Topic: 90% of bitcoin is owned by 2% of user base (Read 540 times)

There's nothing to get astonished or worried, because similar is the scenario with every form of investment. Maybe it can be stocks, forex, real estate, etc. A small difference 2± can be found. This is much about the money holding. Early adopters have a good volume and same is with the late jumpers who had good money backing to invest.

2% of user base...

In 2021 the estimations says there are 106,000,000 people who own Bitcoins, so the 2% of that is 212,000 users. who have 90% of the coins, it doesn't looks like something weird because the early investors still holding high amounts.


Source: https://buybitcoinworldwide.com/how-many-bitcoin-users/

It may have meant that 90% of the changes were caused by whales, and the remaining 2% by ordinary users.

And yes, bitcoin is valuable for the majority because its instability allows many holders to make a profit.

I think this isn't totally accurate. 90% is just too much and I don't think even the whales themselves can have so much bitcoin. There are still unmined btc left and also many people are hodling their btc tight. They won't let the whales get them no matter how hard they manipulate this market.

Indeed. It's hard to predict the value of a coin when someone is manipulating it but like some users said on this thread, whales do have some contributions somehow. It's also possible to survive, I mean we can still be able to profit but only those who can panic are newbies that don't take time to do a research. There are environmentalist who are against btc saying it's not friendly to the environment so the use of renewable energy for btc is being pushed. This is a good thing actually.

Another matrix of opinion generated from half-truths that periodically wanders looking for answers or attracting distraction, the data it provides is wrong, but perhaps it is its priority idea to avoid the objective reality by publishing its "out of context".

On the other hand, there is always a kind of crybabys wandering around the idea that an important part of bitcoin is concentrated in a small number of users, it is somewhat true, no problem, they came first, it happens with any asset, the confidence of the initial investors has its benefits, anyway at present day, buy!, you do not look in the rearview mirror at those who have more or those who have less, buy! or hodl! that is, this is corresponds make today to you for your economic capacity and confidence, is easy understand.

Even with such a kind of holding the market haven't gone into the control of a group of Whales. This is the real potential of the technology. To some extent the whales have got the ability to manipulate the market, beyond that it is the 2% that have the ability to keep everything working par without any difference for the Whales and the rest of the holders. Anyhow there is no clear data to mention the Whales and common users in the market.

I think, the main issue here is, who really controls Bitcoin? Despite the huge gap between how much wealth the top two wallet holders have compared to everyone else, they still own more than 90% of Bitcoins collectively. This gives a certain group of individuals unprecedented power over the entire network.

Even if 90% of Bitcoin really is owned by 2% of the addresses, I wouldn't like a even distribution (may I say communist) approach to dividing the coins among everyone. First of all, that would wreck the scarcity of Bitcoin and cause the prices to tumble to almost zero. Second, who are we to challenge a person for owning a lot of Bitcoin? There is nothing wrong with that. Satoshi himself owns more than 1/7th of the entire bitcoin supply, or so I heard.

Really dude that is a bold statement as when i saw the topic i was like is this really possible 🤣 but then i realized omg 😱 similar to the google now BTT is also Click demanding haha as click betting  to get response there.

I am sure 😊 that BTT already made many good topics related to Ponzi schemes but still i think 🤔 i should cover it here. Bitcoin is perfect thats it bro.

For those who want to find an excuse, there is always something, and it doesn't have to be exclusively the price, but also opinions that have taken root very well over the years and become part of the mainstream. Whether it is that Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme, a dirty industry that destroys the environment, a tool used by drug dealers and other criminals to the fact that Bitcoin is some kind of anarchist idea created to destroy the existing financial system.

If it's only about the price, I earned my first Bitcoin without investing a single cent by spending a couple of hours a day on faucets and anyone could do that. Some may call it a waste of time, but considering the price then and a few years later, I still think it was time well spent.

I have the impression that you have erroneous information. Many here on the forum would be grateful if you share a link to the source of your information that whales control 90% of all mined bitcoins. Then we could discuss and debate on this topic. Also, it seems to me that you have not quite the right idea about btc. I can recommend that you read the discussions on this forum and maybe your opinion about bitcoin will change for the better.

By the way, which two 1.5 hour videos are you talking about?

And what makes you think that the 2% Bitcoin movement belongs to just one few wallets, and among such wallets are exchanged hot wallets that have to transact thousands of Bitcoins, and as we are well aware that most whales do tell up to the such amount as claimed in this post.

To arrive at such a conclusion on Bitcoin control and wallet balances, a lot of data need to be accessing evaluated, to be able to come up with a clear conclusion on that.

So basically you will need to back up your claims with enough evidence to support your argument.

On Bitcoin decentralization and clean energy, we have good development in that direction as the Proof of work environments becoming decentralized in terms of energy generation and consumption.

If you're claiming something then it is important to provide the appropriate evidence as well to claim.

AFAIK, bitcoin distributed more among the investors in recent years and with more people entering the concentration will be diluted and whales are also losing their manipulation power.

Early investors didn't actually lose their money, they just sold it too early when it reaches double and triple digits still its like 100x profits for them so we can't consider this as a loss.

You seems like trying to say if Bitcoin are controlled and manipulated to 2% of user base, while the truth is actually not.

If a rich person want to bought all of Bitcoin in order to manipulate the market, he can't because Bitcoin price will increase since there's no many users have Bitcoin willing to sell with cheap price. Of course this make the rich person need to increase his buy order to the price where the holders are want too. It's mean Bitcoin price will increase higher and higher, so if the rich person want to sell his Bitcoin on the highest price, it will benefit for the market since he's sell Bitcoin at the highest price.

The funny thing is that people were complaining about "early mover advantage" back then too and claimed that $200 is too much since they've lost the opportunity to buy bitcoin "cheap". Complaining about the same thing now at $20k isn't any different and they'll do it again in the future when price is $200k and $2 million too, instead of buying bitcoin now!

Exchange portfolios are included in this chart. So it doesn't take much to say what's in the title. But even so, I believe this ratio is still better than that of many fiat currencies.

The OP's claim, aside from the fact that he has not been able to prove it and is most likely false comes from the communist minded garbage that comes to say that the world is very unequal and the solution is going to be a politician confiscating wealth from those who have the most to distribute it to those who have the least.

The nonsense is such that I get tired of repeating it ad nauseam but here we go. To begin with, it starts from the false conception of wealth according to which wealth is like a cake, and then, if the rich get richer, they take part of the cake away from the poor and then they are poorer. The garbage of this conception cannot explain why then today almost 8 billion people live on earth, poverty has been reduced everywhere, especially hunger, and there are more than 60 million millionaires.

According to Marx's capital this is impossible to have happened.

In order to deceive people into believing that the world is in a very bad way because of inequality, they change the terms and want people to believe that a poor person today is like a poor person in 1800, when the quality of life of a poor person in a developed country is much better.

As for Bitcoin, the same people who complain about inequality are those who from the beginning said that Bitcoin is a scam, a ponzi scheme, etc. and who now see that Bitcoin is not going to disappear, but has come to stay, they start to protest about how unfair it is that some have more than others. But above all, what pisses them off is that a redistributionist politician cannot confiscate Bitcoin to supposedly redistribute it. I say supposedly because in the redistribution the politician is much more favored than the others to whom he redistributes. We only have to look at the inequality between the billionaire politicians of Cuba, Venezuela or North Korea and their poor citizens.

Because of course, they don't like to talk about merit and things like that. Like the merit of having bought Bitcoins 10 years ago and HODLed them, at least a good part of them to this day. No, for them that's unfair and the state, through a socialist, or worse, communist politician, has to confiscate it and redistribute.

Investing in Bitcoin is higher than ever. Moreover, now big institutional investors are willing to invest here. They are so convinced about Bitcoin that they are willing to invest almost all of their wealth in it. Knowing that there is a possibility of loss, their huge investment inspires everyone else. As a result we have seen a bullish trend in Bitcoin in the past. Hope that the next Bull run will surpass previous record and add new dimensions. Today, about 2 percent of the world's investors hold about 90 percent of bitcoins. But those who hold 10 percent they are worried about it.

In relation to Bitcoin, I would still emphasize that the rich and powerful did not have the advantage of being the first, because the first was Satoshi and his close associates, and then those who at that time and in the years after managed to realize that Bitcoin is a lot more than what some rich people thought it was. Even 7 or 8 years after Bitcoin was created, most people could afford to buy half or even one whole BTC, because $200 or $400 is not much money for most people in the developed world.

I think that the big players started to take a serious interest only after the 2017 bull run, so I rightly wonder why someone complains that the distribution was (or still is) unfair considering the time that has passed since the first block...

Envy towards early adopters is therefore completely irrational in my opinion, as are the claims made by people like the OP who try to convince themselves (and others) that Bitcoin is just another online scam that will make 2% of people rich while everyone else will fail.

Makes us think that it’s getting to same thing as we seen or experience in the real world. The richest club is in 1% and rest of it just strained out residue!! Now if this claim comes up to be true then we are done, they have injected themselves into the crypto space and now they are the top 2% in their. 
But I do believe that this could be inclusive of big exchangers, institutional investors with thousands to million bitcoins in holding. Surely that makes up some of it so we don’t have to worry about someone manipulating the market just like that. Since it would be public holdings and they can’t sell it just like that.

I definitely agree with you. Even now you can accumulate and be termed a whale if you have the means to do so and I don't think that is solely based on early adoption, so pardon me if I say, someone like Elon Musk can't really be called an early adopter of Bitcoin but can be called a whale based on his hodling before the sales, however, I too believe that Bitcoin has been on it right part as to what it represents only that now there is a lot of focus on its monetary value. 

I think the estimates like that come from the richest addresses and how much BTC they have. But assuming that each address becomes to one person, so that we come to the 2% user base, isn't fair. It's known that some of the richest addresses actually are cold wallets of exchanges. So the money there belongs to tons of people (unless you are a maximalist when it comes to 'not your keys, not your coins', and the all money on Binance for you belongs to, like, one person). Also, while the divide is probably indeed unfair and there is probably a small percentage of riches that own the majority of coins. But it doesn't mean these people act together, conspire to regulate the price. So the price isn't manipulated by whales.

So, if you look at your chart... you will see that only 4.32% of addresses contains between 100 000 to 1 000 000 coins... but that can easily be explained. (This is highly likely that it is the cold storage of some of the largest Exchanges and/or casinos in the industry)

Now let's look at the distribution of Fiat wealth as an comparison ==> https://www.statista.com/chart/11857/the-global-pyramid-of-wealth/  (There will always be an unequal wealth distribution with capitalism in this world)  

People like OP look at sites like https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html and since they don't even know how bitcoin works they make silly conclusions like this topic.
Most of those addresses with large balances are from exchanges. For instance the biggest on right now is from Binance and it holds 252k bitcoin or 1.32% of the supply that is holding bitcoin on behalf of lots of users. On top of that a large number of addresses (about 25% according to bitinfocharts) are holding dust amounts of bitcoin which swings the percentage towards that 2% OP mentions.
Otherwise the distribution of bitcoin is actually pretty good.

Yes some of those are probably still holding or might loss already. There are some accumulators of btc in the past and probably didnt know it got some huge value now. What if they forgot it or died already? Even there is a record of those who have big gains. Some are interested to buy those shares if ever they decided to sell it. Guaranteed many will buy a cheap one if ever the market of bitcoin crash.

Solar is great product if are south of latitude 45n

and north of latitude 45s

So your post is pretty much way off by using solar to diss BTC

Now if you want a valid argument against BTC

you could go with Franky1 LN will drag BTC down and is not the best way to help btc.

The fact that you think 90% of the coins are in the hands of whales means you do not understand just how many coins are held in exchanges.

many exchanges hold over 200000
 btc that comes about 1% of of all the coins

I estimate that the top holders to low holders is not 2% holding 90% as you say but more like 2% holding 80%  when you factor in btc in the exchanges as not single holders.

While it is true that the more people/organizations are holding and even trading Bitcoin, the better it would be for its future, we can never do a lot when it comes to ownership. Even if we are going to be giving away Bitcoin regularly, whales would still be in a better position to influence the general marketplace. Anyway, there is no restrictions for anyone to get hold of Bitcoin as this is an open market. Now, just wondering how many people in the world are owning company stocks...can we say stocks can be faring better than Bitcoin? Or about gold...for that matter?

If you mean it literally, then you should provide your facts. But if you don't mean it that way, which I suppose is the case, then that's just the reality.

And that's probably the downside of something which doesn't have a central authority to decide on its distribution. Everybody can buy Bitcoin. Although there are jurisdictions where Bitcoin is illegal, there are definitely ways to go around such policies. The bottom line is that Bitcoin is available to whoever wants to buy it.

The sad thing is that not everybody is willing to risk on Bitcoin. There are a few wealthy individuals like Saylor and the Winklevoss twins, for example, who are so convinced of Bitcoin's future that they are keeping a huge holding and even adding more. They're certainly not to blame for believing in Bitcoin more. And for having money to buy a lot.

To take your point even further. If I look at one of my own wallets I can see around 50 or so receiving addresses, each one containing a small amount of btc, which represents a small amount of bitcoin I received from some past transaction.  Therefore, my wallet alone represents about 50 data points, spread out, in that Bitcoin Rich List.

I do follow the data within the Bitcoin Rich List, just to see how bitcoin is moving about.  But to form any real conclusions with what is happening with the rich list, it would require further research, and correlations with other types of bitcoin's data.


Taking aside, the OP's distorted views of bitcoin, this above must be one of the most nonsensical comments I have ever read on the internet.

Not understanding who can benefit from solar panels, nor understanding what is meant by "value" will produce gibberish.

Maybe the problem here is a result of having a general disgust of "decentralization":

Decentralization of power.  (solar panels)

Decentralization of money.  (bitcoin)

Proof or this is just fake news. We even don't know how much Satoshi holds.


Depends, there are still user like me who treated bitcoin as as a payment system. Although I used 3rd party services, still though I used my bitcoin this way. Or course I will agree that it has evolved as well, but it doesn't mean that it will stabilized, bitcoin still and will be a volatile asset.


I disagree, bitcoin is not being advertised by anyone, not even Satoshi in the beginning or the early adopters.


Too bad for, you lost 1.5 hours of your time watching those interviews when you can spend that in the forum and learn so much from the creator itself and maybe to some early adopters not willing to have interviews in TV.

Considering that over 19million have already been mined I have no doubt that yes, there are some entities that are holding or controlling vast amounts of BTC. Thing is, using terms such as "2% of user base" is meaningless without also stating what the (estimated) size of that user base is.... In other words - it is pure meaningless marketing spin speak that is worded just for shock value.

Even using a ridiculously small user base of say, 1million users, 2% of that means 20,000 users. Not exactly a small number.
Consider there are considerably more than 1 million BTC users, well...  

Did you just randomly guess the percentage or you heard from somewhere else there is a link maybe a source link were we could get to know how the percentages are being discribed more?
Well concurrently, we can just assume or randomly guess what your not sure of, here we deals with accuracy being that many individual source for data over here. So before giving out information it is best advisable to get it from a reliable source.

It is true that on long term the influence of wealthy adopters is decreasing and I see that by the fact volatility isn't so intense on the market like it was in years ago (especially in 2018). We are in a bearish market, but the price of bitcoin hasn't been completely crashing.

I hope it continues happening, so whales drop their coins on the market and new/small investors purchase those coins, balancing the number of coins held by every adopters and consequently decreasing volatility even more.

It is a slow process, although a very promising one.

About bitcoin mining I guess you are right.

Even if the OP's assumptions were correct, which they aren't; Bitcoin can be scaled. While we'll always have the wealthy elite as some like to describe them, it doesn't mean they have influence over you. Any moves they make in the market could have short term effects, but beyond that it doesn't really matter all that much. For example, them selling a very large amount of Bitcoin could cause a small panic among other users, resulting in more sales, and pushing the price down. Although, ultimately we'll recover from that, and the effects are only short term.

The real centralisation issue right now would be mining, which is somewhat unavoidable to an extent. By that I mean, it requires a significant amount of money to remain in profit with mining, so it's only reserved to those that have the initial funds to mine. That could potentially become a problem in the future, but I don't think it's a huge problem. As for the market share of coins, that's almost irrelevant to me personally.

These are bad news for bitcoin, and it is indeed a fact most bitcoins are centralized in few addresses, even though some or most of them must belong to exchanges. On the other hand, some owners of wealthy addresses might have died already, lost private keys, hardwares or simply won't move/sell their coins for ideological reasons.

So we can't say exactly how many of those bitcoins are circulating or have chances of circulating on the market.

Ultimately, even when attempting different ideologies, the rich, and powerful are going to have a head start. There's no real way of reducing that, in terms of introducing a newer currency. That doesn't mean it's not a better system mind you.

Right, which is the frustrating part about threads like these ones. They fully focus on the perceived value of Bitcoin, but the real value has already been achieved. We now have a more decentralised currency, that doesn't have the typical drawbacks that you outlined above that you have with fiat currencies.

It already achieved its purpose many years ago. The effects of that, is the perceived value that everyone seems to be obsessed about. While, I do somewhat believe Bitcoin was implemented to be deflationary, and combat traditional ideas, I don't think it was it's primary objective.

But you never think how many investors and holders are still quiet and anonymous. Well, should we have to believe that numbers? Not really.
Don't just rely upon those numbers that have been should on television, they are not accurate. Perhaps you can also analyze it, 90% of Bitcoin is owned by 2% of the user base, I'm not sure where you get that but that is definitely wrong.

You are just talking about early adopters but how about the new adopters/investors as they are even more?

tryingtolearn from... Varoufakis?

This doesn't show users but addresses.
Some people own multiple rich addresses, some big rich addresses include multiple people (exchanges).

There's still nothing in this thread that would support OP's statement.

Well bro thats a bitter reality as it put me into the criosity why these 72% are holding there can be many reason that put me into Doubt still i belive on BTC. It can be a ponzy scheem on some point it is store of value on some point it is what it is but BTC is our passion so lets see how seniors watch it. Is it can be thread or just a market flow because 72% WANT TO SELL but is there any buyer for those sellers.

I am not sure of where you you got your numbers and facts from but they are way off and have absolutely nothing to do with reality. You make it sound like there are only a few owners of Bitcoin and that somehow, Bitcoin has become decentralized. This is complete BS and this entire thread is another bear FUD thread which has the sole purpose of scaring newbies and shaky hands into selling.

by bitinfocharts

It is true that the whales are in control of the market but it is not clear if they control up to 90% of current supply. The original intent of btc still stays the same the only thing that change is the people interacting with it.
Btc was not created for the whales only,   they have the large amount today because they were early and have the funds to accumulate.
Anyone can still buy as much btc as they want as long as they can afford it.

This is a good topic of discussion, but it's quite unfortunate as you weren't able to back up your statements with concrete proof, source, or image which justifies that 90% of Bitcoin is actually owned by 2% of its user base because I and other members of the bitcointalk forum love fact, and we would have been very pleased having you dissect this allegation of yours with facts. However, thou Bitcoin transaction is transparent and can be seen by anyone on its blockchain, I doubt if it is possible to see a hierarchy of users with the highest amount of Bitcoin, as a criterion for you to have come up with this statement of yours.

And it's ridiculous to seriously make this assertion without providing some hard evidence that prove so.

The original intent of bitcoin was to be used as a peer-to-peer electronic cash system, with no intermediaries, no suspended accounts, no chargebacks, no bailouts, no weeks of transaction confirmation, no monetary monopolies. And, adoption-wise, it's working better than ever.

There are no tops and bottoms. There are those who own more and those who own less, both of which obviously want financial gains.

It would be nice if you share the source where did you find only 2% of a circulation controlled by normal users and 90% controlled by whales? I haven't seen such news anywhere. So I am curious to know more. Don't forget Bitcoin is a truly decentralized cryptocurrency. Anyone can accumulate whatever they want by availability. Not a centralized that can mint whatever they want. Regarding loss and profits, it's a highly volatile cryptocurrency, so people take advantage. Nothing wrong with that.

That's a bold statement. How do you know this?
How is it possible to calculate how many bitcoins a single person owns?

Price discovery is impossible with the whales controlling 90% of all bitcoins minted.  The original intent of bitcoin as a neutral asset disappeared long ago.  Those at the top are trying to get more users in to keep it's price (and their investment) stabilized.  

Bitcoin kind of reminds me of the push for solar energy to replace engines using fossil fuels.  Big marketing push by those who benefit from it's adoption even though it doesn't have the value advertised.

Two 1.5 hour videos on the subject on streaming TV interviewing early adopters and investors who have made and lost money.