On May 20, Caitlin Long, founder of Custodia Bank, retweeted and revived an interesting question asked by Adam Back, CEO of Blockstream, about whether the number of so-called Bitcoin “wholecoiners” has peaked.
Has the number of Bitcoin Wholecoiners peaked?
Her question is when did the number of people holding at least 1 BTC, rose above the 1 million mark last week.
While the growing number of wholecoiners indicates the potential for adoption and increased demand for BTC over time, market forces could eventually limit their numbers.
She believes that as bitcoin prices rise, it will be more expensive for those who want to acquire the asset to buy the asset. So, based on these factors, it may be very unlikely that there will be 10 million in the coming years.
Have we reached the peak in full coins in # Bitcoin Asks @adam3us? 1 million coins complete today. Maybe a full 10 million coins can never be reached, bc bitcoin price would be too high to reach that given the 21 million max supply… pic.twitter.com/vzRvv2vyAW
– Caitlin Long 🔑⚡️🟠 (@CaitlinLong_) May 20, 2023
On May 13, Glassnode, an on-chain analytics company, open The number of addresses managing at least 1 BTC has crossed the 1 million mark and is still growing exponentially.
This upward trend has held steady, surviving the impact of the crypto winter that saw bitcoin prices plummet from over $69,000 recorded in November 2021 to below $16,000 in Q4 2022.
Despite this impressive trend, Long and Adam’s observations may cast doubt on whether this can continue in the long term, pushing the university’s headcount into double digits.
By design, Bitcoin is deflationary and there will be 21 million BTC ever in circulation. Since inflation is also declining due to BTC halving roughly every four years, coin holders expect BTC prices to gradually increase over the years.
Based on historical performance and increasing crypto adoption, market forces could push bitcoin prices higher, making it difficult for more users to own a single bitcoin currently trading at over $26,900 on May 21.
Less than 2.5% of BTC addresses are bulk buyers
While the number of holders of financial assets continues to grow, there is a division between long-term investors and short-term speculators.
Long-term holders of bitcoin showed resilience during market volatility, holding their positions rather than selling. On the other hand, speculators are more known for getting out of USDT and cash in times of increased volatility. For their actions, short-term stockholders or speculators were classified as “weak hands”.
So far, BitInfoCharts Offers Less than 2.5% of all Bitcoin addresses contain at least 1 BTC. As of May 21st, addresses with between 1 and 10 BTC amounted to 2.1% of the total. Meanwhile, the number of whales, or those holding over 100 BTC accounted for less than 0.033% of the total addresses.
Roughly 93% of all Bitcoin addresses are owned between 0.00001 and 0.0001 BTC.
Featured image from Canva, chart from TradingView
