Bitcoin Distribution of Wealth Detailing the BTC Holdings of Wallet Addresses

[CryptoDomains]

franky1, it would appear if what you say is right (more mid to upper range accounts belong to people holding multiple accounts to cut up large accounts) that would actually make it worse.

Those numbers don't look good at first sight or cut up the way you mention either.

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[ashapasa]

is the concentration of bitcoin among a few people the reason for its high price.

I bet quite opposite, the more people using bitcoin, the higher value.
And I bet bitcoin is more evenly distributed now than one year ago.

true but only if it becomes a major currency. Right now if the OPs numbers are true its still very concentrated and whales can influence price in the short term, by hoarding and creating artificial scarcity.

[Abdussamad]

franky1, it would appear if what you say is right (more mid to upper range accounts belong to people holding multiple accounts to cut up large accounts) that would actually make it worse.

Those numbers don't look good at first sight or cut up the way you mention either.

Yeah exactly. We don't know how many addresses people have. But we do know that, excluding multi-sig addresses, an address belongs to one person or one organization.  So looking at this table it seems 100k addresses hold 96% of all bitcoins. If we assume, conservatively, that a person has 10 addresses that means just 10,000 entities own 96% of all bitcoins. I bet the real number is even lower than that. Maybe just a few hundred.

[CryptoDomains]

Exactly!

I am starting to wonder what kind of game this was or is...satoshi is such a humble, secretive and noble man since he hasn't spent any coins and he gave us this new form of currency, ya sure.

So far he and a handful at best of others have not really given the currency freedom to make significant impact, why, time will tell the real plan. And no social media hype, news and a few dollars in the pockets of a few is not significant impact.

[nanonano]

We don't know how many addresses people have. But we do know that, excluding multi-sig addresses, an address belongs to one person or one organization.

No, we don't, not in the sense that we could say "there must  be one person that (thinks that he) owns all the coins in this one address". The Mt Gox incident showed very clearly that a lot of people (far more than I imagined) are totally ready to give control of their coins to some other entity that typically will consolidate the coins to a small number of addresses.

[odolvlobo]

We don't know how many addresses people have. But we do know that, excluding multi-sig addresses, an address belongs to one person or one organization.

No, we don't, not in the sense that we could say "there must  be one person that (thinks that he) owns all the coins in this one address". The Mt Gox incident showed very clearly that a lot of people (far more than I imagined) are totally ready to give control of their coins to some other entity that typically will consolidate the coins to a small number of addresses.

Yes. Many of the largest addresses are owned by exchanges and hold bitcoins for thousands of people.

[klmist]

Very interesting chart!  Where did it come from?  It would be nice to see a new chart every month to see how wallet distribution is changing.

You can see it daily at http://www.klmist.com/keysreport.html

[misterbigg]

It seems that while we are focusing on the asymmetric distribution of bitcoin, everyone is ignoring the histogram that shows the distribution  of population size relative to their overall contributions to the quality of life and standard of living of others.

[double.o]

This is an interesting topic, I am just not convinced that BTC's wealth distribution is going to be problematic in the years ahead, the full explanation is here:

http://bitcoinreflections.com/2014/02/wealth-distribution-and-bitcoin/

thx

[keithers]

Very interesting chart!  Where did it come from?  It would be nice to see a new chart every month to see how wallet distribution is changing.

I found it on one of the financial webpages.   I should have sourced it, but I forgot to when I posted it, and now I don't remember where I got it.   I definitely did not crunch the numbers myself...

[Alley]

To me it tells me I'm still an early adopter.  Im in the richest 1% and only 100k or less people have more btc then me.  And I only bought 10 btc for fun.

[odolvlobo]

To me it tells me I'm still an early adopter.  Im in the richest 1% and only 100k or less people have more btc then me.  And I only bought 10 btc for fun.

You don't know that. You are looking at statistics for addressess, and not people. Because a single address can hold bitcoins for multiple people and a single person can control many addresses, All you know is that there must be less than 1.25 million people (12.5 MBTC / 10) with more bitcoins than you.

Your Bitcoins	Maximum Number of People With More Bitcoins Than You
1	12,500,000
10	1,250,000
100	125,000
1,000	12,500
10,000	1,250
100,000	124
1,000,000	11
10,000,000	0

[keithers]

To me it tells me I'm still an early adopter.  Im in the richest 1% and only 100k or less people have more btc then me.  And I only bought 10 btc for fun.

You don't know that. You are looking at statistics for addressess, and not people. Because a single address can hold bitcoins for multiple people and a single person can control many addresses, All you know is that there must be less than 1.25 million people (12.5 MBTC / 10) with more bitcoins than you.

Your Bitcoins	Maximum Number of People With More Bitcoins Than You
1	12,500,000
10	1,250,000
100	125,000
1,000	12,500
10,000	1,250
100,000	124
1,000,000	11
10,000,000	0

Yes, that is true, but even holding 10 btc is a pretty decent sized holding given how many bitcoins are actually in circulation in comparison to the world's population.   There aren't even enough bitcoins for each person in my state to have just one

[dscotese]

I like to track this distribution.  30.63% of all bitcoins were in addresses with between 1 and 100 bitcoins on 2/6/14.  Today, 5/2/14, 31.58% are in addresses with between 1 and 100 btc in them.  So they are slowly getting dispersed into addresses with lower balances.

[bryant.coleman]

Hmm... So there are two wallets which contains more than BTC100,000. The first one might be the DPR wallet (Silk Road) which was seized by the FBI. Which is the second one? Any exchange hot-wallet?

[keithers]

I like to track this distribution.  30.63% of all bitcoins were in addresses with between 1 and 100 bitcoins on 2/6/14.  Today, 5/2/14, 31.58% are in addresses with between 1 and 100 btc in them.  So they are slowly getting dispersed into addresses with lower balances.

Would you happen to have an updated graph?  I am curious to see how the wealth has shifted around in the past few months.   My default assumption is that when the prices crashed recently, most of the small holders panic sold, whereas the larger holders scooped up more...

[keithers]

Hmm... So there are two wallets which contains more than BTC100,000. The first one might be the DPR wallet (Silk Road) which was seized by the FBI. Which is the second one? Any exchange hot-wallet?

Is it possible that it is one of the "missing" Gox wallets?

[CryptoDomains]

Forgot about this thread.

Firstly even if a handful are exchanges, it makes little impact over all.

Secondly if Satoshi had his heart in the right place or where everyone wants you to believe he did, he would slowly sell off his coins at market prices and help distribute. Not give away, not impact prices but a slow steady market sell out. Why one individual would need so many bitcoin is not justifiable. Priee up or down it doesn't matter, you hoard for one reason maybe two, it's MINE or that will be worth more one day and thus wanting more riches. But riches of what, fiat because at this rate of distribution it will not become fully integrated enough to enjoy billions of bitcoin worth.

He isn't doing this, why, my thinking is it isn't their plan. This group of top account holders, government or mad men are hoarding for a reason, control!

Ill play the market, have fun and ride it while it lasts but end of day, there needs to be change and soon or it may be one of the biggest booms and busts in tech we read about.

[franky1]

what i mean to say is that PEOPLE owning 10,000-100,000 bitcoins are not all holding their hoard in a sole address purely for them.

infact i bet that atleast 80 of the 96 addresses in that category are cold store for exchanges. where the 10k+ addresses are all mixed coins of many users stored offline.

the other 16 will b people like early adopters (2009 era) that never touched their hoard.

and as for the 2 million addresses with small amounts in them. i presume they are deposit addresses for customers that are using services.

in short the numbers in the OP are meaningless unless you put them into context. there are not 96 super rich people that have there whole hoard in one address. and there are not over 2 million people with only 0.0001 to their name

[bryant.coleman]

Is it possible that it is one of the "missing" Gox wallets?

No. The wallet which was labelled as the stolen gox coins was later found out to be the centralized wallet of some Bitcoin mining pool. Also, the Gox thief never kept all the coins in a single wallet.