Each year, the number of “wholecoiner” Bitcoin wallets that hold over 1BTC increases continuously. The rest that does not hold whole coins represent a mere 5% of Bitcoin’s market capitalization.
The latest data reveal that ‘wholecoiners’ account for around 95% of the crypto’s capitalization. The remaining 5% is divided among millions of users that have these low balances in their wallets. Since 2009, the addresses that hold at least one bitcoin have been increasing year-over-year regardless of BTC’s massive price rallies.
On November 27, 2021, Rafael Shultze-Kraft, Glassnode CTO, tweeted a detailed chart that revealed over 800,000 addresses that currently hold over 1 BTC.
The number of #Bitcoin "wholecoiner" addresses (holding ≥ 1 BTC) on this day every year 📈
Data: https://t.co/VJm4nRFKp8 pic.twitter.com/6VJff2vB3r
— Rafael Schultze-Kraft (@n3ocortex) November 26, 2021
Based on Bit Info Charts, wholecoiner addresses represent almost $300 billion worth of Bitcoin currently. On the contrary, the current cumulative value of less-than-wholecoin addresses is around $15 billion.
A linear chart indicates some retracements in the history of the wholecoiners, with the biggest dip coming in early 2016 when that number of addresses that held over 1 BTC dropped by 13.5% from around 520,000 to 450,000.
In 2018, the wholecoiner growth stagnated as the number of addresses with a whole bitcoin hovered around 720,000 and 690,000 for 12 months from December 2017.
Into The Block reported that 32.95 million Bitcoin addresses have some balance in BTC. It suggests that the wholecoiners represent a small 0.47% of the balance-bearing Bitcoin wallets.
