The Owner of 11.1 Million Bitcoins is Unknown: Who Owns 55% of the Total Supply?

Galaxy Research stated that they could not associate approximately 55% of the mined Bitcoins with any exchange, fund, company, or other known organization.

The adoption of Bitcoin by Wall Street and the growth of spot ETFs can create the perception that the supply is entirely under the control of large institutions. However, a recent distribution study by Galaxy Research shows that the majority of mined Bitcoins are still not linked to any known institution.

According to October data, approximately 11.1 million $BTC, or 55% of the approximately 20.1 million Bitcoins mined to date, are held in “unidentified” addresses. Researchers were unable to link these addresses to a cryptocurrency exchange, ETF, company, government, fund, or known custodian.

Galaxy Research President Alex Thorn believes the data indicates that the secrecy method, where individual investors protect their own private keys, is still widespread. It is known that individual users who entered the market in Bitcoin’s early years accumulated large amounts of $BTC long before institutional investors.

However, it cannot be concluded that all 11.1 million Bitcoins belong to active individual investors. This amount may include Bitcoins whose private keys have been lost or are inaccessible because their owners have passed away. Companies, mutual funds, over-the-counter trading desks, and complex custody systems whose addresses have not yet been tagged may also fall into the “unknown” category.

The remaining 45 percent includes identified holders such as major exchanges, spot ETFs, the US government, and various companies. The study also considers the 1,123,658 $BTC in “Patoshi model” addresses associated with Satoshi Nakamoto as a separate known category.

While address balances on the blockchain are publicly available, it’s not always possible to definitively determine who owns an address in the real world. Furthermore, a single individual might use thousands of addresses, while a custodian’s single address could represent thousands of clients. Therefore, this study offers an estimate based on existing address tags, rather than a definitive ownership list.

*This is not investment advice.