Topic: Distribution of bitcoin wealth by owner - page 36. (Read 153396 times)

rpietila, in general I think your table is roughly accurate. It matches quite well what I have in my head about the BTC holdings distribution. Thanks for sharing!


we won't know until he moves these coins. Afaik they are still sitting there (~1 million coins unmoved, see my post linked below for more exact data). I suggest we simply assume he still has access to them.

We use different meaning of the term "mystery miner". Back in 2011 there was a miner popping up with lots of power for a short period of time, noone knew who he was. He mined for a while, then disappeared. He was named "the mystery miner", or short: MM). Back then his coins remained unmoved for months. Not sure they're still sitting there (see spike in the following graph and click graph for more info)


(click for larger version and background info)

I also did some analysis on 2009 coins back in 2011: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.458441

That whole thread contains relevant info to this discussion here, so the inclined might want to read a bit from it.


my guess is 100-200kBTC


This is hard to guess. I would guess: Satoshi (1 million), 2-3 friends of Satoshi (2.5 * 500k), about 3-4 early GPU miners (3.5 * 250k), about 5-10 dudes like DPR (7.5 * 150k). Sum: 4.25 million BTC.


This is very hard to guess. We can put an upper bound using the blockchain (number of addresses ever used) assuming they hold their keys privately. In early 2012 this was about 500k Addresses. Anyone have newer data? We can probably divide this by at least 10 due to people using multiple addresses (I'm pretty sure I used 200 addresses myself already).


I agree. But first I'd like to try to collect more data and do more guessing / estimating. I will likely reactivate my bitcoin-abe database so I can pull some figures (like above-references 2009 coin age (maybe also 2010) and number of distinct addresses used). This might happen this weekend.

I have loads of ideas how to pull different kinds of relevant data from the blockchain... but these analyses are not simple to conduct.

I so feel you. I also sold BTC1,000 a month ago   Luckily I came to the party so late, I haven't had time to squander any large holdings as I never had any.

But although surprising, it seems that with our remaining stash of BTC1,000 we both fit into Bitcoin top-1000  

I would like to have some information from the blockchain to sharpen the analysis.. How many of the 2009-6/2010 coins are still in original addresses? Some percentage of the ones not belonging to Satoshi are likely lost.

Is it realistic to assume 4 million people have fractional bitcoin holdings? Does anyone know such people or is Bitcoin still totally in the hands of very few? Do we only have the about 100,000 holders who hold minimum USD 1,000 worth? Worldwide?

This is in very early stage. The only way for bitcoin to accommodate 1 million people willing to invest $1,000, is for the pyramid to stay where it is, but Bitcoin's value goes up 10-fold and therefore the "owning bitcoins worth $1,000 cut-off" goes down one bracket. It has already done so many times in the past, to accommodate people like me.

FYI, I sold a bit over BTC1,000, a lot of it as cash through localbitcoins.com, back when they were $22 

That makes sense.  I guess knowing the total number of bitcoins gives the parameters in which to get some numbers for sure. As the price rises it does become even more difficult for there to be large holders. 

Are most of the large holders, beside the Winklvii, early miners?  My husband thinks that many of them sold off their coin.  In that case the winners in this "game" if you want to call it that are those that buy the earliest and just hold the longest.

"Far more" holders there cannot be. I know personally several people that have more than BTC1,000. The mean of their holdings is significantly higher than that. I don't know exact figures because everybody wants to retain privacy, but my estimate is BTC4,000. To reach a mean of BTC4,000, we might have for example 4 people, one owning BTC10k, and the rest BTC3k, BTC2k and BTC1k, respectively. The large holders raise the mean significantly.

To drive in the point, if all the bitcoins are divided equally to people who have BTC1,000, there would still be less than 12,000 such people, since there is less than 12 million bitcoins! But since many own much more, assuming mean of BTC4k, this actually leaves us with only 3,000 people!! I agree that it is shockingly few. And this assumes that nobody owns anything in between BTC0.00000001 and BTC1,000, which is clearly incorrect.

The values in the table are my current guesses and now it is up to the community to develop them.

What we need to make this analysis more accurate, is to gain answers to the following:

- Does Satoshi have access to the "backbone miner" keys or are they lost?
- What is the likely stash DPR controls
- How many individuals have BTC100,000+ holdings in addition to the previous
- How many bitcoin investors there are in total.

The gaps are rather easy to fill with the law of large numbers, and probability distribution. Of course we need to reach consensus which one to use!



Edit. Original estimate archived (moved from OP):

22. Oct 2013:

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
100	BTC10k+	5.5M
900	BTC1k-10k	2.9M
5000	BTC100-1k	1.6M
31k	BTC10-100	1.0M
167k	BTC1-10	0.5M
1M	BTC0.1-1	0.3M
3M	BTC0-0.1	0.0M

Total: 11.8M bitcoins, 4.2M owners
80,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC5 or more).



ADD2: First consensus estimate:

26. Oct 2013

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
50	BTC10k+	2.9M
1100	BTC1k-10k	3.1M
12k	BTC100-1k	3.3M
58k	BTC10-100	1.8M
110k	BTC1-10	0.4M
110k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
57k	BTC0-0.1	0.0M

Total: 11.5M bitcoins, 350k owners
120,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC5 or more).

Changes from previous estimate:
- Bitcoin total number adjusted to 11.5M to account for lost coins
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoin users to account for the assumption that few people would play with stashes that are <$10 in value, and other evidence pointing to a lower number
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoins owned by the highest bracket due to the lack of evidence that there are many large holders. As this is a base case model, nefarious premine schemes are not assumed without proof. Sorry for falling into that initially.
- Number of people in each bracket behaves according to binomial distribution as found in another data.

TL;DR:  As a result of analyzing the "Mt.Gox leak", the number of bitcoin holders is likely 1.0 millions. Of these,
* the 400 bitcoin millionaires with at least BTC2,000 hold 40% of bitcoins.
* 100,000 owners with BTC10-BTC2,000 ($5,000-$1,000,000) hold 50% of the bitcoins.
* 900,000 owners have a holding of BTC0.002-BTC10, valued at $1-$5,000, and hold 10% of the bitcoins

This is NOT a largest addresses/wallets -list, we are talking about largest owners here. An owner can have many wallets, and a wallet can have many addresses.



22. Apr 2014

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
70	BTC10k+	3.6M
930	BTC1k-10k	2.2M
13k	BTC100-1k	3.0M
85k	BTC10-100	2.3M
250k	BTC1-10	0.8M
340k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
230k	BTC0.01-0.1	0.0M
90k	BTC0.002-0.01	0.0M

Total: 12.2M bitcoins (0.5M bitcoins assumed lost)

The changes from previous estimate:

- Total number of holders revised down from 2.0 million to 1.0 million. This did not change much in the distribution of coins. If new users are added, the large holders do sell according to an experimentally derived rate of 17% per doubling in price, but some newish holders also add to their positions. All-new entrants can come to any bracket, because no amount of coins is yet too expensive to buy. The perceived static totals of the analysis hide the fact that Bitcoin trade is quite brisk and the people who consist of a bracket do change all the time.

- Number of 10k+ holders recalculated because we now know better the average number of coins in each bracket (thanks to Mt.Gox data). So the large holders still have the same number of coins in total, but there appears to be more of the holders.

- Same for 1k+ and 100+. More people but approx the same number of total coins.

- 10+ category turned out to be larger than previously estimated. The Mt.Gox data gave us the confidence to use a steeper j parameter, which means a more "equitable" distribution with more coins in the middle brackets.

- 1+ category remained intact, and the fractional categories were significantly sized down. The lower threshold of "owner" was also raised to BTC0.002 because of the decline in price.

- Number of Bitcoin millionaires at this price ($500) is about 400. This means that only 400 people worldwide can raise a $million by selling bitcoins, but about 30,000,000 people can invest a $million to buy bitcoins (without going into debt).

- The Bitcoin millionaires command about 4.9 million bitcoins, which is 40% of all bitcoins. The control of world's gold and fiat currency is more centralized with a smaller number of individuals controlling higher percentage.




Earlier estimate of 27. Jan 2014

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
46	BTC10k+	3.6M
820	BTC1k-10k	2.4M
10k	BTC100-1k	2.8M
68k	BTC10-100	2.0M
250k	BTC1-10	0.8M
550k	BTC0.1-1	0.2M
690k	BTC0.01-0.1	0.0M
430k	BTC0.001-0.01	0.0M

Total: 11.8M bitcoins (0.5M bitcoins assumed lost)

There is less holders than before in the category of BTC70+. The number of holdings smaller than this increased.

The number of bitcoin millionaires, previously estimated 930, decreased to 790 (-15%). Their combined wealth is 5.9M bitcoins, which is 50% of all bitcoins.


Earlier estimate of 3. Dec 2013

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
47	BTC10k+	3.5M
880	BTC1k-10k	2.6M
10k	BTC100-1k	3.0M
63k	BTC10-100	1.8M
210k	BTC1-10	0.6M
350k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
350k	BTC0.01-0.1	0.0M
210k	BTC0.001-0.01	0.0M

Total: 11.6M bitcoins (0.5M bitcoins assumed lost)

1,200,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1 (BTC0.001 or more)
280,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC1 or more), up from 120,000 last month
930 people own bitcoin that are valued at more than $1 million (BTC1,000 or more)
1 person owns bitcoins that are valued at more than $1 billion (Satoshi, estimated to be BTC980,000)

Changes from previous month:
- Bitcoin total number adjusted to account for increase in money supply
- Thoroughly re-engineered the number of bitcoin users from original data of the userbases of several services + blockchain usage. This shows that the last month estimate was probably too small, and perhaps 50% of the growth in number of users can be attributed to correction of a previous underestimate.
- Corrected the highest bracket a little bit (BTC0.6M ) upwards because it was over-corrected downwards last time. Number of holders in this category went down a little but we have better estimate of the holdings. As this is a base case model, we do not assume large, completely anonymous entities without at least circumstantial evidence of their holdings.
- Number of people in each bracket behaves according to binomial distribution as found in another data with the parameters: total=1.2 million users, highest bracket=fixed, #of_coins=fixed.

As a result:
- Bracket 1,000-10,000 saw the greatest loss -20%, bracket 100-1,000 lost 10%. Sub-BTC10 holdings gained a lot.


Earlier estimate of 26. Oct 2013

#People	#Bitcoins	#TotalBitcoins
50	BTC10k+	2.9M
1100	BTC1k-10k	3.1M
12k	BTC100-1k	3.3M
58k	BTC10-100	1.8M
110k	BTC1-10	0.4M
110k	BTC0.1-1	0.1M
57k	BTC0-0.1	0.0M

Total: 11.5M bitcoins, 350k owners
120,000 people own bitcoins that are valued at more than $1,000 (BTC5 or more).

Changes from previous estimate:
- Bitcoin total number adjusted to 11.5M to account for lost coins
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoin users to account for the assumption that few people would play with stashes that are <$10 in value, and other evidence pointing to a lower number
- Significantly reduced the number of bitcoins owned by the highest bracket due to the lack of evidence that there are many large holders. As this is a base case model, nefarious premine schemes are not assumed without proof. Sorry for falling into that initially.
- Number of people in each bracket behaves according to binomial distribution as found in another data.


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