India - Highest number of bitcoin owners | Truth or a Myth ?

[pawanjain]

Just saw this instagram post which says that India has the highest number of bitcoin owners across the world.
Curious to know but is this actually true ? I highly doubt it.
Or it could be that it does have the highest amount of bitcoin owners but most of them would be owning less than 1 BTC.
If we hold just 0.0001 BTC in an address that will make us a bitcoin owner and so this post hardly explains anything.

[Bitcoin Smith]

This stat is probably based on the exchange addresses alone not the entire bitcoin addresses since there is no way one can find where the user belongs just based on the bitcoin address. And in number of users it can be true because we are highly populated, and also if we see exchange, the number of active trades is quite high but I am not sure about the number of bitcoins owned.

[TheUltraElite]

A better in depth analysis is needed.

Like how much bitcoin to be held to be included in this list and how many unique users are there against every address, that should narrow down the numbers.

I guess posting on social media has always been for the shock value, for like and retweets only, not statistics.

[pawanjain]

A better in depth analysis is needed.

Like how much bitcoin to be held to be included in this list and how many unique users are there against every address, that should narrow down the numbers.

I guess posting on social media has always been for the shock value, for like and retweets only, not statistics.

Yesh, thats definitely true. Social media posts are mostly for the number of likes and shares.
But do you really think that in depth analysis of addresses holding bitcoin is really possible?
Getting unique number of users is something thats very hard to find, something near to impossible may be, especially in case of non-custodial wallets.

[LucyFurr]

But do you really think that in depth analysis of addresses holding bitcoin is really possible?

It is very much possible, and we already have the information public, I saw somewhere on the bitcointalk from Loycev and if I came across that post then I will list them here.

Getting unique number of users is something thats very hard to find, something near to impossible may be, especially in case of non-custodial wallets.

No, finding the number of users is not possible, only the number of total bitcoin addresses with value is possible.

[LoyceV]

This stat is probably based on the exchange addresses alone not the entire bitcoin addresses

Usually those statistics on Bitcoin owners are much higher than the number of funded Bitcoin addresses, so it must include exchanges (and ETFs).

No, finding the number of users is not possible, only the number of total bitcoin addresses with value is possible.

55,335,135 funded Bitcoin addresses on January 14, 2026
  21,555,149 of those start with 1
  6,388,369 of those start with 3
  22,594,205 of those start with bc1q
  4,741,216 of those start with bc1p