Bitcoin Distribution

[Poker Player]

What do you think by seeing this bitcoin distribution chart? According to this chart whales and humpbacks are controlling over 31% of total bitcoin and retail investors are holding 23% of bitcoin. The price of BTC could be less volatile if more retail investors accumulate bitcoin or we could see more market manipulation by whales to shake out retail investors from the market? Which one is good for bitcoin in the long run?

What I believe is that Bitcoin has been a fairly free market since its inception and whoever has wanted to has been able to buy. All this wealth distribution stuff ends up trying to justify a politician to come along and redistribute, which in its extreme versions we already know how it ends, with hunger, misery and millions of dead people. And in the case of Bitcoin it is no different. The good thing is that Bitcoin is much more difficult to confiscate by a politician and redistribute.

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[Tony116]

What do you think by seeing this bitcoin distribution chart? According to this chart whales and humpbacks are controlling over 31% of total bitcoin and retail investors are holding 23% of bitcoin. The price of BTC could be less volatile if more retail investors accumulate bitcoin or we could see more market manipulation by whales to shake out retail investors from the market? Which one is good for bitcoin in the long run?

Manipulation can never be good for the market, I fully agree with your second statement, for fear of manipulation, retail investors are afraid to invest in the bitcoin market.

Bitcoin's stability will increase as more retail investors enter the market, and the value of Bitcoin will continue to increase at a compounding rate as retail investors grow. But these whales and manipulations have existed since the creation of Bitcoin and their removal is not an easy task.

Another issue is that current retail-investors/Hodlers will turn into whales if the price of Bitcoin rises in the future, so it is not possible to break this cycle.

[pooya87]

meaning these still active pools only had chance to gather 7mill coins, and the chart shows miners are still hoarding 1.8m of the 7mill 2014-2022 which could be falsely seen as 25% of coins mined were hoarded by active miners.

Mining pools, like exchanges, are custodians of bitcoins not the owners. They have to pay their miners and only get a very small fraction in commissions, part of which they definitely sell to cover their costs. So there is no way for them to own 7 million!
Also that payment to miners from pools, breaks the calculation used here so they end up with a wrong estimate of how much bitcoin miners have held on to.

[franky1]

meaning these still active pools only had chance to gather 7mill coins, and the chart shows miners are still hoarding 1.8m of the 7mill 2014-2022 which could be falsely seen as 25% of coins mined were hoarded by active miners.

Mining pools, like exchanges, are custodians of bitcoins not the owners. They have to pay their miners and only get a very small fraction in commissions, part of which they definitely sell to cover their costs. So there is no way for them to own 7 million!
Also that payment to miners from pools, breaks the calculation used here so they end up with a wrong estimate of how much bitcoin miners have held on to.

im saying since 2013 only 7million coins were mined. where the stats show 1.8m are still "owned by miners"
im saying out of the 1.8m "owned by miners" is not even 1.8m
1m of it is practically declared as 'lost' plus as you say some of the 0.8m are just custodian held coins yet to be paid out to individual miners mining on pools.

so the number "owned by miners" is way way lower than 0.8m. i would say. most "miner" linked coin that still remain after 2 year is probably what the pool gets to keep as most users would have claimed their wins regularly(weekly/monthly/6monthly) and those over 9 years are probably "lost".

it seems that chart was done via basic "bitcoin richlist" data. without much analysis on deciding which grouping of x-xx coin allotment is for which category.. in short just taking 0.X-X and give it a ocean based name, X-XX and give it another ocean based name
and thats all they done.

as said before majority of the humpbacks are not rich investors but are exchanges hot wallets. where the chart creator just put exchanges cold wallets into an exchange category. and put anything large but not known cold wallets into a humpback/whale category without much thought or analysis again to not realise that majority of humpback is stil exchange category.
meaning not really any analysis done. but even then those that are humpback and exchange categories are not owned by the exchange. they are just custodian housed funds for all the shrimp, crab, fish, octopus, sharks that cant be bothered to use their own wallet
thus making all the shrimp, crab, fish, octopus, sharks appear to be lacking funds because its again confused into the hunchback/exchange category

in short, the numbers become meaningless as they dont represent anything in reality

[TheGreatPython]

What do you think by seeing this bitcoin distribution chart? According to this chart whales and humpbacks are controlling over 31% of total bitcoin and retail investors are holding 23% of bitcoin. The price of BTC could be less volatile if more retail investors accumulate bitcoin or we could see more market manipulation by whales to shake out retail investors from the market? Which one is good for bitcoin in the long run?

That's a lot of aquatic animals you got there and I never thought there's more than the whales and the fish. All the time I thought we only have two kinds of specie? Where whale means the large group of investors and they are the ones that manipulate the market while the fish means us regular investors.

I think the price of btc can be more volatile if most investors compose of regular individuals because they are the ones that likes to sell but big investors are mostly going for long term. There is no need for the whales to make an effort of shaking the market because regular investors are naturally doing it by themselves.

[franky1]

That's a lot of aquatic animals you got there and I never thought there's more than the whales and the fish. All the time I thought we only have two kinds of specie? Where whale means the large group of investors and they are the ones that manipulate the market while the fish means us regular investors.

then you will look forward to your next lesson. its not actually the whales manipulating the price

imagine you want to move the price from $40,000 to $40,100
whales on the buy side putting a wall up of 10btc of $40,001
                                                               10btc of $40,002
                                                               10btc of $40,003
                                                                ...
                                                               10btc of $40,100
takes alot of coin. (set walls or buy up 10,000coin($400m) to get the price moving to $40.1k)
what if i told you that you can move the price instead with smaller amounts(if conditions are right)
                                                           0.001btc of $40.01  (=$40,010/btc)
                                                           0.001btc of $40.02  (=$40,020/btc)
                                                           ...
                                                           0.001btc of $40.10  (=$40,100/btc)

as you can see. you dont need to set walls or buy up 10,000btc.. you can(if conditions are right) ping the market signals into an upward direction for 0.01btc($400) (lots of little orders of $40.x0)
..

whales that offer coin at 10coin for market rate+100. get ignored because people just add orders below that
but if you keep setting orders for small amounts in small increment prices, small enough people dont notice the increments. your orders fill and ping in a new market price.

dont fear a whale. fear the shrimp feeding frenzy
a whale gulp may take out many shrimp in one go, but thats just temporary... persistent shrimp feeding frenzy has more and longer lasting affect

[DaveF]

I look at charts like that and laugh. I know a whale with ~ 125 coins.
Most are in paper wallets with about 3 to 5 coins in each. No way to link any of them to each other.
How many big holders are out there with their coins like that.

Same question, how many 2011 wallets with large amounts of coins that have had their private key lost, never to be used again.

It's an interesting chart, but in the end meaningless.

-Dave