Ethereum has had a noticeable rise in use since the creation of smart contracts. Let's explore how many people own
$ETH in 2023?
Ethereum has established itself as the number two cryptocurrency by market capitalization. This can be attributed to a consistent growth of unique holders over time, with a small number of addresses owning large quantities of the total supply.
This post aims to provide you with the necessary tools to research how many people own Ethereum at any given time and how to compare historical data.
Key Resources to Research About Ethereum Owners
Etherscan: The primary resource for researching all things Ethereum, including holders, value of holdings, and ERC-20 token data.
YCharts: A great way of pooling together data in chart form, with an easy, at-a-glance view available for Ethereum holders over time.
Binance Academy: Gain a greater understanding of how Ethereum works, and how ERC-20 tokens and dApps influence holder numbers.
How Many People Own Ethereum?
Currently, there are an estimated 232.21 million Cumulative Unique Addresses, according to Etherscan. This represents a 17.99% increase in addresses compared to one year ago (196.8 million). The number of unique Ethereum holders has increased by 0.05% in the last 24 hours alone.
You can check the amount of Cumulative Unique Addresses at any time by heading to Etherscan’s Unique Address Chart. Hover over the date in question to receive data for that specific day, or pull the latest available data on the day of your search.
The current Ethereum holder count stands at just over 232 Million.
How Many Ethereum Holders Are There?
The growth in Ethereum holder numbers over time has been impressive. Due to the continuous growth of the wider ecosystem, unique holders have increased every year for the past five years according to Etherscan.
The Ethereum Unique Addresses chart shows continuous growth. Can this be taken at face value?
With the growth of the DeFi space and Decentralized Exchanges (DEX), the number of Ethereum holders has reciprocally increased. Reason being, you typically need to hold at least a small amount of ETH for gas fees, or to swap into another ERC-20 token on a DEX like Uniswap.
Ethereum Daily Active Addresses
While the growth of Ethereum holders is a noteworthy achievement for the ecosystem as a whole, there are caveats to this data. According to YCharts, the number of daily active addresses stands at 414,344, down 14.59% compared to the same time last year.
Therefore, despite the increase in holder numbers year-on-year, the activity of these addresses is actually dwindling. There are a few estimated guesses as to why this could be:
Airdrop Participation: Major airdrop events like the Arbitrum airdrop can see users create addresses en masse, in order to gain more airdrop rewards. These addresses are usually left dormant after airdrops have been claimed, and thus can’t be seen as active addresses.
Meme Coin Mania: With the return of meme coin season and the explosion of tokens such as $PEPE, new holders can be attributed purely to the purchases of these meme coins. Due to their speculative nature, meme coins remain one of the biggest influences of onboarding new crypto users, and thus, holders.
Secondary User Wallets: Most experienced cryptocurrency traders won’t connect their cold wallet to a DEX, to avoid exposure to bad actors and exploits. They will subsequently create secondary wallets to use for connecting to DEXs and dApps. So, despite the Cumulative Unique Address number growing, a significant quantity will be secondary wallets of existing Ethereum holders.
Conclusion
The number of Ethereum holders has consistently increased over the last five years. With that being said, there are anomalies in the data that must be considered, including airdrop events and secondary user wallets. The Ethereum ecosystem does continue to attract large projects and developers due to how it has stood the test of time.
As long as the number of ERC20 tokens continues to grow, the Cumulative Unique Address count should increase reciprocally. But remember, these unique addresses do not necessarily correspond to new users.
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