Bitcoin’s biggest holders and their market influence

Despite cryptocurrency’s decentralized ideals, a select few hold vast amounts of Bitcoin, wielding outsized influence. Who owns the most Bitcoin, and how do these whales sway the market?

It has been 15 years since the invention of Bitcoin (BTC), the cryptocurrency that kicked off what is now a multibillion-dollar digital asset industry. In that time, the coin has become one of the largest peer-to-peer (P2P) networks in terms of the total number of users.

However, there have been concerns regarding Bitcoin’s centralized distribution, which seems counterintuitive to its original purpose.

It is becoming increasingly clear that a small number of companies and individuals control the vast majority of Bitcoin’s current supply. These entities are often called “whales,” who, because of their massive holdings, can cause significant ripples across the BTC market.

These whales often command attention from other market participants due to their outsized trading activity and capacity to influence prices.

In this article, we’ll look at who these people and organizations are and what their ownership of such large chunks of BTC means for the crypto market.

Overview of Bitcoin’s ownership distribution

Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, had the idea for a decentralized P2P payment system based on a digital currency that was universally accessible for purchase, storage, and use.

Importantly, Satoshi hoped to erase the influence of governments and traditional financial institutions in his new monetary system.

But while Satoshi’s ideals certainly help to explain Bitcoin’s increasing popularity and value, there is a nagging worry that the system is becoming more centralized as its ownership becomes concentrated in only a few hands.

The general feeling is that the greater the concentration of BTC’s supply, the fewer coins will be available to the general public, especially given that there will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins in circulation.

Data from BitInfoCharts shows that of the 48,766,860 BTC addresses currently in existence, the vast majority, about 47,775,437, hold 1 BTC or less. Another 1,013,080 hold between 1 and 1000 BTC, while 2,017 have between a thousand and a million Bitcoin in their possession.

The exact cutoff for how much BTC an address should hold to be considered a whale is still subjective. But if we go by the general consensus of at least $10 million worth of BTC, then from BitInfoCharts’ database and the current dollar value of Bitcoin, there should be about 5,267 addresses that qualify as whales.

However, as can be seen in the chart above, there’s an even more rarified level of BTC whales, numbering 108, who hold between 10,000 and 660,000 BTC each. This is the group we’ll take a closer look at.

Biggest individual Bitcoin holders

Although the true identities of the owners of most Bitcoin wallets remain anonymous, it has not prevented the media from speculating on who owns how much BTC. These reports often rely on the personal admissions of certain crypto industry players and data gleaned from on-chain transactions attributed to organizations or individuals.

Some of the biggest holders of Bitcoin, as reported by the media, are:

Satoshi Nakamoto

One of the biggest speculated holders of BTC is its mysterious creator, Satoshi Nakamoto. Despite the uncertainty surrounding Nakamoto’s identity, it is believed they mined no less than 22,000 blocks, each with a 50 BTC reward. It would put the total number of coins earned by Satoshi at approximately 1.1 million.

Legend also has it that Satoshi always used a different wallet to store coins earned from a particular block; that’s why there isn’t a single BTC wallet with a million coins. However, since Satoshi disappeared from the public eye, it is unclear who, if anyone, has access to this massive hoard and why Satoshi squirreled the coins away in the first place.

If there’s any truth to the claims about the size of Satoshi’s BTC holding, then it would be worth an eye-watering $28.7 billion, going by Bitcoin’s price at the time of this writing.

Tim Draper

American venture capitalist and entrepreneur Tim Draper is a known supporter and hodler of Bitcoin.

According to reports, Draper initially bought 40,000 Bitcoin from the Japanese crypto exchange Mt. Gox. However, in February 2014, Mt. Gox suffered a major security breach, leading to the loss of more than 650,000 Bitcoin. Draper’s entire BTC holdings were allegedly part of the coins stolen in that misadventure.

Later in the same year, the wealthy businessman purchased an additional 29,656 BTC from the now-defunct Silk Road dark web market that U.S. law enforcement had seized. If he never added or removed a single Bitcoin from that particular stash, Draper’s holding would place him at #29 on BitInfoCharts’ list of the 100 biggest Bitcoin owners.

The Winklevoss twins

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are also a huge part of Bitcoin lore. The brothers founded the Gemini crypto exchange in 2014 using part of a $65 million settlement from Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg following allegations he had stolen the idea for the social media platform from them.

Around the time they were setting up Gemini, the twins boasted that they had bought up at least 1% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply.

In 2014, per CoinMarketCap, BTC had a circulating supply of 12,315,650. Therefore, if Tyler and Cameron’s claims were true, they should have amassed no fewer than 123,000 BTC in that year alone.

However, the 2022 crypto winter that triggered the collapse of several companies in the digital assets space and the plummeting of cryptocurrency prices reportedly caused the Winklevoss twins to lose more than 60% of their BTC wealth. As of now, reports indicate that the brothers hold upwards of 70,000 Bitcoin.

Michael Saylor

MicroStrategy co-founder and executive chairman Michael Saylor is another big Bitcoin proponent. The man, who became a multimillionaire in the late 90s after riding the dot-com bubble, once stated that he personally owned 17,732 Bitcoin.

Being so bullish on Bitcoin, it is not beyond the realm of possibility that, since that revelation, Saylor has added some more coins to his BTC trove. What makes it more plausible is that Saylor’s company, MicroStrategy, controlled more than 152,000 BTC as of July 31, following a conscious decision to adopt cryptocurrency as its primary reserve asset.

Changpeng Zhao

Known in crypto circles as CZ, Binance’s CEO, Changpeng Zhao, is thought to be one of the largest Bitcoin holders in the world. The Chinese-born crypto entrepreneur got into Bitcoin in 2014 after reportedly selling his apartment for $1 million. Depending on when CZ sold his property, the million dollars could have bought him anywhere between 1,230 and 3,076 BTC.

Although the exact number of Bitcoin in his possession is unknown, a December 2022 “Bloomberg Billionaires Index” report had CZ’s net worth at $13.1 billion, and given that the 46-year-old had previously stated that he owns very little fiat currency, it is safe to say that a fair chunk of that net worth could be in digital assets, most of it Bitcoin.