Perhaps last year’s drop in the price of BTC also contributed to the fact that today there are already a million addresses where at least one whole bitcoin is stored.
Bitcoin hit a wild high of $69,000 in November 2021. And despite a healthy rally in the first quarter of this year, its price is still nearly two-thirds lower than it was then. This drop in price made it easier for people to jump on the bitcoin bandwagon or continue to “accumulate sats” faster.
More than a million addresses own at least 1 bitcoin
According to data from the analytics company Glassnode, there are already more than a million addresses with a balance of more than 1 BTC (approx. USD 26,800 at the time of writing).
The last time the number of addresses with the status of the entire BTC increased significantly was at the end of February last year. At the time, Bitcoin was about halfway through its correction from its ATH.
Dan Ashmore, head of research at Investoo Group, recalled that holding one whole bitcoin is equivalent to roughly half of the average US salary.
This is what we saw during the unrelenting bull market during the pandemic – a clear reversal of the previous trajectory where the number of addresses containing at least 1 bitcoin grew […] When the price of Bitcoin fell last year, the previous upward trajectory of growth in the number of these addresses resumed. I would not expect this pattern to change in the future.
Whales and stock markets
I prefer to remind you that one bitcoin address does not always represent one person. In other words, it does not necessarily mean that 1 BTC is owned by a million people. Some individuals have multiple Bitcoin addresses under their control, and likewise some addresses may belong to institutions or groups of people.
According to Ashmore, the number of 1 million addresses highlights to us how deeply Bitcoin has established itself in the mainstream sphere in recent years.
Despite the inherent decentralization of the Bitcoin network, the distribution of wealth is more concentrated than commonly assumed.
- among nearly 46.5 million addresses with at least some fraction of BTC (but less than one), only 7% of the supply (1.356 million BTC worth $36.4 billion) is distributed
- the remaining 93% (18 million BTC, worth $482.7 billion) is stored in one million addresses that now own all of the BTC
- Thus, addresses containing more than 1 BTC represent about 2.1% of all non-zero Bitcoin addresses.
However, it should be emphasized that these statistics are somewhat distorted. Especially if we consider how much BTC is located in the addresses of cryptocurrency exchanges. These usually represent the collective holdings of all their users. For example, CoinGlass data tells us that it is about 1.89 million BTC ($50.7 billion). It can thus be said that this is approximately one in ten bitcoins in circulation.
Conclusion
Even distribution across financial systems leads to stability in related asset classes. A smaller number of holders, on the other hand, results in unbalanced buying and selling pressure, causing significant price fluctuations. So more people holding at least one whole bitcoin could mean increased price stability. It can also be seen as the coming of age and maturation of the primary cryptocurrency.
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2023-05-14 12:00:00
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