Nearly a million addresses contain more than one bitcoin, half the median US salary

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Key takeaways Bitcoin distribution can be analyzed through the transparent nature of the blockchain Nearly one million addresses now hold more than one Bitcoin, equivalent to $27,500, or half of annual salary American median. peak to trough, the 1 Bitcoin hurdle has become much easier to reach

The fun thing about blockchain is that while it’s impossible to know the identity of the individuals or institutions behind a bitcoin address, the distribution of the asset is readily available on the internet for anyone to view. see.

This means that we can study the distribution of coins on the network. For example, the largest Bitcoin holder is the anonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto, with around 1 million coins, or more than 5% of the total supply.

Digging deeper, however, we can gauge how many people own certain Bitcoin thresholds. Notably, a target is about to be reached: there will soon be 1 million addresses holding 1 Bitcoin or more.

The current count, as of May 8, 2023, is 997,919 addresses containing 1 Bitcoin or more, which equals $27,500. With a US median salary of $56,400 per year, 1 Bitcoin is therefore about half that amount – and much more in most other countries.

To be clear, one Bitcoin address does not equal one person, so it does not necessarily mean that one million people own 1 Bitcoin. Some people control multiple bitcoin addresses, while some addresses may belong to institutions or groups of people. But this is the best approximation we have, because as we said above, it is impossible to know the identity behind these addresses. We just have an alphanumeric code on the blockchain, which is the beauty of it.

The million addresses represent just over 2% of the total number of non-zero addresses on the Bitcoin network.

“For a long time, a Bitcoin was just a small amount of money. It was only ten years ago that it first broke through the $100 mark. Then in 2017, it surpassed $10,000 for the first time. It’s remarkable to be sitting here now with almost a million addresses containing at least one bitcoin, despite the price it has become,” said Max Coupland, director from CoinJournal.

How does the distribution change as Bitcoin price moves?

Obviously, Bitcoin’s price is incredibly volatile. In November 2021, the price of Bitcoin was nearly $69,000, well outside the median salary in the United States. Since then, the price of the asset has collapsed. Despite rising 66% so far this year, it remains 60% off its peak.

Therefore, it made owning certain amounts of Bitcoin much more feasible. Plotting the pattern of bitcoin addresses holding more than 1 bitcoin against the price of bitcoin, there is a clear shift in upward trajectory starting in the spring of 2022 when the price of bitcoin began to fall. This followed a period of stabilization during COVID as the price of Bitcoin went parabolic, surging from $7,000 at the start of 2020 to nearly 10x higher than at the end of 2021.

When we compare the growth of addresses holding 1 Bitcoin to the total number of (non-zero) addresses on the network in the following graph, we can see that non-zero addresses have grown at a much more steady rate, with the recovery in early 2022 addresses holding 1 or more unmatched Bitcoin. This makes intuitive sense, because the world is on a dollar standard, and fewer dollars needed to buy 1 Bitcoin means more people can clear that hurdle.

Although the hurdle of owning more than one Bitcoin becomes easier to achieve, it is still a lot of money. If Bitcoin ever recovers to the levels it hit during its pandemic boom, the trajectory of people reaching that elusive “whole coiner” status will slow down again, because that simply won’t be possible. Of course, Bitcoin’s price can always go in the opposite direction, in which case it won’t be such a difficult – or desirable – target.

If you use our data, we would appreciate a link to https://coinjournal.net. Crediting our work with a link helps us continue to provide you with data analysis research.

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