This might be of interest here.

Distribution of bitcoin ownership by # of coins.

Corrected.

Perhaps you send your proposal as a table for all to see


In Finnish forums it is vehemently opposed that Satoshi even has mined the coins. I can't see why and by what grounds it should be opposed... I think Sergio's analysis is very clear in this matter, even measuring in 0.1% accuracy that Satoshi has 980k coins.


Corrected my usage.


DPR is not known to have spent much money. I think it cannot be assumed that 400-500k has just been lost in the span of only 2 years.

This assumes that the figure FBI published (600k total revenue to the site during its existence) is correct. But I thought they extracted it from SR own database. In my understanding these are commissions against which there are essentially no costs.

Until there is some evidence to the contrary, I would be inclined to use 500k as DPR figure. Very eager to hear thoughts?


If your estimate is correct, the bitcoin holding is even more top-heavy than in my calculation. Since you will have to add 100 holders in between 10-100k (100*30k) = 3.0 million to the equation.

Therefore all smaller holders would have <5 million, combined. Show me the results as a table!


Does anyone have the table for all addresses that have a balance, grouped similarly as here? It might give quite good clues: if we take a sample of people holding different amounts of bitcoins, and then they post their data on how it resides in different addresses, we can estimate the "conversion function" on how to convert the distribution table of addresses to the distribution table of holders!


This is the place to post them

Extremely bullish! According to this metric, the public in the west has no part in this rally, and can therefore only become a part of it (fueling the rally) or skipping it (rally continues however China sees fit).

The public does not have bitcoins to sell, they are in very tight hands already.

I so feel you. I also sold BTC1,000 a month ago   Luckily I came to the party so late, I haven't had time to squander any large holdings as I never had any.

But although surprising, it seems that with our remaining stash of BTC1,000 we both fit into Bitcoin top-1000  

I would like to have some information from the blockchain to sharpen the analysis.. How many of the 2009-6/2010 coins are still in original addresses? Some percentage of the ones not belonging to Satoshi are likely lost.

Is it realistic to assume 4 million people have fractional bitcoin holdings? Does anyone know such people or is Bitcoin still totally in the hands of very few? Do we only have the about 100,000 holders who hold minimum USD 1,000 worth? Worldwide?

This is in very early stage. The only way for bitcoin to accommodate 1 million people willing to invest $1,000, is for the pyramid to stay where it is, but Bitcoin's value goes up 10-fold and therefore the "owning bitcoins worth $1,000 cut-off" goes down one bracket. It has already done so many times in the past, to accommodate people like me.

No need to clutter this one any more

Analysis on bitcoin wealth distribution by the size of holding.

"Far more" holders there cannot be. I know personally several people that have more than BTC1,000. The mean of their holdings is significantly higher than that. I don't know exact figures because everybody wants to retain privacy, but my estimate is BTC4,000. To reach a mean of BTC4,000, we might have for example 4 people, one owning BTC10k, and the rest BTC3k, BTC2k and BTC1k, respectively. The large holders raise the mean significantly.

To drive in the point, if all the bitcoins are divided equally to people who have BTC1,000, there would still be less than 12,000 such people, since there is less than 12 million bitcoins! But since many own much more, assuming mean of BTC4k, this actually leaves us with only 3,000 people!! I agree that it is shockingly few. And this assumes that nobody owns anything in between BTC0.00000001 and BTC1,000, which is clearly incorrect.

The values in the table are my current guesses and now it is up to the community to develop them.

What we need to make this analysis more accurate, is to gain answers to the following:

- Does Satoshi have access to the "backbone miner" keys or are they lost?
- What is the likely stash DPR controls
- How many individuals have BTC100,000+ holdings in addition to the previous
- How many bitcoin investors there are in total.

The gaps are rather easy to fill with the law of large numbers, and probability distribution. Of course we need to reach consensus which one to use!



Edit. Original estimate archived (moved from OP):

22. Oct 2013:

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
100	BTC10k+	5.5M
900	BTC1k-10k	2.9M
5000	BTC100-1k	1.6M
31k	BTC10-100	1.0M
167k	BTC1-10	0.5M
1M	BTC0.1-1	0.3M
3M	BTC0-0.1	0.0M

Total: 11.8M bitcoins, 4.2M owners
80,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC5 or more).



ADD2: First consensus estimate:

26. Oct 2013

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
50	BTC10k+	2.9M
1100	BTC1k-10k	3.1M
12k	BTC100-1k	3.3M
58k	BTC10-100	1.8M
110k	BTC1-10	0.4M
110k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
57k	BTC0-0.1	0.0M

Total: 11.5M bitcoins, 350k owners
120,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC5 or more).

Changes from previous estimate:
- Bitcoin total number adjusted to 11.5M to account for lost coins
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoin users to account for the assumption that few people would play with stashes that are <$10 in value, and other evidence pointing to a lower number
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoins owned by the highest bracket due to the lack of evidence that there are many large holders. As this is a base case model, nefarious premine schemes are not assumed without proof. Sorry for falling into that initially.
- Number of people in each bracket behaves according to binomial distribution as found in another data.

TL;DR:  As a result of analyzing the "Mt.Gox leak", the number of bitcoin holders is likely 1.0 millions. Of these,
* the 400 bitcoin millionaires with at least BTC2,000 hold 40% of bitcoins.
* 100,000 owners with BTC10-BTC2,000 ($5,000-$1,000,000) hold 50% of the bitcoins.
* 900,000 owners have a holding of BTC0.002-BTC10, valued at $1-$5,000, and hold 10% of the bitcoins

This is NOT a largest addresses/wallets -list, we are talking about largest owners here. An owner can have many wallets, and a wallet can have many addresses.



22. Apr 2014

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
70	BTC10k+	3.6M
930	BTC1k-10k	2.2M
13k	BTC100-1k	3.0M
85k	BTC10-100	2.3M
250k	BTC1-10	0.8M
340k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
230k	BTC0.01-0.1	0.0M
90k	BTC0.002-0.01	0.0M

Total: 12.2M bitcoins (0.5M bitcoins assumed lost)

The changes from previous estimate:

- Total number of holders revised down from 2.0 million to 1.0 million. This did not change much in the distribution of coins. If new users are added, the large holders do sell according to an experimentally derived rate of 17% per doubling in price, but some newish holders also add to their positions. All-new entrants can come to any bracket, because no amount of coins is yet too expensive to buy. The perceived static totals of the analysis hide the fact that Bitcoin trade is quite brisk and the people who consist of a bracket do change all the time.

- Number of 10k+ holders recalculated because we now know better the average number of coins in each bracket (thanks to Mt.Gox data). So the large holders still have the same number of coins in total, but there appears to be more of the holders.

- Same for 1k+ and 100+. More people but approx the same number of total coins.

- 10+ category turned out to be larger than previously estimated. The Mt.Gox data gave us the confidence to use a steeper j parameter, which means a more "equitable" distribution with more coins in the middle brackets.

- 1+ category remained intact, and the fractional categories were significantly sized down. The lower threshold of "owner" was also raised to BTC0.002 because of the decline in price.

- Number of Bitcoin millionaires at this price ($500) is about 400. This means that only 400 people worldwide can raise a $million by selling bitcoins, but about 30,000,000 people can invest a $million to buy bitcoins (without going into debt).

- The Bitcoin millionaires command about 4.9 million bitcoins, which is 40% of all bitcoins. The control of world's gold and fiat currency is more centralized with a smaller number of individuals controlling higher percentage.




Earlier estimate of 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.


Earlier estimate of 3. Dec 2013

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
47	BTC10k+	3.5M
880	BTC1k-10k	2.6M
10k	BTC100-1k	3.0M
63k	BTC10-100	1.8M
210k	BTC1-10	0.6M
350k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
350k	BTC0.01-0.1	0.0M
210k	BTC0.001-0.01	0.0M

Total: 11.6M bitcoins (0.5M bitcoins assumed lost)

1,200,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1 (BTC0.001 or more)
280,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC1 or more), up from 120,000 last month
930 people own bitcoin that are valued at more than $1 million (BTC1,000 or more)
1 person owns bitcoins that are valued at more than $1 billion (Satoshi, estimated to be BTC980,000)

Changes from previous month:
- Bitcoin total number adjusted to account for increase in money supply
- Thoroughly re-engineered the number of bitcoin users from original data of the userbases of several services + blockchain usage. This shows that the last month estimate was probably too small, and perhaps 50% of the growth in number of users can be attributed to correction of a previous underestimate.
- Corrected the highest bracket a little bit (BTC0.6M ) upwards because it was over-corrected downwards last time. Number of holders in this category went down a little but we have better estimate of the holdings. As this is a base case model, we do not assume large, completely anonymous entities without at least circumstantial evidence of their holdings.
- Number of people in each bracket behaves according to binomial distribution as found in another data with the parameters: total=1.2 million users, highest bracket=fixed, #of_coins=fixed.

As a result:
- Bracket 1,000-10,000 saw the greatest loss -20%, bracket 100-1,000 lost 10%. Sub-BTC10 holdings gained a lot.


Earlier estimate of 26. Oct 2013

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
50	BTC10k+	2.9M
1100	BTC1k-10k	3.1M
12k	BTC100-1k	3.3M
58k	BTC10-100	1.8M
110k	BTC1-10	0.4M
110k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
57k	BTC0-0.1	0.0M

Total: 11.5M bitcoins, 350k owners
120,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC5 or more).

Changes from previous estimate:
- Bitcoin total number adjusted to 11.5M to account for lost coins
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoin users to account for the assumption that few people would play with stashes that are <$10 in value, and other evidence pointing to a lower number
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoins owned by the highest bracket due to the lack of evidence that there are many large holders. As this is a base case model, nefarious premine schemes are not assumed without proof. Sorry for falling into that initially.
- Number of people in each bracket behaves according to binomial distribution as found in another data.


Thread is self-moderated to retain readability; user content will be amalgamated to the table and possibly deleted. If this happens, don't take it personally.

Seconded.

I will open up a new thread for this, and use community-researched numbers as starting points. It is quite enlightening, I promise.


We have to remember that sauna itself was not the problem, the problem was that the hotel did not take our security demands (basically: no access by hotel personnel except by our authorization) at all seriously - same thing happened in the subsequent security room suite #30.

I do understand that hotels like to have access to their own premises, but I do not understand, why they promise and do not deliver. It is not like they did not know, or were not aware. The negotiation concerning the deal between us and the hotel for the summit took several days, and even their CEO paid a visit beforehand.

During the event, our special requirements were only 2 A4-sheets, were given to be delivered to everyone in the hotel, and were posted even here in this forum.

There are many things that I don't understand and on top of the list is still, how could the best hotel in Finland fail so badly

I had no intention to rant about that old stuff.. sorry. Just want you to know that anything can happen in a bitcoin meetup if the meetup is expected to have some actual content.

I propose that single men pay double. Ladies are free. This encourages a more balanced gender distribution.

Edit: There is always room to put it nicer.

A "bit" off topic, forgive me for that.. But it is important info for megaparty organizer. If 1000 bitcoin richest will attend, and each pays BTC1, you will have $1M to spend. But what goes unnoticed is that according to the above info, the 1000 people will each have BTC1000, and be already quite rich even in dollar terms ($1M per person, minimum), and likely to want quality this and that.

Also the conference security needs to be in top shape. The participants have a combined net worth in $billions, which is 50% of all bitcoins. Germany has a rather dull image, but is pretty much the place where you can count on the backend to be organized properly

+1.

There are only so many bitcoins...

In 2010, you could effortlessly buy BTC10,000. But only 2100 people will be able to hold it.
In 2011-2012, you could buy BTC1,000. But only 21,000 people will be able to.
In 2013, most can buy BTC100. Still, that is only 210,000 people.

There are more than a million bitcoin users now, so obviously most hold less than BTC100.

Once the bitcoin userbase grows to one billion, only 21 million at most can hold even a single bitcoin. It does not take a scientist to see that BTC1 is very valuable, and a stash of BTC100 bought in 2013 is immensely valuable.

More statistics of bitcoin ownership. Warning: simple math and advanced logic.

Situation now:

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
100	BTC10k+	5.5M
900	BTC1k-10k	2.9M
5000	BTC100-1k	1.6M
31k	BTC10-100	1.0M
167k	BTC1-10	0.5M
1M	BTC0.1-1	0.3M
3M	BTC0-0.1	0.0M

Total: 11.8M bitcoins, 4.2M owners

Situation later:

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
63	BTC10k+	3M
1000	BTC1k-10k	3M
10k	BTC100-1k	3M
100k	BTC10-100	3M
1M	BTC1-10	3M
10M	BTC0.1-1	3M
600M	BTC0-0.1	3M

Total: 21M bitcoins, 611M owners


Of course the numbers in ownership brackets can be off by a factor of 2, but it is mathematically impossible for them to be off by a factor of 10! Therefore we conclude that by buying and holding BTC1, you are forever guaranteed to be among the top 1 million bitcoin owners, regardless of how cheap you managed to buy it, or how valuable it gets in the nearest years.

Iirc, it takes $10M+ to get to the top 1 million in dollar wealth, so we are talking about royal money.

There are definitely 13 year olds with BTC100 or more. Since there are about 6,000 people with BTC100. I would be more wary for 17-year olds who were 13 at the time when coins could be mined 500 per day

Bitcoin is exactly what we need: as long as its value goes up and/or is unstable, it is impossible to have any loaning. Afterwards the option to withdraw your bitcoins from banks and put them in paper wallets, forces the interest rate up. The result is a low level of very healthy loaning.

The rpietila supernode is dissolved now. But unless the run to $1000 happens really soon, we hopefully manage to re-establish it in the coming months. Then I will select the most prestigious occasion where to celebrate $1000, or organize my own. Last time I organized something it did not go really well so perhaps it is better to attend somebody else's party...

At present I hardly have the 5 people in my organization that I need, in order to travel anywhere at all.

My guess for hitting $1000 is April 2014.

Pardon me for reverting to supernodespeak prematurely. I closed my public presence down in June, with the conviction that the time and my ideas did not yet match, even promising to continue only after Bitcoin hits $1400. So what happens now? Not even 1/2 year has passed and bitcoiners are doing the stuff that was so hard to get done in May. Nobody is questioning the viability of having a 1000-people party with $1 Million budget!! I mean, wtf, a few months ago I did not even dream of this and still got ridiculed.

I am so much in.

Touché. But it is equally true that the mighty host of bears that abounded after the crash, has all but disappeared by now also.

In a sense, it's not going truly all-in if you don't wager in all your future earning potential...

If somebody has as much money as I do, but is young and healthy and with a good diploma (none of which I possess), his earning potential is much higher than mine. Therefore it makes sense to put a higher percentage of current wealth into crypto.

Many of the ideas make me smile from peaceful satisfaction.

If you are 100% sure of Bitcoin, plus 100% sure of your government, and 100% sure of everything, please by all means skip PM's totally. But why would you, as it does not hurt to own a tiny emergency stash. Most of us have at least some insurance for house for example. Hopefully this analogy will make it easier to understand why going 100% all in with anything is just not smart.

People including me think that I am cocksure, yet it means that I am only about 25% sure that Bitcoin will take over fiat in a grand way, 75% sure that I know the intention of my government, and 10% sure of everything. If in your heart you are even less sure about things, do not forget the sound math of gambling theory.