For the past 13 months, the number of Bitcoin addresses holding one or more whole Bitcoins, known as “wholecoiners,” has consistently exceeded 1 million since May 13, 2023, when Bitcoin traded at $27,000.
According to Glassnode data, currently, there are about 1,010,800 wallet addresses with at least 1 BTC. This trend has been observed to be on the rise, although it’s true that one wallet address does not necessarily belong to one person; many investors have multiple addresses.
The highest number of wholecoiner addresses was established on the first of January this year and it was more than 1,024,000. The milestone of “one million” Bitcoin wallets shows a sharp increase in the number of people owning Bitcoins even as the cryptocurrency’s price doubled from May 2023.
However, not all Bitcoins are in active circulation in the market. Out of the 19.7 million Bitcoins in existence, approximately 2.48 million are stored in large CEXs such as Binance and Coinbase, which is equivalent to $152 billion.
Also, approximately 3 million Bitcoins are believed to have been stolen, which would be worth $80.4 billion, and are considered permanently lost to the economy and society.
However, there have been instances where wholecoiner addresses have been reduced by more than 30,000, three times in particular. These declines happened in March-May 2016, in September-December 2018 in the context of the bear market, and in February-July 2021 after the sharp market correction after the period of its growth.
The ability of the one million wholecoiner mark to remain intact despite the changes in the price of Bitcoin demonstrates the continuous interest and use of Bitcoin among the retail and institutional investors that define its position as a foundational asset in the cryptocurrency market.
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