Retail Investors Now Hold The Largest Share of Bitcoin Supply: Report

Retail investors currently hold about 17% of the total circulating quantity of Bitcoin BTC/USD, according to public blockchain data compiled by Glassnode.

Reflexivity Research analyst Will Clemente tweeted in response to the data, saying it was “Not perfect yet, but solid for a 12-year-old asset and definitely trending in the right direction... Bitcoin's supply disperses over time, while fiat's holder base concentrates to whales over time."

A Glassnode figure demonstrates the percentage of the Bitcoin supply held by retail investors has increased steadily since 2011.

Glassnode defines "retail" as having less than 10 Bitcoin, which are presently worth close to $169,000, in a wallet.

Similarly, according to IntoTheBlock, another blockchain analytics company, addresses with 0–10 BTC represent 17.3% of the entire supply of Bitcoin.

Early in 2020, this number was less than 12%, but in 2022 it started to rise dramatically. Late 2013 into early 2014, as well as late 2017—each a late bull market/early bear market period for Bitcoin—were other instances of significant retail accumulation.

Previous definitions of "entities" by Glassnode included groups of blockchain addresses that may or may not share the same owner as unique owners of Bitcoin.

It was discovered that 13.9% of the supply in February 2021 belonged to entities with fewer than 10 Bitcoin, a percentage that “has been growing over the course of Bitcoin’s lifetime.”

Bitcoin has received a lot of flak for its high degree of ownership concentration, which some people feel undermines the decentralized claims made by its proponents.

According to Bloomberg, only 2% of accounts held 95% of all Bitcoin as of November 2020.

This statistic, however, does not take into consideration the distinction between people and wallet addresses, including exchange addresses, which might store Bitcoin on behalf of thousands or even millions of different users, as Glassnode pointed out in direct response.

In comparison to other popular cryptocurrencies like Ethereum ETH/USD and Dogecoin DOGE/USD, Bitcoin also seems to have a more evenly distributed supply among different percentiles.

In contrast to just 9% of all Bitcoin, around 64% of DOGE and 38% of ETH are held by addresses with at least 0.1% of the total supply, according to CoinMarketCap.

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