[2018-09-18] 1% of wallets hold 55% of the world’s Bitcoin

[manyexp]

source https://thenextweb.com/hardfork/2018/09/18/cryptocurrency-bitcoin-blockchain-wallet/



More than half of the entire Bitcoin circulating supply is controlled by cryptocurrency whales, and 42 percent of them didn’t sell during peak crypto-mania.

Blockchain research unit Diar has put together some interesting data that suggests less than 1 percent of all wallet addresses control $100 billion in Bitcoin.

In fact, more than half of Bitcoin’s circulating supply is controlled by wallets with balances exceeding 200 BTC ($1.25 million).

...

Even further – it appears that a third of all Bitcoin $BTC▲0.82% held by whales has never been used for outgoing transactions (meaning the whales never moved it out of their wallets after receiving it). Diar does note that some of these could be the reserves of cryptocurrency exchanges.

Regardless, this is surely impressive, considering the price of BTC fluctuates dramatically.

Most notably, BTC exceeded $20,000 in January, for which many blamed market manipulators for the hysteria that followed.

Diar suggests that some of the sleeping Bitcoin could actually be accidentally locked up due to owners losing private keys. Either that, or there are some rich cryptocurrency believers out there with lots of patience.

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[1Referee]

Diar suggests that some of the sleeping Bitcoin could actually be accidentally locked up due to owners losing private keys. Either that, or there are some rich cryptocurrency believers out there with lots of patience.

Oh ya, that's a possibility too, right? Imagine there being people that actually hold their Bitcoins because they believe that it will be a unit of value on its own. They must be crazy! 

Once people slowly but surely start ditching centralized exchanges everything will look a whole lot different. I'm sure articles will pop up stating that Bitcoin's userbase has increased with 1000% just because value-address distribution looks so much more healthy. Or what about articles by that time stating 'Large number of whales left Bitcoin'. 

[milewilda]

Diar suggests that some of the sleeping Bitcoin could actually be accidentally locked up due to owners losing private keys. Either that, or there are some rich cryptocurrency believers out there with lots of patience.

Oh ya, that's a possibility too, right? Imagine there being people that actually hold their Bitcoins because they believe that it will be a unit of value on its own. They must be crazy! 

Once people slowly but surely start ditching centralized exchanges everything will look a whole lot different. I'm sure articles will pop up stating that Bitcoin's userbase has increased with 1000% just because value-address distribution looks so much more healthy. Or what about articles by that time stating 'Large number of whales left Bitcoin'. 

What would you expect? for sure those kind of articles would pop out just like mushrooms speculating and blaming here and there.

For those wallets who holds up billions of dollars worth of BTC im not even sure if those are still accessible or just purely floating in the void because keys are lost.There would only a news pops out
when a certain big amount wallet had moved its funds.We would surely be aware on that one.

[vy99]

This article is meant to stoke fear about Bitcoin but when you really think about it the top 1% own the majority of most investments. I've read that 99% of the products in store shelves is from 10 corporations.

[Harlot]

There is no big difference compared to the top 1% of the world's population as these people are controlling almost 50% of the world's wealth which is near in terms of their cryptocurrency side. And these is inevitable to happen the early adopters from the first investors to the first miners they are holding the biggest chunk of BTC as they were the first in line when everything was cheap and the original block reward was 50. And to think about that number these whales really have a big influence when it comes to price movements.

[timerland]

Not really surprising statistics due to the fact that most coins are held on centralized exchanges.

If you look at the distribution you'd see that most funds are currently stored with addresses that are owned by Bitfinex, or other major exchanges. These aren't necessarily the funds of one entity, but rather a pool of funds that are owned by various different sources.

Also, given that there are many used and inactive addresses that may still count towards this statistic means that this becomes even more likely. Obviously, early adopters may have bought a lot of these coins for cheap and held onto them over time as well, leading to this distribution, which is honestly quite normal in terms of the financial world.

Diar suggests that some of the sleeping Bitcoin could actually be accidentally locked up due to owners losing private keys. Either that, or there are some rich cryptocurrency believers out there with lots of patience.

Both. There are indeed lost/burned coins, but I'd say majority are probably still in control of these investors.

[AXELNetwork]

Not really surprising statistics due to the fact that most coins are held on centralized exchanges.

If you look at the distribution you'd see that most funds are currently stored with addresses that are owned by Bitfinex, or other major exchanges. These aren't necessarily the funds of one entity, but rather a pool of funds that are owned by various different sources.

This is the strongest and most overlooked reason for this stat. People will misinterpret the 1% to mean one entity but they're most likely just exchanges, but that doesn't make the story as juicy.

[TraderTimm]

Look up "Power Law" or "Pareto Distribution".

It explains everything. Though I'd be wary of the source of Bitcoin statistics, obviously.

[Spaffin]

These figures just indicate that. that whales control the crypto-currency market. Just an example of this can serve as the current price increase ripple by 58 percent and its increase in the level of capitalization, so ripple has already bypassed ethereum for the second time in terms of capitalization and is now in second place according to CoinMarketCap.

[vy99]

These figures just indicate that. that whales control the crypto-currency market. Just an example of this can serve as the current price increase ripple by 58 percent and its increase in the level of capitalization, so ripple has already bypassed ethereum for the second time in terms of capitalization and is now in second place according to CoinMarketCap.

I have no doubt that Ripple is being artificially pumped...it wouldn't shock me if the drop is harder than anything we've seen in cryptocurrency so far, so I'm staying the hell away from it.

[BitHodler]

I have no doubt that Ripple is being artificially pumped...it wouldn't shock me if the drop is harder than anything we've seen in cryptocurrency so far, so I'm staying the hell away from it.

XRP pumps are always fake and mostly lead by idiots not having an idea about what they are doing. If you look at XRPs charts, this is yet another common spike and it has been due for a while now, so here it is.

Good thing for crypto overall is that Ethereum is back on spot 2, but the question is for how long. Insane how it peaked at nearly $4 back in January of this year. One must be mentally ill to pick up some XRP at such levels.

We'll see where it ends, but I can't deny that it's more than interesting keeping an eye on the price developments today. Bitcoin's market cap dominance as irrelevant as it is has been eaten through by altcoins today.

[RodeoX]

That can be very deceptive. Most bitcoin wallets created contain no BTC and never will. I bet I have created 100 wallets without a balance personally. Then there are the business wallets. Exchanges, large retailers, etc. They are generally the large wallets that people find online. It is not a "whale", it's a wallet containing many small transactions pooled together for offline storage.

I would guess that about 1% of MY wallets contain way more than %55 of my bitcoin. Statistics are not always intuitive.

[ghermghuda]

But if that's so then why do they still claim the market is being manipulated by whales. I mean if whales aren't moving their money then how do they manipulate. Could it also be that some of the wallets are dead wallets (that's those who own it have lost access to it) and so they can't use them?
Or maybe they know that something big will drop in the future and so they're waiting for it.

[Taki]

Who knows how much wallet's and coins in them just got forgotten or lost. We all know that in the most beginning coins were cheap and fell like a rain from the sky and too few people counted them as serious and promising kind of investment.