🔶 How many people own 1 Bitcoin?
Currently, there are about 420 million cryptocurrency users in the world in 2024, and about 1.5 million of them 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 approximately 19.59 million.
Another 6.68% of bitcoins (1.41 million) will be slowly mined in the next 100 years, until 2140, when all 21 million bitcoins will be mined. By then, the rewards miners will no longer include block rewards and transaction fees for users on the chain.
Of the 19.59 million bitcoins that have been mined, about 6 million have been lost! This leaves only 13.59 million bitcoins in circulation, so at most 13.59 million people own one bitcoin, or one per person.
But the reality is not that simple, because wealth is concentrated in the hands of a few people. We can see from the on-chain information that 1.94% of the wallet addresses hold 92.76% of the Bitcoin. 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. This is just a theoretical number. 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 exchanges only own 20% of 1.89 million bitcoins, 189×20% ≈ 379,000.
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.
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.
🔶 Assuming that the addresses on the chain and the exchange users do not overlap (in fact, there is a high possibility of overlap), then the number of people who own more than 1 Bitcoin is: 102+47.25=149.25. Taking into account financial institutions and Bitcoins 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 0.36% of the 420 million users in the cryptocurrency circle. This can be said to be rare in the cryptocurrency circle!
