and i can't help but notice the numbers you quoted don't even amass to 2 million let alone 5.
You mean the "six largest bitcoin holders don't even amass to 2 million "? that is the biggest known bitcoins holders that I found in the net, I am sure that there might be bigger holders, but their identity is unknown, I added them just as an interesting fact to know.
One thousand it is the investors which has big amounts of bitcoins in their wallets, they have got 5 million, the rest 2,4 million belongs to small investors, that are holding a little amounts of BTC.
ok that clarifies things. but now the problem is that among those 1000 you have no way of knowing who owns what. i may possess 100,000BTC but i spread them around. 10,000 on different exchanges to manipulate the market (so the exchange cold storages should show a higher price) 10000 in a business i run. the rest i spread among multiple addresses so that nobody knows any better.
or the opposite, i run a business (like Coinbase) and i handle hundreds of thousands of accounts with a lot of bitcoin. i put them in one cold storage address. am i a holder in that 1000 you mentioned?
how do you differentiate these two?
1. Satoshi Nakamoto - 1 000 000 bitcoins, which are still untouchable.
I did not know that, you mean that there in no one address with 1 000 000 bitcoins on it? There is many, which thought to belong to Satoshi?