With over 1 million BTC held by various Bitcoin ETFs, they now represent over 5% of the asset’s capitalization. Who are the other major bitcoin holders?
More than 5% of existing BTC is locked in ETFs
While more than 19.74 million BTC have been mined since Bitcoin's launch, a significant portion of the $1.2 trillion capitalization is now immobilized. Indeed, some bitcoins may be lost, or held long-term by whales, companies, or investment funds.
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So, ETFs fall into this latter category, and as we might expect before their launch, they now hold a significant percentage of this capitalization, with more than 5.3% of this capitalization. Indeed, as data from Bitcoin Treasuries shows, the number of BTC held by ETFs now exceeds one million:
Map of the largest BTC holders
As we can see above, BlackRock and Grayscale alone account for more than half of Bitcoin ETF capitalizationwith 351,454 and 229,181 BTC each respectively.
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Other major players holding BTC
While ETFs immobilize a significant portion of BTC, it should be noted that they do not directly own it. The more investors buy shares in these ETFs, the more their amount of assets under management will increase. Thus, a parallel can be drawn with centralized exchanges, which are not shown in the previous illustration.
For example, Arkham data shows that Binance has 673,746 BTC under management, while Coinbase has 859,839. Together, this represents no less than 7.76% of Bitcoin market cap.
On the other hand, there are players whose bitcoin reserves are smaller, but who can use them as they wish.
This is particularly the case of the giant Microstrategy and its 226,500 BTC, or of Block.one and Tether, with 164,000 and 75,354 BTC. In addition, we can also cite the case of governments, with the United States in the lead with 213,246 BTC, as well as China which holds 190,000.
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In addition to the well-defined quantity of the number of bitcoins, we can also see that these phenomena can contribute to the scarcity of the asset in the long term. At the time of writing, the price of BTC is $60,800, up 2.5% over 24 hours.
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Source: Bitcoin Treasuries
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Since 2021, I have devoted my free time to seriously training myself on cryptocurrencies in order to acquire as much knowledge and credibility as possible. I often have the opportunity to conduct interviews with influential figures in the blockchain industry. I also conduct in-depth analyses on Web3 themes to offer exclusive content to Cryptoast readers.
Vincent Maire
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