Bitcoin Rich List Shows Addresses Owning Over 10 BTC Have Reached An All-Time High

It’s no doubt that the euphoria experienced in the cryptocurrency market in 2017 is slowly creeping back in. The price of the top crypto, Bitcoin (BTC) has gained over 160% since the start of 2019 to trade at $10,200 USD as of press time. According to several reports, the top addresses holding the pioneer crypto – with a least 10 BTC and above – is at an all-time high.

A Skewed Distribution in Bitcoin Ownership

Data collected from Bitinfocharts, a BTC analysis website, shows a total of 156,830 accounts own at least 10 BTC, roughly $102,000 USD at current rates. While these addresses hold over 85% of the total BTC in circulation, they account for less than 1% of the total active BTC addresses.

Source: Bitinfocharts

According to the data, the mega addresses with at least 10 BTC to 100 BTC totals 140,500 BTC addresses with a combined value of $46 billion USD (25%). The Top 100 Rich list further shows 14,219 accounts hold 100-1000 BTC – a total of over 3.5 million BTC with a valuation of $36.2 billion USD, representing 19% of the total BTC value.

Close to 2000 addresses hold 1000-10,000 BTC in their wallets, contributing to the largest share in USD value of the wallets holding BTC – 26.27% of the total value. Only 103 addresses hold 10,000 – 100,000 BTC ($22 billion USD) and only 4 hold 100,000 BTC and above.

Over 13 million accounts hold less than 0.001 BTC (~$10 USD), which accounts for close to half of the total BTC addresses – at 48 percent.

A Mysterious address with over 94K Bitcoins

Four of the top five holders are crypto exchanges cold wallet storage with Huobi exchange holding 151,000 BTC in the wallet equivalent to 0.8416% of the coins. Binance, Bittrex, and Bitstamp, which close out the top four cold wallet storages, sees the four addresses hold collectively 3% of the total BTC in circulation.

It is understandable when these custodians hold such large amounts of BTC as they serve thousands of clients. However, the fifth-largest address, which received over 94,000 BTC on Sept 6 is a rather mysterious account. The whale moved a total of 94,504 BTC to the account on Sept 6 and added 2 more on Sept 16. The fee paid for the transaction of over $1 billion in BTC value stood at $700 USD – a figure 20 times the actual cost of transacting the amount.