Good and Bad at the same time - Mega entities hold $ 14 billions in Bitcoin

[The Sceptical Chymist]

And it does not really mean that these amounts are not in circulation because these amounts are in the liquidity pools from which traders are making there trades. I hope you do understand that the assets they have are in circulation and not in there holdings. But you can say that, the inflow and outflow almost remain equilibrium.

I don't get your explanation that the coins are not in the custody of these exchanges. Any circulation of bitcoin between or within any centralized is in the custody of these exchanges. Although you have access to assets these exchanges are the holders or custodians. Any coin that is in circulation outside a decentralized wallet cannot be said to be in circulation.

I'm having a hard time understanding what you two wrote, simply because of legibility of English, but I think I'm getting that there's some confusion as to who's holding what under whose name.

Robinhood might have $X million in bitcoin under its control, but that's not to say it's theirs--and that goes for any investment firm.  That's their clients' bitcoin, not Robinhood's or any exchange's for that matter.  In other words, none of those exchanges could sink the price of bitcoin by dumping a huge amount of it on the market all at once, so I don't think there's really anything to worry about here.

If we were talking about a whale like Michael Saylor or the Winklevoss twins, then there would be legit concerns about centralization and danger of market manipulation (though I don't think any of them own enough to manipulate it to a great degree or for that long).  Know what I mean?

[Faisal2202]

I'm having a hard time understanding what you two wrote, simply because of legibility of English, but I think I'm getting that there's some confusion as to who's holding what under whose name.

Robinhood might have $X million in bitcoin under its control, but that's not to say it's theirs--and that goes for any investment firm.  That's their clients' bitcoin, not Robinhood's or any exchange's for that matter.  In other words, none of those exchanges could sink the price of bitcoin by dumping a huge amount of it on the market all at once, so I don't think there's really anything to worry about here.

If we were talking about a whale like Michael Saylor or the Winklevoss twins, then there would be legit concerns about centralization and danger of market manipulation (though I don't think any of them own enough to manipulate it to a great degree or for that long).  Know what I mean?

Yeah my English is not that good but I am working on it, and to clear things out, Op mentioned in his post the bad side of these holdings which is manipulation and dump on bigger level and I tried to say that these holdings are lesser and also can not be used to dump the market because they are using these funds to back there platforms up. I mean why would they sell all of there holdings just to dump the market. And to explain it further more I said the holdings they have. They are using it as liquidity to complete the trades and to back there own assets like for Binance they have there own tokens to back them up like BNB and same goes for other 2 projects.

[Wimex]

I really can't understand some Bitcoiners.
On one hand, many Bitcoiners want big companies, investment funds and banks to buy more BTC and pump the Bitcoin price. On the other hand, there are Bitcoiners, who are bitching and complaining that "the big whales are manipulating the market" and "Bitcoin is under the control of a few big corporations". What do you people want? Mass adoption(including from the big corporations) or less adoption?
Two of biggest centralized crypto exchanges are holding Bitcoins worth billions USD. Is this supposed to be big news? Is this supposed to be bad news? To be honest, I don't care. Holding 6 billion USD in Bitcoins isn't such a big deal. The BTC market cap and trading volume are way bigger.
Yes, those crypto exchanges might collapse like FTX. And so what? I never used them. The people, who are using them do this at their own risk.

As has always been seen, both in political parties and in those organizations where an agreement must be reached, there are always people who are in favor of certain things and not others, and this is due to the fact that each one maintains their own approaches in as far as specifics…many bitcoiners want mass adoption as this could help raise the market and the value of the coin, the other side would just like there to be more equiting and not feel,  like another force majeure as entities or people who own of large amounts of bitcoin, continue to control the system or in this case the market by having a certain domain to change the value situation from one moment to another, greatly affecting those who do not have considerable sums of this asset and of course to bitcoin at the time, because let's be honest, in case something happens to the money that these people have, the impact will be temporary, regardless of the amount, the question here is that everyone does what they want with its capital…just as you say...

The people, who are using them do this at their own risk.

If a company, corporation or a person decides to accumulate their bitcoins on an exchange platform in their problem, if someone has more capacity to invest  economically in bitcoin, than another why judge them?, If we had the opportunity, we would certainly think equal

[Lucius]

I really can't understand some Bitcoiners.
On one hand, many Bitcoiners want big companies, investment funds and banks to buy more BTC and pump the Bitcoin price. On the other hand, there are Bitcoiners, who are bitching and complaining that "the big whales are manipulating the market" and "Bitcoin is under the control of a few big corporations". What do you people want? Mass adoption(including from the big corporations) or less adoption?
~snip~

To me, there is nothing strange here, because not all people who invest or use Bitcoin are the same, some only want profit and have no other motives, while others (who are the minority) were attracted by something else. If someone did a serious global survey on how many BTC investors would agree to sell all the BTC they have at some expensive price, but if that meant that BTC would no longer exist after that, what do you think the survey results would be?

What do people really want? Well, some want the price to be as low as possible because they think that BTC is simply too expensive to invest in it, while others who just want to profit dream of a big pump. But wishes are one thing, and reality is something completely different - which means that anyone can buy and sell BTC at any time and in any amount, without asking for any permission from anyone else.

[DeathAngel]

We better get used to it because Blackrock & others will begin to hoover up the supply, if they haven’t already. Any asset that is in high demand will to some extent get bought up by big institutions. Microstrategy own 1% of the supply, it is what it is. The fiat denominated price will soar, you can decide to do what you want with that information.

[Ruttoshi]

For these three entities to have this amount of bitcoin, it means that the market can be manipulated by any of them because so many other investors bitcoin is also in their custody. It will have a bad effect on the market if any of them gets hacked or runs out of liquidity,it will affect the market due to FUD.

There are some private owners that I think have more bitcoin than these exchanges and their bitcoin is not in circulation but just in their wallets. These people too can also manipulate the market,if they want to.

[passwordnow]

We have to embrace this reality that's happening that no matter how decentralized is the goal of Bitcoin, we can't stop these entities from holding large amounts because they're able to.

The extent of bitcoin distribution among users will not harm the decentralization of the network, so no one can force you to sell bitcoin, even if the supply in the market decreases, the price will inevitably increase.
Imagine that out of a total of 21 million bitcoins, 12 million of them are in the hands of central parties. It is true that they can influence the price if they suddenly decide to sell bitcoins, but the presence of bitcoins with them will cause an increase in the price of bitcoins as long as they have diamond hands. Decentralization could be severely affected if there was a centralization of mining conditions and we had a pool or two, or an international regulatory framework was put in place to ban Bitcoin and imprison everyone who deals with it.

That's right, even if these large amounts have been taken by companies they hold no custody of our coins. And if you have been in the market for so long and didn't even manage to collect a few when the times were still early then that's a missed opportunity and problem you just made for yourself. Even I, I made a lot of mistakes that I've sold too early and I think this is the concern of many of us in here with these companies. They can dump any time so do we but they can't force us to sell or buy if they want to because the decision will still rely to ourselves but whatever we do, they'll continue to accumulate.

[dunfida]

And it does not really mean that these amounts are not in circulation because these amounts are in the liquidity pools from which traders are making there trades. I hope you do understand that the assets they have are in circulation and not in there holdings. But you can say that, the inflow and outflow almost remain equilibrium.

I don't get your explanation that the coins are not in the custody of these exchanges. Any circulation of bitcoin between or within any centralized is in the custody of these exchanges. Although you have access to assets these exchanges are the holders or custodians. Any coin that is in circulation outside a decentralized wallet cannot be said to be in circulation.

I'm having a hard time understanding what you two wrote, simply because of legibility of English, but I think I'm getting that there's some confusion as to who's holding what under whose name.

Robinhood might have $X million in bitcoin under its control, but that's not to say it's theirs--and that goes for any investment firm.  That's their clients' bitcoin, not Robinhood's or any exchange's for that matter.  In other words, none of those exchanges could sink the price of bitcoin by dumping a huge amount of it on the market all at once, so I don't think there's really anything to worry about here.

If we were talking about a whale like Michael Saylor or the Winklevoss twins, then there would be legit concerns about centralization and danger of market manipulation (though I don't think any of them own enough to manipulate it to a great degree or for that long).  Know what I mean?

People should at least know the basic operation on how exchanges does work which means that they might be holding those huge numbers or chunks of Bitcoin but doesnt mean that its theirs just like on what you had precisely said. Its on their users coins which had been deposited and been park on their platform which it had been accumulated on which knowing that these places are known and popular then its not shocking that
those numbers could really be able to reach out and its not something that shocking and just said that they dont have the rights on dumping and selling all of those coins in one go and the fact that it isnt theirs in the first place, unless if they would go dark and deciding on selling out then thats truly a devastating one.

Its doesnt really that much of a critical thinking on how exchange platform works and the wallets that it do have. Using up your common sense would be telling you that it would be normal that
they would be accumulating such numbers since these places are the common spot in between trading within markets.

[suzanne5223]

I think the cryptocurrency exchange that's holding a huge amount of Bitcoin are least of our problems and for the record, all their holding is not directly their own. Besides, I remember Binance did an ICO in which they have their bounty campaign on this forum.
I think what is bad is the holding of the seized BTC from the US and other countries governments and for the record the previous sell of BTC done by the US impacted the market.

[vv181]

That's a lot of money under one roof of each entity mentioned above. It should make us think whether this is good or bad to Bitcoin economy? Since these much Bitcoin are under their custody they have full control of it and we have already seen what happens when such entities get hacked for their data leak. The case of FTX is the biggest lesson for us.

They are an exchange, currently, it is a customer's money and they have a security system set in place. Surely they did not put all the funds in one address. If your concern is that the funds within those addresses are hacked, well, I don't think they dare to revert the chain to claim back their lost funds, at least the majority of the community won't support it. Also, it is worth noting, that it is small compared to the total bitcoin market cap.

It's like the real world wealth distribution inequality. That shouldn't have happened with Bitcoin at least.

It is absurd to demand bitcoin as an exception of Pareto distribution whereas it exists in many sectors of life.

[icalical]

I really think that a centralized mega entities holding $14 Billions of Bitcoin has more bad effect than good, I don't deny that when those bitcoin is hold it helps to keep the Bitcoin price steady, but that also make Bitcoin less centralized, taking all hacking risk aside, we still don't know when will that $14 Billion Bitcoin be sold and lead the Bitcoin market into crash. This might sound utopian for now but I wish there wouldn't be any centralized entity holding so much of Bitcoin.

[kryptqnick]

Didn't know that Robinhood was in the top-3, with the first two being major crypto exchanges... But this list got me suspicious immediately, as it got me thinking that there should be other major companies. So then I Googled how much BTC Grayscale's holding, and the answer from Wikipedia (based on Yahoo Finance) is 643,572 BTC, which is worth more than 17 billion dollars. So how's this company not in the top-3 if it's holding more than all three of those combined? And if whoever wrote the article missed something as huge as Grayscale, it makes me wonder what kind of other things may be missing here, creating a potentially deceptive list of top holders. Or am I missing something here?

[Darker45]

Obviously, this is bad, very bad. Why do we even have to ask whether this is good or bad? What's good in it? There's nothing good in it.

You saying that it's good for Bitcoin economy because it is being held for long term is wrong. In the first place, are these coins Robinhood's? Nope. These are coins from Robinhood's users. Robinhood is merely a custodian. This in itself is already risky. Billions of people's money in a single wallet? Uh-uh!

Secondly, how can you say that these coins are for long term? There's no indication. But if it is, it's still wrong because to hodl is to keep one's coins in self custody and not in centralized platforms.

Saying that this means "much less Bitcoin in the circulation" is another mistake, because in lieu of these actual coins Robinhood is actually issuing IOUs or paper coins. We could even go as far as inquire how much IOUs or paper Bitcoin has Robinhood actually issued? It's a possibility that this amount is just mere fraction of the actual holdings that the platform users have.

[so98nn]

That's not a lot, it's actually surprisingly low. 14B is less than 3% of total supply. And they control it but don't own it, since it belongs to their customers. Even if you add Microstrategy, Coinbase and other giants, it seems that the majority of all coins is held in private wallets, as they should be.

Exactly, these are the funds of their clients that are there because they trade with them, but there are probably also those who use these companies as banks, which is definitely not recommended. However, if you were to add up all the BTC that are in custodial wallets, you still get millions of coins that are at risk of being hacked or seized at any time.

It would be ideal for everyone to use non-custodial wallets, and to trade via DEX, but that is something that is hard to expect considering that people mostly choose simplicity at the expense of privacy and security.

That’s insane.

We forgetting one thing here, Not your keys Not your bitcoin. These giant exchangers have already lured everyone into their investment strategies and everyone feel like they are the owner of it but that’s completely wrong. They are in possession of these coins through the agreements that they make while signing up for their services. That’s the only bond they hold with them.

They are at all times at risk of losing the funds because of this very agreement with those little text under the Terms and Conditions that leads to lot of dispute and at the end they always win. Pick any case in the past only few of them successfully received full funds but not all.

This much holdings has any effect on the market or not that’s different story but having ownership is another.

[adaseb]

Robinhood is a very popular broker. You go to wall street bets and many people there use it. Many stopped after the GMC halt but it’s still widely used. And these people got tons of money to throw around. Everyday there is some kid there is which yoloing $100K on some option that will expire at the end of the week.

They got tons of money and it’s no surprise that in total over $3B is tied up in bitcoin. I don’t think they are doing custody for Blackrock. Because blackrock would never use Robinhood. If needed they would use coinbase custody instead. There is also a similar wallet for dogecoin. It’s also on the top of the rich list.

[posi]

However, having that much significant amount can also be good for bitcoin economy since it is in holding for long terms. It is like having that much less Bitcoin in the circulation. It may or may not have an effect on the demand and supply but I wanna ask, does it have any?

Have you thought what would happen if they sold all those bitcoins at once? As many have pointed out, the majority of bitcoin being owned by one organization or individual has never been considered a good thing. It does not reduce the supply of bitcoin circulating in the market and on the contrary, it can be pushed to the market at any time. And what happens next you probably already know.

Bitcoin becomes more valuable not only because of its scarcity but also because of the utilities it brings to us that are really useful to us. But many say scarcity is what helped bitcoin achieve its value today. Creating a coin with a finite supply is not too difficult, but creating a coin that is decentralized and has as many use cases as bitcoin is impossible.

[Unbunplease]

Have you thought what would happen if they sold all those bitcoins at once? As many have pointed out, the majority of bitcoin being owned by one organization or individual has never been considered a good thing. It does not reduce the supply of bitcoin circulating in the market and on the contrary, it can be pushed to the market at any time. And what happens next you probably already know.

Bitcoin becomes more valuable not only because of its scarcity but also because of the utilities it brings to us that are really useful to us. But many say scarcity is what helped bitcoin achieve its value today. Creating a coin with a finite supply is not too difficult, but creating a coin that is decentralized and has as many use cases as bitcoin is impossible.

I don't think that an asset like bitcoin is bought for a huge sum only to sell it in one fell swoop. Most likely, these are people with strong nerves. As for decentralization, bitcoin hasn't been decentralized for a long time, but is mostly in the hands of manipulators who play the exchange rate the way they want it to be played

[Bushdark]

We better get used to it because Blackrock & others will begin to hoover up the supply, if they haven’t already. Any asset that is in high demand will to some extent get bought up by big institutions. Microstrategy own 1% of the supply, it is what it is. The fiat denominated price will soar, you can decide to do what you want with that information.

This is looking like a battle of the fittest and the way institutions are diving into Bitcoin is very surprising. This people may not have a god plan for Bitcoin but there agenda looks like they want to have control of the market and decide on what will happen in the market at the same time they will keep making some crazy amount of profits that we may not have idea about. In the next few years, there will be many institutions in the market and they could cause the scarcity of Bitcoin

[serjent05]

The distribution of wealth is always unequal, I can see this scenario as a normal occurrence in the world of finance.  The market itself will tend to balance this output but obviously, these three companies have a significant effect on the Bitcoin market if it suffers a huge backlash just like the Binance if the SEC keep on pursuing their "illegal activities" and the other huge holder when they get hacked.  But I believe they will act with responsibility and will not disrupt the market and affect it negatively.  Because if they make the Bitcoin market crash, they will be the first one to suffer a huge loss.

[arabspaceship123]

We're having to deal with undesirable scenarios which aren't impossible outcomes. Any exchanges holding that many Bitcoin it's going to shake the market if they're hacked. Any exchanges with that many bitcoin's going to be tempted to venture outside using funds that aren't theirs.

I wouldn't trust others with my coins. I'd keep them safe myself.

Current stats:

Binance : ~ $6.3 billion
Bitfinex : ~ $4.3 billion
Hood     : ~ $ 3.0 billion

That's a lot of money under one roof of each entity mentioned above. It should make us think whether this is good or bad to Bitcoin economy? Since these much Bitcoin are under their custody they have full control of it and we have already seen what happens when such entities get hacked for their data leak. The case of FTX is the biggest lesson for us.

However, having that much significant amount can also be good for bitcoin economy since it is in holding for long terms. It is like having that much less Bitcoin in the circulation. It may or may not have an effect on the demand and supply but I wanna ask, does it have any?