now the problem is that among those 1000 you have no way of knowing who owns what. i may possess 100,000BTC but i spread them around. 10,000 on different exchanges to manipulate the market (so the exchange cold storages should show a higher price) 10000 in a business i run. the rest i spread among multiple addresses so that nobody knows any better.

or the opposite, i run a business (like Coinbase) and i handle hundreds of thousands of accounts with a lot of bitcoin. i put them in one cold storage address. am i a holder in that 1000 you mentioned?
how do you differentiate these two?

yes. it would have been easy if that were true :D
what happened is that we know Satoshi was mining bitcoin from day 1 and continued doing it for a long while. so some people started calculating like this:
(50BTC block reward * 144 block/day * X days) - (the coins that others were mining) = 1 million BTC
we don't know how long he mined, we don't know who else was mining and how much so the result is a guess at best.