Nearly 1 million Bitcoin addresses now hold over 1 BTC, much of which was accumulated between 2021 & 2023
On-chain data suggest that Bitcoin’s protracted entrenchment beneath $24,000 allowed a sufficient chance for smaller holders to raise their stake sizes. Around 1 million Bitcoin addresses now contain more than 1 BTC, most of which were amassed between 2021 and 2023.
According to LookIntoBitcoin, as of March 29, 991,670 Bitcoin addresses hold more than 1 BTC, steadily increasing since Bitcoin’s birth as more BTC entered the network. Nevertheless, with the collapse of crypto exchange titan FTX in November, that figure jumped from 915,110 on November 8th to 961,756 on December 8th. The event dropped Bitcoin’s price back down to $15,500 for the first time since 2020, allowing determined HODLers to stack sats.
Addresses with Balance > 1 BTC | Source: LookIntoBitcoin
Individual crypto hardware wallet manufacturers witnessed record sales following FTX’s bankruptcy, demonstrating a widespread preference for independent wallets over centralized exchange wallets. This could also explain the rise in smaller address balances, as exchanges sometimes combine thousands of users’ BTC into a single blockchain address at a time.
Additionally, Glassnode, a blockchain analytics startup, said that “shrimps” – blockchain addresses with 1 BTC – had added a record 96.2k BTC to their combined holdings in the month following FTX’s bankruptcy.
#Bitcoin Crabs (up to 10 $BTC) have also seen aggressive balance increase of 191.6k $BTC over the last 30-days.
This is a convincing all-time-high, eclipsing the July 2022 peak of 126k $BTC/month. pic.twitter.com/osjHovLRoV
— glassnode (@glassnode) November 28, 2022
Over time, the number of wallets holding >0.1 BTC (4,289,243) and >0.01 BTC (11,724,266) has increased. Meanwhile, the number of addresses holding more than 10 BTC or more than 100 BTC has been largely stable since at least 2018, while wallets holding more than 1000 BTC have declined by around 20% since 2021.
Just roughly 11% of Bitcoin’s supply is held by entities accounting for more than 0.1% of total ownership. This is a relatively low level of wealth concentration when compared to other altcoins, such as Ethereum and Cardano, which have figures of 39% and 33%, respectively. At the time of writing, BTC is changing hands at $28.351.
BTC/USD 4-hour chart | Source: TradingView
Nate Madrey, a CoinMetrics analyst, claimed in 2021 that Bitcoin’s more fair distribution is due to its Proof of Work consensus method, which incentivizes miners to sell newly produced coins rather than hoard them.
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