Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner

[pereira4]

Could you all be so kind as to only discuss the Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner here, and use any or all of the "Distribution of bitcoin wealth by address" threads for that purpose.

The "distribution by address" data does not give any useful indication about the owners, or if you believe it does, start with explaining how the situation has changed from the first 20 pages when it did not.

But as far as I know, it's impossible to know any data "by owner", we can only do guesstimating on "by address" and then speculate about who owns what.

There will never be a way to properly know any of this, what do we know is that the distribution is super unbalanced, but as time goes by and whales start getting scared, they will sell and those coins will go to more hands.

[rpietila]

But as far as I know, it's impossible to know any data "by owner", we can only do guesstimating on "by address" and then speculate about who owns what.

There will never be a way to properly know any of this, what do we know is that the distribution is super unbalanced, but as time goes by and whales start getting scared, they will sell and those coins will go to more hands.

Just read the first few hundred posts of this thread about the methodology first, and if discussion from that basis is uninteresting, continue in one of the myriad of other threads dedicated to other methodologies!

[RealBitcoin]

Could you all be so kind as to only discuss the Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner here, and use any or all of the "Distribution of bitcoin wealth by address" threads for that purpose.

The "distribution by address" data does not give any useful indication about the owners, or if you believe it does, start with explaining how the situation has changed from the first 20 pages when it did not.

Ok, no problem, when are you going to publish your analysis for 2016, your latest analysis is for 2014 which is pretty obsolete.

I`d like to see a fresh updated study on it. Thanks!

[Zuminest]

recent estimates has shown that majority of people with substantial shares spreads their btc wealth across multiple addresses. the wealth disparity in bitcoin may not be as extreme as the address data would suggest..
 in fact it's likely that the top 1% of the btc holders only own around 78% of all btc..

[rpietila]

Ok, no problem, when are you going to publish your analysis for 2016, your latest analysis is for 2014 which is pretty obsolete.

I`d like to see a fresh updated study on it. Thanks!

The methodology is created in this thread. There is nothing there where "I" am needed. No proprietary parts involved. Just do it yourself!

[Ardenyham]

I don't think anyone has an authority to distribute coins belonging to someone, Even if it's an inactive address it still has an owner and therefore should not be looked at in this way.. That's one of the criteria of BTC i.e no central authority and distributing the coins serves as a central authority IMO.

[RealBitcoin]

Ok, no problem, when are you going to publish your analysis for 2016, your latest analysis is for 2014 which is pretty obsolete.

I`d like to see a fresh updated study on it. Thanks!

The methodology is created in this thread. There is nothing there where "I" am needed. No proprietary parts involved. Just do it yourself!

I`m too lazy, i hope somebody else does a list for 2016

I don't think anyone has an authority to distribute coins belonging to someone, Even if it's an inactive address it still has an owner and therefore should not be looked at in this way.. That's one of the criteria of BTC i.e no central authority and distributing the coins serves as a central authority IMO.

Wtf are you talking about? Nobody is distributing coins here, we just analyze how they are distributed.

[JayJuanGee]

Ok, no problem, when are you going to publish your analysis for 2016, your latest analysis is for 2014 which is pretty obsolete.

I`d like to see a fresh updated study on it. Thanks!

The methodology is created in this thread. There is nothing there where "I" am needed. No proprietary parts involved. Just do it yourself!

Other people may be able to do it; however, you have the skills to be able to give us an update with both persuasive abilities and to clearly conform with your earlier methodology, and even maybe to improve upon it and show various weaknesses that you have since considered.


On the other hand, I understand why you may not want to contribute to such - because likely you are both too much conflicted with your investment in Monero (accordingly your interests have shifted to pumping that and attempting to get rich on some new coins that have pumping potential), and there may likely be several additional weaknesses in your methodology and flaws that may come to light, based on a true attempt to update with new information and a larger (and probably more sophisticated audience).

In essence, it is too bad that your interests have shifted because you certainly had been capable (when you were more focused on bitcoin) to be able to provide insight on this topic to a lot of us readers, including myself.

[RealBitcoin]

Rpietila please update your estimations in the OP to reflect 2016 data.

I am ultra curious how the current distribution looks like. You would do a great service to the bitcoin community by continuing this research.

I`m already working on a spinoff from this, but you are a bigger expert on the issue so I would like your research better.

[rpietila]

there may likely be several additional weaknesses in your methodology and flaws that may come to light, based on a true attempt to update with new information and a larger (and probably more sophisticated audience).

So far, the criticism towards the methodology has been incredibly low standard. I have yet to find even one critic who understands what I have done (which should not be too difficult, after all it is written as clearly as I can manage, in English, in this thread!  )

This is a 100% mathematic, parametrized, generic, model for modelling naturally occurring distributions. It can be wrong if the phenomenon to be modelled is not a good fit for the model (see thread that it is), or it can be off if the parameters selected are off (they cannot be too much off because of the interrelations between them, the possible range of parameters is very very small actually, even if we could not have any knowledge of the total number of owners (the only real unknown in the whole model since both the marketcap and the number of coins are knowns).

So I am not too scared of the sophisticated audience shooting holes in the model, since the assumptions they must subscribe to before attempting to criticise my model are untenable. If they have a better idea of the values of the individual parameters, they may be right as well as I, since the truth about those values remains unprovable forever, and the system is dynamic as well.

[rpietila]

Rpietila please update your estimations in the OP to reflect 2016 data.

I am ultra curious how the current distribution looks like. You would do a great service to the bitcoin community by continuing this research.

I`m already working on a spinoff from this, but you are a bigger expert on the issue so I would like your research better.

Can you give me your idea of the constraints?
- # of bitcoins
- marketcap
- size of largest holding
- presence of oversized secret and manipulative holdings (eg banking cartel 2 million coins)
- smallest attributable holding
- total number of owners/holders above the threshold
- if only cold holdings count or exchanges as well
- how is shorting attributed

Since it is some time since the last one, I am probably at a disadvantage to answer these. The model is somewhat simple fit when these are discussed first.

[RealBitcoin]

Since it is some time since the last one, I am probably at a disadvantage to answer these. The model is somewhat simple fit when these are discussed first.

Actually let's just think of another logic.

It's pretty impossible to calculate the % of ownership without identifying most addresses, instead let's take a different approach.


Let's analyze it from the transaction side. The methodology would be the following

1)Pick a period, let's say the past 2 years

2)Get all transactions from there and put it in a database including the (amount moved - fee), the list of input and output addresses

3) Filter out transactions where 1 input address sends coins to 1 output address
Then consider the input address different owner from the output (because this was most likely someone sending money to somebody else)

4) Filter out transactions that had multiple inputs and 1 output.
Then consider all the input addresses as 1 owner, and the output as separate owner (because most likely this was a person spending from his wallet)

5) Filter out transactions with multiple inputs and multiple outputs
Then consider all addresses involved in it as separate owners (because most likely this was a joint transaction)

6) Filter out transactions that had 1 input and multiple outputs
Then consider all addresses as separate owners (this was most likely a mass payment system)

7) Compare the info you have with the addresses that havent participated in transactions in the past 2 years, and see if you can filter out some more

Group all suspected owners, and compare them with eachother based on each testing, and filter out multiple addresses of the same owner.

9) You should have a pretty good estimation now about probable owners in the past 2 year and estimate the bitcoin flow


This methodology is not 100% accurate, but it should give you some estimations about bitcoin ownership distribution, and it can be tied to a timeframe.

Sure this methodology can be polished, but as a rough estimation it would work like this.

It needs good programming skills and a fast PC though to run through all data from the blockchain !

[rpietila]

This methodology is not 100% accurate

In an attempt to not sound haughty, your methodology relies on a large number of unproven and unprovable assumptions, whereas mine relies on a framework of known and undisputable constraints, which bound an event space of interrelated parameters with a tight possible range of values.

Ping me if you make a thread for your idea

[RealBitcoin]

This methodology is not 100% accurate

In an attempt to not sound haughty, your methodology relies on a large number of unproven and unprovable assumptions, whereas mine relies on a framework of known and undisputable constraints, which bound an event space of interrelated parameters with a tight possible range of values.

Ping me if you make a thread for your idea

It's assumptions but what better do you have?

A more accurate method would be to go to big bitcoin services and parse through all users and see how much they have in account by the input addresses and ingoing transactions.

Fore example satoshidice is probably the biggest casino where most bitcoin went through at some point.

Grab their deposit addresses, and check every transaction input address that was associated with it, it should give you some info.

[ByzantineGeneral]

Could you all be so kind as to only discuss the Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner here, and use any or all of the "Distribution of bitcoin wealth by address" threads for that purpose.

The "distribution by address" data does not give any useful indication about the owners, or if you believe it does, start with explaining how the situation has changed from the first 20 pages when it did not.

I would be interested in your comments about this new model of the distribution of Bitcoin wealth.

Results:

http://www.blocklink.info/distributions.html

Model:

https://medium.com/@BambouClub/are-you-in-the-bitcoin-1-a-new-model-of-the-distribution-of-bitcoin-wealth-6adb0d4a6a95

[Collinslevi]

ARK Invest & Coinbase estimate “roughly seven million people around
the world hold a material amount of bitcoin” & “Coinbase stores nearly half a billion dollars of bitcoin–more than any other provider in the world”.
The Android “Bitcoin Wallet” app has been installed “1–5 million times”, Coinbase’s Android app has been installed “500k — 1 million times”, and Mycelium’s Android app & Blockchain.info’s Android app have each been installed “100k — 500k times”.
Many bitcoin are stuck in addresses with lost private keys — another extremely area of analysis full of murkiness & unknowns. A great article written over 2 years ago by John W. Ratcliff proposed as high as 30% of then existing bitcoin were “zombies”, & the still unknown Satoshi

[Cassius]

This article is also well worth a read: https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

It makes the case (which many others had assumed but that had not been proven) that Satoshi mined around 1 million BTC.

Like others, I had assumed that Satoshi may well have discarded some or all of the keys to these wallets. However, this post makes that seem unlikely:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

The question of whether he owns those coins or not therefore comes down to whether he is still alive.

[explorer]

This article is also well worth a read: https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

It makes the case (which many others had assumed but that had not been proven) that Satoshi mined around 1 million BTC.

Like others, I had assumed that Satoshi may well have discarded some or all of the keys to these wallets. However, this post makes that seem unlikely:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

The question of whether he owns those coins or not therefore comes down to whether he is still alive.

it would be amusing to watch those coins move to a new wallet...  Followed by an epic dump of BCH 

[RAJSALLIN]

This article is also well worth a read: https://bitslog.wordpress.com/2013/04/17/the-well-deserved-fortune-of-satoshi-nakamoto/

It makes the case (which many others had assumed but that had not been proven) that Satoshi mined around 1 million BTC.

Like others, I had assumed that Satoshi may well have discarded some or all of the keys to these wallets. However, this post makes that seem unlikely:

Sigh... why delete a wallet instead of moving it aside and keeping the old copy just in case?  You should never delete a wallet.

The question of whether he owns those coins or not therefore comes down to whether he is still alive.

it would be amusing to watch those coins move to a new wallet...  Followed by an epic dump of BCH 

Or an epic dump of BTC. BOOM

[borislt]

@rpietila,Thanks for getting a man about it and not deleting my put up.Stage taken, I ought to provide evidence and not just view.Many thanks for all your effort in collecting all this info.