The title of this article is of course in reference to the approximately 3.8 million Bitcoin that has been "lost" to the chain, forever locked, and therefore, should be subtracted from the final 21 million tally. Though, who knows how much of it is really lost - Maybe it is just hiding for a while.
| Total BTC | Left to be mined | % issued |
|---|---|---|
| 19,874,325 | 1,125,675.0 | 94.640% |
Looks like a lot (remembering there are almost 4 million locked), but I was asking some friends in a chat how many people they think have a full Bitcoin to their name. The chart below looks at what is held in all the Bitcoin wallets across ranges, and it is pretty easy to see that while there are a lot of "holders", the majority of don't have much. The four largest with 100,000+ BTC in them, are exchange cold wallets, with two of them being for Binance. Actually, most of the top wallets are exchange wallets of some kind, or "confiscated" Bitcoin wallets, like that of the SilkRoad.
Don't lose the keys!
But, none of this really answers the question of how many people own one Bitcoin. However, there are over a million wallets that have more than a single bitcoin in them - though this doesn't mean over a million individuals, as many people in that top echelon will hold in multiple wallets. Still, it is interesting to think just how many people there might be, and to consider that 93% of all the Bitcoin is held in less than 2% of all the wallets. However the largest volume of Bitcoin is held in wallets that have 10-100 BTC in them, and then 100-1000. They are more likely to be people "every day" people, I suspect.
Do you have more than one BTC?
Another way to look at this is from the same site, looking at the amount of value held in each wallet across factors of 10 dollars.
Over 47 million hold more than a dollar worth. Under 13,000 hold more than 10 million worth. But, there are over a 127K bitcoin millionaire wallets. Paris Hilton might be one of those.
But, why I find this interesting is that as the price goes higher, it is of course that people will probably divest some, especially the larger holders. This means that distribution might increase, but it also decreases the amount each new buyer will get. Someone might have bought 1 BTC for 3000, but that same person is unlikely to buy 1 BTC at 85,000. And, they are likely (like me) kicking themselves for not buying more when it was 3000. Or 800, like it was when I started paying attention - poorly. I say poorly, because I was both stupid, and poor.
Nothing has changed.
I wonder how many people have held more than one Bitcoin, but don't hold more than one now. It would be interesting to see when people have bought and sold over time, and what they have done since. It would be even more interesting to see how many people have a different life based on what they have done with their crypto. Yes, there are people who have gone from nothing to massive amounts, and some have gone back again. But, how many people are actually significantly better off, given the opportunity they had?
Are you?
I am not. Well, not financially. But I do consider myself better off in the knowledge and perspective I have of the economy and the way society functions. It has been a pretty good school to be involved with, and I reckon if more people spent their time learning about all of this, and interacting directly with it, the world would be a better place. Ignorance might be bliss in the moment, but ignorance to personal suffering is hard to ignore for long.
Right now, I have enough Bitcoin to make the price interesting, but not enough to make it life-changing. What I would "need" for real change, is for HIVE to move significantly upward. That would be nice. I have told myself that I wouldn't hold everything all the way down again this time. But, as said, I am no smarter than I have been in the past and probably, the reverse is true. I am a bit stupider than I was earlier. I guess stupidity or smartness can only really be evaluated after the event, so we will see which it is.
I am sure those reading this have a perfect plan in place for what they will do and they will stick to it, as they know they should. I am sure that everyone will make the right decisions at the right time, and have little to no remorse on the outcome. I am sure there is no one who wishes they bought more, or held on a little longer than they did. I am sure that no one will feel a sense of loss.
We're all smarter than that, right?
At least we didn't lose 327 billion....
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Posted Using InLeo Alpha
I don't know what it is about fixed amounts but fixed amounts of anything really turn me off (one reason why I lost interest in bitcoin). I guess I just prefer things flowing.
Interesting how everyone knows exactly what's going on and exactly what they would do (because they have everything perfectly mapped out) in any given situation isn't it XD
We are born with a scarcity mindset, and being "exclusive" is a driving force these days. It will probably work out well for Bitcoin, but not sure how many will successfully accomplish similar. maybe none.
Everyone knows, until they don't know anymore :)
Boy am I ever loving this! I went in kinda heavily for me, at just under 20k. Before that I had bought very very little. That's nearly 4 1/2 times on my investment in just two years! I consider myself to be financially safer now, but not significantly better off. But I sure do wish I had bought more!
I haven't sold or traded any of my bitcoin holdings, other than to trade $100 for Hive back in the day, but would like to branch out into other coins.
Congrats. Hopefully you have a plan to at least reclaim what you have put in and then roll on up :)
I think even if BTC hit 1m per token I still wouldn't own enough for it to be life changing for me. I just didn't get in early enough and I didn't hold onto what I did have when I had the chance. Stupid moves. I really wish I had been mining back in the day, but I am sure I would have dumped most of it long before now!
I had a couple early on, but bought into Steem more heavily :D
Pretty much everyone would have. If they hadn't, there would be more people in the top ranges, and the top ranges wouldn't be so extreme.
Yeah, I guess that is good. I remember buying some Steem back in the day too when it was much higher than it is today. Can't go back though, just gotta keep moving foward.
We all long have been waiting for that move from HIVE. It is not yet the time for alts, and I still keep hope for HIVE.
2025 might be the true alt time. but hopefully there is some movement now also.
Yes. Please send it back to my account.I don't offer the finder's reward but if you will return full amount you will be in my thoughts/prayers. I hope that you will return my money as quickly as possible because I want to buy a basketball team.
Sincerely...
:D :D
I have very little invested in BTC. Most of my crypto investments is mostly in alts and several of them have made some nice gains. Of course, securing our wallet keys is paramount. You either write it down, store it digitally, or both. I have lost some good amount of crypto due to losing my keys and I won't let that ever repeat. I want to rake in a lot of profits this bull run and God forbid that after that, the problem would be that I've lost assess to my wallets.
Always have backups, and keep them safe!
This post has been manually curated by @steemflow from Indiaunited community. Join us on our Discord Server.
Do you know that you can earn a passive income by delegating to @indiaunited. We share more than 100 % of the curation rewards with the delegators in the form of IUC tokens. HP delegators and IUC token holders also get upto 20% additional vote weight.
Here are some handy links for delegations: 100HP, 250HP, 500HP, 1000HP.
100% of the rewards from this comment goes to the curator for their manual curation efforts. Please encourage the curator @steemflow by upvoting this comment and support the community by voting the posts made by @indiaunited.
It has happened to me twice now, once when creating a new BCH wallet.dat and once when creating a new BTC wallet.dat that there was already crypto which had been transferred to the addresses. The BTC one was more than the BCH gift. My thought was that some OG like perhaps Satoshi sent out some easter eggs to be found at a later date.
Your article makes me wonder... how much of the HIVE supply is held by people who have lost their private keys 🤔
What amount of Bitcoin would you have to hold to make it life changing in your opinion?
And in 2013 I was cycling through Magic the Gathering card collections instead of stacking the BTC.
Yup! Finally started in 2015 and sold in late 2017 just under 100 BTC when price was near ~$17.5K and closing in on 2nd divorce. Didn't get nearly aggressive enough at start of pandemic in 2020 around $8K I remember looking again real hard, but I had just moved home and was without work. I tried to convince some people to let me at the reserves but was shot down.
I got back closer to 0.5 in 2022 when I could DCA in btwn 16 - 30K. That was the best range. I started investing back in SPL more when BTC got back to 50K range. But I still DCA in every month and all my credit card rewards for the month are credited to me in BTC.