New data suggests that “wholecoiners” — Bitcoin wallets holding 1 BTC or more — now account for 95% of the cryptocurrency’s entire capitalization. That leaves just 5% of the market cap divided among tens of millions of users with a balance below 1BTC.
The total number of wholecoiner addresses has steadily increased year-over-year since 2009, despite BTC’s astronomic price rallies. On Nov. 27, Glassnode CTO Rafael Shultze-Kraft tweeted a chart revealing that more than 800,000 addresses currently hold at least 1 BTC.
The number of #Bitcoin “wholecoiner” addresses (holding ≥ 1 BTC) on this day every year
Data: https://t.co/VJm4nRFKp8 pic.twitter.com/6VJff2vB3r
— Rafael Schultze-Kraft (@n3ocortex) November 26, 2020
According to Bit Info Charts, wholecoiner addresses represent around $301 billion worth of BTC. By contrast, the current combined value of less-than-wholecoin addresses is $16 billion.
A linear chart reveals few retracements in the history of wholecoiners, with the largest dip coming in early 2016 when the number of addresses holding at least 1 BTC fell by 13.5%, from 520,000 to 450,000.
The year 2018 also saw wholecoiner growth stagnate, with the number of addresses oscillating between roughly 720,000 and 690,000 for 12 months from December 2017.
According to Into The Block, 32.95 million Bitcoin addresses currently hold some value of BTC, suggesting that wholecoiners represent just 0.47% of balance-bearing Bitcoin wallets.
