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One Million Individual Wallets Now Hold a Whole Bitcoin
A major bump in such wallets came after the implosion of crypto exchange FTX between November and January.
Updated May 16, 2023, 7:45 p.m. Published May 16, 2023, 7:57 a.m.
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Individual wallets holding at least one bitcoin set a milestone figure earlier this week, suggesting long-term sentiment for the tokens remains intact even as broader markets weigh down bitcoin prices.
Data from the on-chain analytics tool Glassnode show bitcoin wallets holding more than one token crossed the millionth mark on Monday. This is a 20% bump since February last year.
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The data shows that bitcoin wallets holding one token grew by 79,000 between November and January – amid the collapse of crypto exchange FTX as prices fell from over $22,000 to briefly under $16,000.
The recent rise in ‘Bitcoin Request for Comment’ (BRC-20) tokens has done little to increase the number of wealthy holders, with only 30,000 new wallets holding one bitcoin added since the BRC-20 token standard’s launch in March.
Read more: BRC-20 Explained: How Tokens on Bitcoin Work and Why They Are Controversial
These standards allow developers to issue tokens on the network and build decentralized finance (DeFi) services such as lending and borrowing. It has contributed toward fees on the Bitcoin blockchain surging to two-year highs amid the demand for block space, with altcoins issued on Bitcoin reaching a cumulative market capitalization of as high as $1.6 billion earlier this month.
Meanwhile, despite the large holder figure, some market observers saw that most of the current bitcoin transactions come from smaller wallets.
“During the last peak in 2019, most Bitcoin transactions skewed towards larger transactions, in the range of $1,000 to $10,000,” said Tom Rodgers, Head of Research at ETC Group, in an email to CoinDesk.“This suggests most Bitcoin users were using the blockchain for trading.”
“Compare this to last week. The largest cohort of Bitcoin transactions - 359,560 - came from transactions under $1. This suggests a huge increase in Bitcoin velocity -- or the amount of Bitcoin being transacted by users, instead of being locked up in cold wallets and held over the long term,” Rodgers added.
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