Bitcoin was supposed to save us from decentralization, but now a third is in the hands of a few big players.😅❌

The cryptocurrency has gained a lot of institutional and corporate interest in recent years, "betraying" its decentralized spirit.

The "whales" are getting bigger and bigger. This is indicated by a recent study from Gemini and Glassnode, which discusses the large "centralized bitcoin treasuries" that now control 30.9% of the bitcoins currently in circulation.

The figure is striking, but it is not entirely conclusive, and the decentralization of the cryptocurrency remains high.

In 2021, we talked about how the 10,000 most important bitcoin investors controlled more than a third of all circulating cryptocurrencies.

They were the big whales of the market, individuals or entities that had accumulated huge amounts of cryptocurrencies.

That concentration was already concerning,

but now it is even more so: according to the data from the aforementioned study, there are now 216 large centralized entities that control a third of all bitcoins in circulation.

An upward trend.

The report points out how the total number of bitcoins that large institutional and custody entities have acquired has grown to 6,145,207 bitcoins.

This represents a 924% increase in the amount of bitcoins that such entities had a decade ago.

From hatred to institutional love

During the past decade, the vast majority of institutions stayed away from bitcoin, but in recent times we have witnessed a peculiar shift in the mindset of these entities.

Companies and governments have begun to invest in bitcoins extraordinarily, and institutional love is today a clear exponent of the situation —and the price— of bitcoin.