How Many Bitcoin Whales are There?

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Sixteen years have passed since Bitcoin was created and it has cemented its place among the most influential digital assets in the world. This token acted like a catalyst for the cryptocurrency ecosystem that has now grown into a multi-billion dollar industry.

One word Bitcoin has been most often associated with is “whales”. These entities generally drive up major moves in the price of Bitcoin and the liquidity of the token in circulation. But how many Bitcoin whales are out there today? A better understanding of the major holder distribution could give insights into market stability, decentralization, and overall health of the Bitcoin network.

Here, we’ll outline what we know about Bitcoin whales, how they are defined, and what their presence means for the future of cryptocurrency.

What are Bitcoin Whales?

A Bitcoin whale doesn’t necessarily refer to one single person; they can be a company or group of people that have a considerably large amount of Bitcoin holdings, enough to impact the coin’s price movements with a single trade.

How Much Bitcoin Holdings Make a Whale?

To be considered a whale, a wallet (or wallets) usually has to hold a minimum threshold of around 1,000 BTC. However, there isn’t any universal law that states someone below this threshold can’t be a whale.

The definition of a whale by many analysts is often based not just on Bitcoin holdings but on their influence in USD terms. For example, someone holding 100 BTC today could be considered extremely influential due to the high valuation per coin.

How Do Whales Influence the Market?

Bitcoin has a limited supply despite its high value, a reason it is often referred to as “digital gold” due to its scarcity. Now with this fixed supply, whales have a position as the game changers due to their significant holdings in the bitcoin market, and their moves can have an instant impact on the demand and supply of the token every time they trade.

Their movements, more often than not, trigger a chain reaction amongst smaller investors. Take, for instance, a scenario where a whale sells off a significant amount of BTC, around 5,000 BTC, in a single transaction. This trade can create downward pressure on the market, causing panic among smaller investors and triggering broader sell-offs.

Conversely, if a whale decides to add to his Bitcoin position over time, it can not only lead to price stability but an upward trend as smaller investors may decide to rally behind them due to the size of their trades.

They can also decide to manipulate the market to their favour by placing large buy or sell orders at specific price levels; this creates “walls” that can artificially inflate or deflate prices. They can also engage in wash trading, creating the illusion of high trading volume to attract other investors.

Biggest Bitcoin Holders

Data from a Bitcoin whale chart currently indicates that there are around 2,060 BTC wallets that have a balance that exceeds 1,000 BTC. Although the identity of some of these holders remains anonymous, the media has been able to spot some crypto industry players that have large holdings in Bitcoin. Some of these entities are:

Satoshi Nakamoto

Definitely the most elusive name on this list, no person can surely tell who was truly behind BTC’s creation, or even to this day if the name Satoshi Nakamoto refers to one individual or many.

One thing for sure is that it is believed they were able to mine no less than 22,000 blocks, with each block holding a 50 BTC reward placing the total number of coins earned by Satoshi at approximately 1.1 million.

Despite this large sum, the 1.1 million tokens have never been tracked to a specific wallet, as it was speculated that Satoshi always used a different wallet to store the coins earned from a particular block.

The wallets with these holdings have remained inactive for years, and if the rumours are worth their salt, the size of Satoshi’s Bitcoin holding would probably be worth a whopping $50.4 billion.

Michael Saylor

Michael Saylor, the MicroStrategy co-founder and former CEO, is another prominent  Bitcoin believer. Through his business, he was able to purchase and control more than 152,000 BTC in a bid to adopt cryptocurrency as its primary reserve asset.

He has once stated that he owned 17,732 Bitcoin personally and is a very strong believer in the Bitcoin ecosystem and its benefits. He was even said to have begun selling part of his stake in MicroStrategy last year to use some of the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin for himself.

Changpeng Zhao

Changpeng, a co-founder of Binance, is a Chinese cryptocurrency trader rumoured to hold one of the largest Bitcoin reserves globally. He initially became involved in Bitcoin in 2014 after selling his apartment for approximately $1 million, using that money to invest in Bitcoin, which would have provided him with just a few thousand dollars back then.

Despite the exact figures of his holding being largely unknown, he has an estimated net worth of over $31billion and has quite possibly added more positions to his holdings, and a huge amount of his net worth could be in Bitcoin.

Tesla

Moving from individuals to companies, Elon Musk’s automobile company, Tesla,  is said to hold 10,500 Bitcoins that are worth over $300 million. The company first acquired approximately $1.5 billion in Bitcoin in 2021 after announcing it would begin accepting cryptocurrency payments.

A few months later, Tesla divested 10% of its BTC assets as Musk allegedly aimed to evaluate if the coin could be sold off easily without significantly impacting the market. Then in 2022, Tesla sold 75% of its remaining Bitcoin as it began to decline in value due to a crypto winter that impacted the overall digital asset market.

The Future of Whales in the Bitcoin Ecosystem

Bitcoin whales are the needle movers that set the ball rolling in shaping the market’s behaviour and long-term trends. As the crypto ecosystem matures, the influence of whales may gradually diminish due to increasing market liquidity, broader adoption, and the rise of institutional players that may seek to balance the concentration of wealth.

Regardless of this potential shift, whales will still likely remain a powerful force; understanding and monitoring whale activity will continue to be crucial for investors seeking to navigate the evolving crypto landscape.