Who owns the most Bitcoin? Some people ask this question without knowing the answer. Was he Satoshi Nakamoto, the inventor of Bitcoin?
Or an investor like Micro Strategy or Tesla? Or is the famous cryptocurrency owned by certain governments?
Inevitably, a group of governments sits on large stores of Bitcoin.
There is no specific answer, as the world still does not know who owns a large amount of Bitcoin.
However, there are guesses to answer this question, which we will explain in this article.
What drives Bitcoin’s value?
Satoshi Nakamoto invented Bitcoin as a widely used, more transparent, and democratic alternative to fiat currencies, which central banks control.
In contrast to this control, Bitcoin does not control the economy but rather challenges the current financial system by empowering those who have a digital device such as a smartphone.
It conducts financial transactions with people or companies from anywhere in the world without exorbitant fees, banking intervention, or delays from financial institutions.
Bitcoin is still far from achieving the goal of replacing paper currencies and becoming the approved global currency.
However, it has achieved a great achievement in being among the leading global assets in the world and proving that it is the best-performing asset in recent years compared to gold, oil, and stocks.
Some factors give value to Bitcoin, such as:
- Bitcoin Scarcity: The maximum supply of the coin is set at 21 million, making it a scarce asset.
- Solidity: Bitcoin is more solid in value than any physical asset such as oil and precious metals as a decentralized digital asset.
- Divisible: The currency can be divided into 8 decimal divisions, making it more divisible than paper currencies.
- Authenticity: Unlike gold or banknotes, Bitcoin is impossible to counterfeit.
- Portability: It is the most transferable asset in the world provided there is access to public and private keys as the user carries Bitcoin anywhere wherever he goes.
Who owns the most Bitcoin?
Largest Bitcoin wallets
The answer to this question can be found by tracking the wallets that contain the largest number of Bitcoins.
As of writing this article, there are only five Bitcoin wallets with a balance between 100,000 and 1 million Bitcoins, with all of these wallets representing 4.08% of the total currency in circulation.
As shown in this image, Binance has five wallets.
But this does not mean that the largest crypto exchange in the world owns the largest number of Bitcoins because a large portion of this money is user money deposited on the crypto exchange.
The next 92 wallets on the list contain between 10,000 and 100,000 BTC with a total of 2,119,438 BTC representing a combined 11.11% of the total supply in circulation.
As of writing this article, more than 19 million Bitcoins have been mined out of 21 million, so the total distribution of currencies is as follows:
Note that the circulating supply of Bitcoin is more than 19 million according to the data, but the actual number of coins in circulation may be much lower due to an estimate of 4 million Bitcoins being lost.
Wallet addresses only give us an overview of the overall distribution of Bitcoin.
Due to the lack of clarity of lineage on the Bitcoin network, addresses alone are not sufficient to link a specific wallet to a person or company.
Individuals who own the largest number of Bitcoins
The order of this list depends on whether Satoshi Nakamoto is an individual or an organization. His true identity has not been revealed, leaving room for all guesswork.
Some people believe that it is a person, while others believe that it is just a pseudonym representing a team of experts who combined their experiences to invent the first cryptocurrency in the world, and the world still disagrees about this matter.
1. How much Bitcoin does Satoshi Nakamoto own?
As the top miner on the Bitcoin network, Nakamoto mined more than 22,000 blocks before exiting the picture in 2011.
According to mining rewards at this time, he is believed to have over 1 million Bitcoins stored in various wallets with no Bitcoins expected to be spent except for some coin testing transactions.
As a result, the idea is taking hold that Nakamoto is a Bitcoin billionaire, worth $21 billion at the time of publishing this article.
This is a higher figure than about $66 billion when Bitcoin reached its high of $68,789 in November 2021.
If you consider Satoshi Nakamoto as a person and not a team, you can expect him to be on the list of people who own a large amount of Bitcoin, along with more people on the list in unknown order.
2. Winklevoss twins: Cameron and Tyler
After a struggle that was widely covered in newspapers over the founding of Facebook, the Winklevoss twins invested in several cryptocurrencies and companies specializing in blockchain and crypto.
They founded Gemini in 2014 as a cryptocurrency exchange regulated by the New York State Department of Financial Services.
According to Forbes, the twins were among the first to become Bitcoin billionaires with about 70,000 Bitcoin, among many other cryptocurrencies.
4. Michael Saylor
Michael Saylor is the founder and CEO of MicroStrategy, which specializes in providing business intelligence solutions.
While the company makes headlines regarding cryptocurrencies, the company is several decades ahead of blockchain and cryptocurrencies.
The company was founded in 1989 to provide a range of cloud-based software and services.
Before entering the crypto industry, Saylor began supporting and betting on Bitcoin in 2019, currently owning 17,700 Bitcoins. While Macro Strategy owns approximately 130,000 bitcoins.
5. Barry Silbert
It can be guessed how much Bitcoin Barry Silbert owns although the amount of slavery has not been determined.
It is expected that this number will be huge as a result of the founder and CEO of the Cryptocurrency Group being linked to many encryption and blockchain companies, such as the Coinbase exchange, and his ownership of Galaxy Digital, which alone owns more than 16,400 Bitcoin.
6. Tim draper
Investor Tim Draper has nearly three decades of experience in successful investments as he is a Wall Street celebrity.
In addition to his investments in several companies such as Tesla and Skype, Draper was an early adopter of Bitcoin.
Draper bought 30,000 Bitcoins for $19 million in 2014 from an auction held by Marshalls in the United States to sell a large amount of Bitcoins.
Seized from Silk Road (the notorious dark web market), such an investment was one of the early investments in Bitcoin as well as many in later years.
How many Bitcoins do countries own?
According to expectations, governments around the world own about 260,000 Bitcoin, which represents 1.24% of the total circulating supply of the crypto-asset.
In some countries, such as El Salvador, that recognize and store Bitcoin as legal tender, ownership is more secretive.
There are some reports that North Korea has hackers and other suspicious means of acquiring cryptocurrencies.
Other reports indicate that Bulgaria owns about 210 thousand bitcoins.
Some also believe that members of the Ukrainian government own about 46,000 bitcoins.
As for the United States and its government, it is expected to possess thousands of Bitcoins that it exports from currency thieves.
While there are no in-depth details on this matter, some estimates indicate that 70,000 bitcoins were acquired.
The Finnish government also holds some of its confiscated bitcoins for criminal investigations.
But not as large as the United States where some believe holding about 1,981 Bitcoin.
In April 2022, the government hired brokers to sell Bitcoin at its disposal.
Companies that own a large amount of Bitcoin
Companies investing part of their savings in Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly diversifying to confront inflation and counter bonds with negative yields.
We review some public and private companies that own a large amount of Bitcoin:
Public companies
- Micro Strategy: The largest company that has owned the Bitcoin currency for a long time, in addition to its specialization in smart software that helps institutions. The company is based in Virginia, where it has 129,218 Bitcoins in its treasury, according to data from the CoinGecko platform. The company is owned by its founder, Michael Saylor, the first competitor to The title of the largest cryptocurrency holder.
- Tesla: In second place is Tesla, which has begun accepting Bitcoin for payments, as Elon Musk, the founder and CEO of the company, is a major supporter of the company and a supporter of the cryptocurrency. The company currently owns about 48,000 Bitcoins.
- Galaxy Digital: The company presents itself as a specialist in the world of investment and provides high-quality financial solutions through technology. It also supports and works to solve problems within the ecosystem of cryptocurrencies. The company owns approximately 16,400 Bitcoins.
Private companies
- Block One: The company is based in China and supports the open-source blockchain platform EOSIO. The company owns about 140K Bitcoins.
- Tezos Foundation: The company is based in Switzerland and markets the Tezos protocol through various investment methods, as it is considered the second largest private company to own Bitcoin and currently owns about 17,500 bitcoins.
- Stone Ridge Group: It is in third place on this list and is headquartered in New York with 10,000 bitcoins.
No clear conclusion can be made for the largest holder of Bitcoin
The question of who is the largest owner of Bitcoin cannot be clearly answered.
It is not possible to know whether Satoshi Nakamoto is a person or a group of experts. If he is a person, he may have access to many wallets of Bitcoin, amounting to more than a million.
But we can say that Nakamoto owns the largest stock of bitcoins in the world, and the largest owner of the currency will only be known by knowing the true identity of the inventor of bitcoin.
