One-third of Bitcoin’s supply held by whales

The idea that Bitcoin (BTC) is an egalitarian alternative to traditional finance has come under scrutiny, as a study by the National Bureau of Economic Research revealed 27% of the total supply is held by just 0.01% of the currency’s users.

The study revealed that crypto whales have been able to amass the currency, and while the public ledger can verify that certain addresses hold this much BTC, it doesn’t help make the space more accessible or equal.

An estimated 10,000 BTC accounts now own five million out of the total of 19 million tokens available. In other words, these BTC whales hold around $232 billion at today’s price.

The 10,000 BTC accounts are just a drop in the ocean though, as Crypto.com says there are currently 114 million accounts around the world. It means BTC is more skewed than the 1% of US citizens who are said to control a third of the US dollar supply.

The 1% argument has often been used to depict mainstream finance as favoring the privileged, whereas crypto is put forward as a potential way to change things.

However, decentralization doesn't seem to have made much difference. While the study, run by Antoinette Schoar at the MIT Sloan School of Management and Igor Makarov at the London School of Economics, is fairly certain about the numbers in terms of who holds and how much, the researchers are not quite sure how to pinpoint the identities of the account holders.

Nevertheless, the study shows that the majority of the BTC supply is in the hands of a small group of people. The fact remains that early investors in BTC have been able to generate a substantial return on their investment. Even in 2020, BTC was worth $5,000 per token, while the price is now sitting at around $50,000. The lowest it came this year was $30,842.

Tesla invested $1.5 billion in cryptocurrency and seems to have benefited from the move.

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Written by Barney

Co-founder

Barney is co-founder of CryptoGamblingNews.com. When not at work he can usually be found behind a Nikon. He's won numerous international competitions for his photography and volunteers as a content creator for aid organisations in Africa.

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