Only 2% of addresses hold 1 Bitcoin or more — Is this true?

[LoyceV]

I opened List of all Bitcoin addresses with a balance for this. At the moment, 829,324 of the 34,653,280 addresses in this 904 MB list hold at least 1 Bitcoin. That's 2.39%.

An address will only be considered to be holding a bitcoin if it's publicly posted by anyone

You do know the Bitcoin blockchain is public, right?

[Vishnu.Reang]

I opened List of all Bitcoin addresses with a balance for this. At the moment, 829,324 of the 34,653,280 addresses in this 904 MB list hold at least 1 Bitcoin. That's 2.39%.

An address will only be considered to be holding a bitcoin if it's publicly posted by anyone

You do know the Bitcoin blockchain is public, right?

Actually this is disappointing. If the total number of Bitcoin wallets with a non-zero balance is 35 million, then it means that the number of active users of Bitcoin may be much lower than that figure (because most of the users have multiple wallets). And that would also mean that the number of Bitcoin users is much lower than what is being claimed right now (100 million to 200 million). This is disappointing on many fronts. The less number of Bitcoin users we have, that much lower will be the collective bargaining power. So what is the real number? Somewhere around 10 million worldwide?

[LoyceV]

And that would also mean that the number of Bitcoin users is much lower than what is being claimed right now (100 million to 200 million).

I've seen similar claims, and I never believed them. If there would be that many Bitcoin users, the current block size can only handle about 2 transactions per person per year.
I'm not counting people who keep Bitcoin on an exchange or their Paypal account. They don't own the private keys, so they're not really using Bitcoin.

[Bamselk]

I'm curious about some publications mentioning that "only 2% of the addresses holds 1 Bitcoin or more".

I found this to be quite surprising, since I always supposed longtime hodlers to be the larger segment of the Bitcoin ecosystem and not just a small fraction.

How accurate this data could be?

Firstly, most people have a new address for each transaction which is sent to them.  Therefore, most Bitcoin addresses would not have over 1BTC sent to them since people would get it in parts.

Secondly, since most transactions sent are quite small and most people don't have as much as $37,000 worth of Bitcoin, it's difficult for addresses to have so much money on them.

Hodlers are relevant in the Bitcoin ecosystem but they would control a small percentage of overall Bitcoin addresses even if they make up a lot of the people who have a large amount of Bitcoin.

[justdimin]

There is discrepancy for such data especially if it's about determining the percentage of addresses that holds this and that. An address will only be considered to be holding a bitcoin if it's publicly posted by anyone unless there really are researchers and companies who are good in digging data like unexposed addresses that hold from 1 bitcoin to more than that.

We only have 1 reference and it's bitinfo, I haven't any other reference that can give the same stat as them. They are including the wallets that have less than 1 bitcoin while the other websites that I've seen, they only are for the rich list.

Do not forget that someone who has 1+ bitcoin could basically have 10 different addresses with 0.1 bitcoins in it that makes it over 1 bitcoin as well. And all those people who do not have any wallet of their own but have 1+ bitcoin in their exchanges as well, think of all the people who have under 1 btc in their wallets but have over 1 bitcoins on their binance account and that is just binance. So, I think data definitely lacks a lot of information.

Of course majority doesn't have 1+ bitcoin, I wouldn't say 2% but it still is not 80%+ neither, that would be insane to think that many people having that much money, it is obvious that things are not like that. However it is also obvious that it is over 2% with all the data points I have pointed out, it is probably a lot more than we know but we can't check it since these are data we can't find anyway or shape without people confirming it themselves.

[Febo]

I'm curious about some publications mentioning that "only 2% of the addresses holds 1 Bitcoin or more".

Think what you wrote. If there are a lot  of addresses s logical that only tiny number can have 1 btc. If there are 18 million addresses, then every address can have 1 BTC, but only if none have more then 1 BTC. It is not logical that no address would have more then 1 BTC since all BTC on exchanges is in one address.   My point is this is totally unrelevant data. What si relevant s why on earth we can see how much coins in n peoples wallets. Bitcoin ledger should be opaque as is in Monero. 

[Twentyonepaylots]

This may say a lot but honestly speaking, this percentage is misleading, it's not its fault however but it is very much erroneous at best. Why you ask? Because the percentage most probably didn't took into account the fact that a huge percentage of bitcoin investors, whether big or small, hold two or more addresses with less than one bitcoin, which when added up, adds up to one or more bitcoins. Let that sink in.

There is discrepancy for such data especially if it's about determining the percentage of addresses that holds this and that. An address will only be considered to be holding a bitcoin if it's publicly posted by anyone unless there really are researchers and companies who are good in digging data like unexposed addresses that hold from 1 bitcoin to more than that.

We only have 1 reference and it's bitinfo, I haven't any other reference that can give the same stat as them. They are including the wallets that have less than 1 bitcoin while the other websites that I've seen, they only are for the rich list.

Bitinfo has been a reputable source of bitcoin info for a lot of us, and I doubt the researchers who took on this study relied their information from this site. Or they probably just skimmed through the whole site and cherrypicked what would work best for them.

[aesma]

With what a BTC is worth nowadays, even if you have several of them you might as well spread them over many addresses for privacy reasons : that way nobody knows how much you own, when you cash some out you're not showing your big stash, etc.

I wouldn't be surprised if many of these "richest" addresses aren't actually lost coins.

[Sithara007]

And that would also mean that the number of Bitcoin users is much lower than what is being claimed right now (100 million to 200 million).

I've seen similar claims, and I never believed them. If there would be that many Bitcoin users, the current block size can only handle about 2 transactions per person per year.
I'm not counting people who keep Bitcoin on an exchange or their Paypal account. They don't own the private keys, so they're not really using Bitcoin.

So we can safely assume that the total number of active users stand at anywhere between 5 to 20 million (including users who use only an exchange wallet). So this also means that the claims put forward by exchanges such as Coinbase is shady? They claim to have 43 million users worldwide. Even if they have that many users, I assume that the majority would have just made an account and never dealt with any crypto. And back in 2019, Changpeng Zhao claimed that there are 15 million Binance users.. Current numbers must be at least 100% higher.

[stompix]

And that would also mean that the number of Bitcoin users is much lower than what is being claimed right now (100 million to 200 million).

I've seen similar claims, and I never believed them. If there would be that many Bitcoin users, the current block size can only handle about 2 transactions per person per year.

Those claims are pure PR articles written by exchanges who claim millions of accounts and millions of users.
We had one article with 20% of Turkey's population owning crypto, one in 5 random guys you meet on the streets would be a crypto owner! Seriously? Who would believe this!

I'm not counting people who keep Bitcoin on an exchange or their Paypal account. They don't own the private keys, so they're not really using Bitcoin.

If we go by the private keys then we know the maximum possible number of users, that's the quoted before 34 624 737.
Assuming at least a median of 2 addresses per user (since we also exclude a lot of services with thousands of addresses) and we only count the ones with at least 30$ then the number drops to around 10 million, which is highly more probably than the 200 million.

Besides, there are only 600 million transactions in the blockchain, some of them are indeed batching transactions from exchanges sending coins to buyers but also 10 millions are just back and forth from satoshidice  

[aesma]

Sithara007 : I have accounts on many many exchanges (I don't mean several accounts by exchange, just one each), I leave crypto/fiat on few of them, if any. I'm still counted as a user of all these exchanges.

Interesting stat stompix, I figure I have done several hundreds transactions, I guess it's much more than the average.

[Kakmakr]

There is no "rule" that says long-term hoarders should store 1 Bitcoin per Address ... You can decide how you want to store your coins. I decided to split some of my coins on to paper wallets with increments of 0.5 BTC per address, because it just makes it easier to sweep, when you need smaller amounts.

It does not make sense to store 5 bitcoins on one paper wallet and then when you need say 0.5 BTC... you need to sweep all those coins and then transfer 0.5 BTC and then having to store 4.5 BTC again onto a new paper wallet.  

So it all depends on what strategy the owner of the bitcoins wants to use to store his or her coins.  

[Shasha80]

In my opinion it makes very sense that only 2% of addresses hold more than 1 Bitcoin, because the very expensive price Bitcoin is currently in.
Although there is a possibility that someone usually stores their Bitcoin at more than one address for security reasons. So if one wallet address
has been hacked successfully, there is still Bitcoin saved at a different wallet address. It's hard for me to collect 1 Bitcoin right now, even though
I tried hard to collect them. So it's normal for the data to be accurate, because it's not easy now to have 1 Bitcoin.

[SaShiRaJaVu]

I'm curious about some publications mentioning that "only 2% of the addresses holds 1 Bitcoin or more".

I found this to be quite surprising, since I always supposed longtime hodlers to be the larger segment of the Bitcoin ecosystem and not just a small fraction.

I have no idea about the number of bitcoin addresses in existence and there are wallet where hundreds and thousands of coins are held and many use and throw the wallets they used in the public to safe guard their privacy and even if your statement is true, the long term holders will be holding their coins in offline wallets and they will be having huge amount of coins especially early adopters.

[Lorence.xD]

I think there are still many wallets that have 1 bitcoin or more in their wallets because the 2% percentage value is very small compared to the number of wallets in circulation and many wallets cannot be accessed anymore when the price of bitcoin is still around $ 1-100, many people forget about private the key, so the conclusion is more than 2%, maybe it can reach 10% if you carefully and correctly.

Maybe what the 2% refers to is the active wallets and it does not always equate that one person is using that one wallet or that a person only has one wallet. 10% is a lot of people considering that a lot of institutional whales and traditional whales are accumulating a lot of bitcoin resulting to the decrease of wallets that are owning 1 or more bitcoin, not to mention that for an average person, 1 bitcoin is a pipe dream.

[jaysabi]

I'm curious about some publications mentioning that "only 2% of the addresses holds 1 Bitcoin or more".

I found this to be quite surprising, since I always supposed longtime hodlers to be the larger segment of the Bitcoin ecosystem and not just a small fraction.

How accurate this data could be?

The percentage of total addresses is pretty meaningless considering that there can be hundreds of millions of addresses created over time. Since there can only be 21 million bitcoins, this is the max amount of addresses that could potentially hold 1 btc.  A more meaningful metric would be the percent of addresses that hold 1 btc of the max possible.

Although even then, what's the point of knowing this? I don't see any valuable insight it provides.

[asia.zharova]

Judging from the information currently provided to us, it is correct, but this is the number of accounts, not the number of people, so it should be lower than this number, because someone will have multiple accounts larger than one Bitcoin

[Vishnu.Reang]

In my opinion it makes very sense that only 2% of addresses hold more than 1 Bitcoin, because the very expensive price Bitcoin is currently in.
Although there is a possibility that someone usually stores their Bitcoin at more than one address for security reasons. So if one wallet address
has been hacked successfully, there is still Bitcoin saved at a different wallet address. It's hard for me to collect 1 Bitcoin right now, even though
I tried hard to collect them. So it's normal for the data to be accurate, because it's not easy now to have 1 Bitcoin.

I am someone who is having multiple wallets to store my BTC. The idea of having multiple wallets is not to protect from hacking though. If you have multiple wallets, then you have additional sets of passwords and private keys to take care of, and it actually increases the risk of gambling. The reason why I am having multiple wallets is that if someone trace a particular transaction back to me, he will never get an idea about the total number of coins that I am holding. And this has become very important nowadays, as the government in my country is planning to make cryptocurrency ownership a criminal offense. So I guess it is better to split the coins in to several addresses, to reduce the risk of government officials confiscating all of them.

[tyz]

Well, this is not surprising. An address only appears in the blockchain once it has been used. That is, once a transaction has taken place. Today, almost every modern wallet software uses an address only once and transfers the remaining balance to a completely new created address during a transaction, so that the old address no longer has any balance.
This old address is also no longer used, so that it is included in the statistics as an address without balance. As a result, countless new used addresses without balance are added every day. As a result, the number of addresses without credit will continue to increase in the future and the percentage will decrease accordingly.

[beerlover]

I agree that it is definitely impossible that only 2% "people" hold more than 1 bitcoin, but you have to realize that there are soooooo many addresses created for nothing and gone. If you check how many "active" addresses there are, as in any address that had a movement in the past 30 days, and calculate how much of those addresses has over 1 bitcoins, you will realize that a lot larger amount will be owning bitcoins.

It is not about how many addresses there are, most of the addresses either have money in but haven't moved in years, or most addresses ever existed never had any money in, or maybe once or twice and never had any moves ever again after that, I probably created 100+ of my own over course of years, it is really not that simple. That is why I think it is quite important to calculate this again but with accounts that have money in them or active in the last 30 days.