How many individual holders of Bitcoin are there?

[radjie]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

It's quite complicated, and it's even impossible to know how many people hold Bitcoin, because one person can have many Bitcoin addresses.  It is better to focus on the limited amount of Bitcoin supply available, the decreasing amount of available supply will certainly affect the price.  Therefore, it is better to focus on continuing to invest in Bitcoin rather than finding out how many people hold Bitcoin

[Churchillvv]

They have been so many attempts to know how many people uses Bitcoin or own Bitcoin but it all failed because of the same reason Charles Tim has mentioned above.

According to chainalysis there have been over 460 million Bitcoin address recorded including both empty wallets but it doesn't determine how people holds Bitcoin in reality because two people can own a Bitcoin address (multisig wallets) and other reasons why we can't actually know how many people holds people.

[synchronym]

op It's really hard to say exactly how many bitcoin holders there are. Usually many people hold bitcoins now so it would be very difficult to tell how many people hold bitcoins. If we work in a company, maybe it can be said in general how many employees are working from that company, but I think it is almost impossible to say how many people have bought bitcoins.

[EarnOnVictor]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

I would like you to forget about it as you will not find it, after all, Bitcoin is decentralised and it is trying to cover up for the privacy of some people, so it will make it difficult to ascertain this and I do not even know the reason for it. Also, don't forget that addresses could be known but many of them do not even have Bitcoin in them. However, you can rely on the market capitalization of the coin to know the value instead of wanting to poke a nose at those who are holding their asset.

To make matters worse, the confusion of knowing what you are seeking will be aggravated with people having their coins in different addresses. This means that a single person can still own 5 addresses that are stashed well with Bitcoin. Above all, I see no need for this.

[doomloop]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

I am sure there is some kind of a statistic for Bitcoin hodlers, especially that things are transparent and are recorded in the blockchain. So researchers can just rely on it alone, if they are not doing some kind of a survey. But there are still people who hid themselves using a mixer, so knowing the exact number can be hard. Then not all those wallets that has a BTC on them has an owner which are still alive. Unfortunately, some has perished already. Numbers are not a way anyway in understanding the market but it was the words. We can read the whitepaper and other write ups related to it. But that won't be enough if we won't make things serious and put what we learn in our head.

[goldkingcoiner]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

I do not think that is possible to find out. A hodler is a hodler whether he has 10 usd worth of Bitcoin in his wallet or 100 million USD worth. We can try to find out which coins have remained in a wallet for how long but just because somebody moves coins betweens wallet does not reset the hodling period and that person is still hodling. So the amount of coins and the amount of time which those coins have been on a wallet say nothing about someone's status as a hodler.

Those are only two examples of things we cannot keep track of, but there are simply too many other variables we cannot account for. The only way we can know an estimation of how many hodlers there are, is through statistical mathematics and gathering certain data points. For example, a poll could reveal more information as we project the results on to the larger community outside of Bitcointalk. But again, that would not be entirely accurate.

[mirakal]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

Unfortunately, there is no way you can tell the number of hodlers all over the world. You can tell how many addresses are there but you will never know how many addresses each hodler used. So there would be no certain strategy that will help us know the actual amount of hodlers.

However, I don't see any significance why you should know how many individual holders are there. Privacy should be given to each of them so we should not go deep with that. One thing is certain, the amount of holders is less than the amount of addresses as there are holders who are actually using more than one address.

[Richbased]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

It's somewhat difficult to know the actual figure of individuals that are holding Bitcoin currently reason being that some individuals have various means with which to buy and hodl Bitcoin but it can be possible to know the amount of Bitcoin that have been mined using the Blockchain technology.

 It is estimated that about 19 million Bitcoin have been mined so far out of the limited supply of 21 million Bitcoin which means that about 2 million Bitcoin is yet to be mined and it has also been speculated that by the year 2140, all the estimated Bitcoin of about 21 million must have been mined. So definitely, it's really impossible to know the number of individuals hodling Bitcoin but rather it is possible to know the total amount of Bitcoin accumulated by all individuals.

[anushkasachith888]

The exact number of individual holders of Bitcoin is difficult to determine, but according to data collected by Buy Bitcoin Worldwide, there are an estimated 106 million Bitcoin owners worldwide. Additionally, the number of Bitcoin wallets is estimated to be around 200 million,However, it's important to note that these numbers are based on estimates, and the actual number of individual Bitcoin holders may vary.

[Lorence.xD]

It would be impossible as many people could make multiple wallets for holding Bitcoins, imagine 5 people having 3 wallets it's already 15 counts. The fact that Bitcoin is decentralized makes every user anonymous to ensure their security and safety. There are statistics for estimating how much Bitcoin has already been mined, sold in the market, or bought. There are also existing wallets that might be forgotten or don't even have any amount that one reason could already conclude that counting all the exact numbers of holders of Bitcoin would be impossible, but estimation could do.

[Volimack]

Calculated the number of individual holders of Bitcoin will come out but no one can find the right holder in fact no one knows the exact creator of Bitcoin. Since each bitcoin can be divided into 100 million units called satoshis the maximum estimate for use in the bitcoin blockchain is not always accurate. This limits the number of holders to ensure and maintain the value of Bitcoin over time.

[AnonBitCoiner]

I think such information is not known by anyone because we don't know that a single individual owns how many bitcoin and may be some people don't have whole bitcoin but they have bought it in smaller portion which means that they will have different addresses as some people make transactions to different wallets through which they can access.
This is not an easy task to know about the holders of bitcoin because we are unable that how many address are of a single guy therefore  we should just think about our success and leave behind the thoughts that how many individuals have hold bitcoin because neither they can take our profit nor they will give us their profit.

[Obari]

There is no way you can know that because a single person may have more than one address. I have not seen such research or way to know how many bitcoin holders we have. You can only know about addresses and not the holders.

Exactly
You can only know of how many address but knowing number of holders isn’t really relevant and I think the statistics wouldn’t be near correct for several reasons that a particular person can have several addresses as there isn’t any restrictions to the number of addresses own is supposed to own but on the other hand, I think it will be possible if bitcoin isn’t decentralized as then the census would be counted as per the number of KYC

[Distinctin]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

No one will know the right answer to that as privacy is given high emphasis. And even if there’s a metric that will help us know that, we can’t be sure if we have derived with a right and fixed answer or just an estimation. Note that each hodler may also be using different addresses so it’s really impossible to determine how many exact hodlers are here.

However, I find no relation why we have to look for that. Hodling entails privacy so we should not dwell with everyone’s privacy and just respect everyone who is actually here to hold for long term.

[highalch]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

No one will know the right answer to that.

Employees at big exchanges should have a pretty good estimation. They can look into the withdrawal stats, find out the average addresses per user and take the product with their market share. I would be pretty surprised if this was not an extremely accurate guess.

[redsun114]

How can that be a metric to understand the market? And it's not possible in any way to even find a close estimate of how many individuals in the world have a hold on Bitcoins because a single person can have hundreds of Bitcoin wallets created since the day they started using Bitcoin, not counting exchanges and other platforms that use Bitcoins for deposits and withdrawals especially those that have changed addresses which means that a single address is used just once by one user and they have millions of users.

So, I believe it's enough for us to know that millions of people around the world are using and holding Bitcoins and that's how we can understand how saturated the market is and how popular Bitcoin and the overall cryptocurrency market has become, and it's just the beginning, we are yet to reach new heights.

[Raflesia]

It's definitely a lot
IMO it would be very difficult to see a specific number when talking about bitcoin holders because in the end it would not be able to record that. There are several reasons that make this unpredictable. First we don't know that one person has several wallets which certainly cannot be proven either because in the end it could be that 1 holder has several different wallets. In addition we also cannot identify with real that bitcoin holders can be proven because in the end with the number of wallets that exist today and with the spread of bitcoin in almost all parts of the world, things like that are difficult to know so no one knows for sure how many but certainly it is a lot

[Pi-network314159]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

Your quest is very difficult budy! Its like asking for the total number of people whom are poor or rich in the world. Just as wallet creation is not limited in creation, which implies that non custodial wallet generate seed phrase endlessly so do people creat thousands of it. Some wallet are abandoned due to the seed phrase has been compromised. While others lost access to it and you wouldn't know if it's functional and if by virtue of conting it, you are making a mistake. So there for that method is not a good way of understanding the market.

[stadus]

Individual holders cannot be determined since not all holder uses a single address, but numerous address. But we can come up with a fixed number of addresses but for number of holders, obviously we can't.

However, it's certain that majority that invest in the crypto market are long term hodlers. It's just that each individual has more than one or two wallet addresses that they are currently used and make them secured.

[South Park]

Is there some metric or study somewhere that could let us know how many individuals (individual humans) currently hold Bitcoin as an asset? Are there any metrics that could approximate the number? Estimate change over time?

I would think this would be a key metric in understanding the market.

Over the years I have seen many speculations about the number of people actually using bitcoin, but none of them seems to be very convincing since the usage of bitcoin and how many addresses each person has varies wildly among its users, as a person could use a single address to accumulate and hold their coins, while another person could use hundreds of addresses, and yet both are valid ways to use bitcoin, however the only thing we know for sure is that the number of people using bitcoin is still increasing.