How Many people Own Bitcoin?

in #bitcoin6 years ago (edited)

The number of bitcoin investors is increasing. We can't know for sure how many investors there are. However we can know how many bitcoin addresses there are. Here is a table of the number of addresses taken on different snapshot dates:

As can be seen from the above table, there are currently only 23.68 million addresses. This gives us an absolute upper limit for the number of bitcoin investors.

I have divided the bitcoin investors into three broad groups as follows:

Whales (more than 15 bitcoin)
Dolphins (0.01 to 15 bitcoin)
Minnows (less than 0.01 bitcoin)

I think it is reasonable to exclude the category of "minnows" from being bitcoin investors. The average amount of bitcoin in those addresses is 0.0012155, worth around $12 at current prices ($10'000). At the start of the year it would have been barely $1. For the most part, the amount in these addresses are tiny fractions of a bitcoin left over from some long forgotten transaction. Even the address containing the maximum of 0.01 bitcoin, would only be worth $100, which is hardly an "investment".

If we exclude the minnows we can see that there are 5.7 million addresses left, which could represent investors, or their wallets. This number is likely to over-state the true number of individuals. Many will own multiple bitcoin addresses.

Having talked with many bitcoin investors, I have found that half a dozen or more addresses is not uncommon. People like to spread their risk. Others like to have different bitcoin addresses for different uses. Some hold online wallets with many addresses. Almost nobody has only one address. If I take an average of three addresses per individual, then we arrive at a global number of bitcoin investors of 1.9 million.

1.9 million people own bitcoin.

If we compare that to the number of adults on the planet (approx 4.8 billion), we can see that the penetration rate is around 0.112%. Very roughly, this means that around 1 in 842 adults own any bitcoin.

The next obvious question is "How fast are new bitcoin investors growing?" To answer this question I will look only at the dolphins. I think the whales and minnows don't count for this question.

As can be calculated from the table above:

So, as of now, we are seeing around 15'919 new dolphin addresses being created daily. On the basis that each investor has an average of 3 addresses, we can conclude that there are around 5000 new investors daily.

In a later post I will demonstrate that the average amount going into each new address is a little over $1’000. That translates into more that $16 million daily being invested into bitcoin.

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yes bitcoin member is increasing by leap and bounds. it's due to high value of increment in bitcoin during a couple of weeks. All the best for bitcoin invester. ncie article @swissclive keep sharing. Resteemed & Upvoted

I am one of those investors Minnows of BTC, I am very happy to have known this world of cryptocurrencies, the growth of investors every day is more surprising, Greetings and thanks for the information of great interest to the community.

I really enjoy when you make these posts. This will help me sleep better at night. You can add one more address to that as I got one more person converted to be wiring money tomorrow to an exchange to be a new holder.

The group of investors will continue to grow, despite the defamations of the YPM group of agents. they are strategies that they use to cause panic presumably in the new investors, so that they want to sell their few btc, so they buy themselves by becoming creditors of a large number of small quantities of btc in the market. Every day they have more and they go for more.

When you look at this, how could you say Bitcoin is in a bubble?

There’s an obscene amount of room for growth!

I made a mistake and I sold a good portion of my Bitcoin a month ago. Never say never, but I can’t see myself selling again anytime soon.

Interesting thought process, personally I have 3 separate bitcoin wallets from various different points in time since different wallets serve different need, and none of my wallets have had less than 10 addresses each. It is still a nice idea for a general number of frequent users though.

Nice analisys! It is easy to conclude that there is a lot of room for new investors in Bitcoin which means that its price could keep going up! I would like that one day to be a dolphin, but until then I will keep on reading new articles and get new information each day :)

That is huge growth.
In a span of 1 year bitcoin has seen more than 10k new people investing than what it was one year back.
Going by this chart and the popularity bitcoin has gained in 2017,it would not be a surprise if we see the new investors increase 4 times in next one year than what it us today.

Excellent statistics and analysis. From this we see that the value of Bitcoin will grow dizzy, if we have an influx of 15,000 new dolphins every day, then this is the time to invest in as many Bitcoin as possible.
You're really an extraordinary analyst, where do you get this information, the style of the story is more than understandable. Thank you for your support and great posts @swissclive

This is confirmation of the fact that now the market is just a temporary correction, and in the near future you can wait for bitcoin and $ 50,000 dollars.

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