🔶 How many people own 1 Bitcoin?
At present, there are about 420 million cryptocurrency users in the world in 2024, and about 1.5 million people own more than 1 Bitcoin, accounting for only 0.36% of cryptocurrency users.
🔶 As we all know, the total amount of Bitcoin is 21 million, and 93.32% of Bitcoin has been mined, which is about 19.59 million.
There are also 6.68% of Bitcoin (1.41 million) that will be mined slowly in the next 100 years, until 2140, when all 21 million Bitcoins will be mined. At that time, the rewards received by miners will no longer include block rewards and transaction fees on the user chain.
And of the 19.59 million Bitcoins that have been mined, about 6 million have been lost! This leaves only 13.59 million Bitcoins that can be circulated in the market, so at most 13.59 million people own 1 Bitcoin, 1 per capita.
But the reality is not that simple, because wealth will be concentrated in the hands of a few people. We can see from the information on the chain that 1.94% of the wallet addresses hold 92.76% of the bitcoins, and the total number of these wallet addresses is: 1,020,070, or 1.02 million.
At present, the exchanges hold a total of about 1.89 million bitcoins, so at most 1.89 million people in the exchanges own 1 bitcoin, which is only a theoretical number, and in reality it is much less than this. For these 1.89 million bitcoins, we roughly use the 80/20 rule: 80% of retail investors in the exchange only own 20% of 1.89 million, 189×20% ≈ 379,000.
Then the number of retail investors who own 1 bitcoin must be less than 378,000 (1 per retail investor). Under the 80/20 rule, the ratio of large investors to retail investors is 1:4, so the number of large investors is 1/4 of 378,000, that is, 94,500, and the average number of large investors is 16. 378,000+94,500=472,500 people.
Then the number of retail investors who own 1 Bitcoin must be less than 378,000 (1 Bitcoin per retail investor). Under the Pareto Principle, the ratio of large investors to retail investors is 1:4, so the number of large investors is 1/4 of 378,000, that is, 94,500, and the average number of large investors is 16. 378,000+94,500=472,500 people.
🔶 Assuming that the on-chain addresses and exchange users do not overlap (in fact, there is a high possibility of overlap), the number of people who own more than 1 Bitcoin is: 102+472,500=149,25. If we take into account financial institutions and Bitcoin packaged into other public chains, we can conservatively say that there are about 1.5 million people who own more than 1 Bitcoin, accounting for only 4.0.36% of 200 million users. This is rare in the cryptocurrency world!
