The Latest List of the Largest Bitcoin Holders in 2023

1. Introduction

Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, is believed to be the largest holder of Bitcoin, holding about 1.1 million Bitcoins (about $30 billion). Although no one knows exactly how many Bitcoins Satoshi Nakamoto holds, research shows that he mined 22,000 blocks, and these Bitcoins are his mining rewards. The personal wallet holding the most Bitcoins is a Binance exchange wallet, which holds about 250,000 Bitcoins.

Through Arkham’s research, we can see which wallets hold the most Bitcoin:

Bitcoin is a decentralized digital currency that runs on a peer-to-peer network called the blockchain. Due to these properties, no one person can truly own the entire Bitcoin network, but individuals can access and own Bitcoins controlled by their own private keys.

The price of Bitcoin has risen dramatically, reaching a peak of approximately $69,000 in November 2021 and a market cap of $1.3 trillion, creating several Bitcoin millionaires and other wealthy Bitcoin holders in the process. In this article, we will take a look at some crypto whale wallets, some of which are individuals and some are companies, and will investigate the amount of Bitcoin they hold based on on-chain data and their public announcements.

Note: The price of Bitcoin fluctuates constantly, and the amount of Bitcoin held by a particular wallet may change over time.

summary:

Satoshi Nakamoto is the largest holder of Bitcoin, allegedly owning 1.1 million Bitcoins, worth approximately $30 billion at today’s prices.

Binance and Bitfinex are the two largest Bitcoin exchange holders, custodial over 600,000 and 200,000 Bitcoins respectively.

The U.S. government holds 205,515 Bitcoins, seized from the Silk Road marketplace, hacker James Zhong, and the Bitfinex hacker.

There are multiple anonymous Bitcoin billionaire wallets, most of which are no longer active after the initial flow of Bitcoin into the wallet.

2. The largest known individual Bitcoin holder

Many of Bitcoin's largest holders are not well known, with many remaining anonymous but becoming known through public disclosures or research.

Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator of Bitcoin, is said to be the largest holder of Bitcoin, with 1.1 million Bitcoins stored in 22,000 addresses. While we are not sure how many Bitcoins Satoshi Nakamoto holds, as the first miner on the Bitcoin network, he may have mined more than 22,000 blocks from 2009 to 2010 and received 1.1 million Bitcoins as block rewards. However, although it is assumed that these rewards were obtained by a single entity, we cannot be completely sure whether these rewards are Satoshi Nakamoto's Bitcoins, nor can we determine who Satoshi Nakamoto is.

Here is an address known to be held by Satoshi Nakamoto himself: 1A1zP1eP5QGefi2DMPTfTL5SLmv7DivfNa

Gemini founders Tyler and Cameron revealed in 2013 that they had purchased 1% of the total supply of Bitcoin at the time, estimated to be around 70,000 Bitcoins.

In 2014, Tim Draper, a well-known venture capitalist, purchased 29,656 bitcoins from the U.S. Marshals Service for $18.7 million. In December 2014, Draper participated in a second bitcoin auction and purchased another 2,000 bitcoins. These bitcoins were originally seized from the Silk Road market, then auctioned and purchased by Draper. (Disclosure: Draper is one of the investors in Arkham, and his company is Draper Associates.)

MicroStrategy co-founder Michael Saylor revealed in November 2021 that his personal Bitcoin holdings were 17,732 Bitcoins. Saylor has become a prominent figure in crypto culture, known for his extremely bullish stance on Bitcoin. He maintains an active media presence on Twitter and other platforms, and has been vocal in his support for the spirit of Bitcoin.

3. Publicly traded companies holding Bitcoin

As Bitcoin gains more and more adoption and recognition as a digital asset, many public companies have already included Bitcoin as part of their investment strategy or diversification of company reserves.

MicroStrategy, led by Michael Saylor, holds more Bitcoin than any other public company. The company has been accumulating Bitcoin since August 2020, and their most recent purchase was in April 2023, when they spent $29.3 million to buy 1,045 Bitcoins. This brings their total Bitcoin holdings to 140,000.

Galaxy Digital, founded by Mike Novogratz, provides a range of asset management, trading and other institutional services. In its most recent public filing for 2022-23, Galaxy Digital said its Bitcoin holdings were valued at $357 million. However, this figure does not include any loans payable or collateral payable on digital assets.

Marahon Digital Holdings is a North American listed bitcoin mining company and another large holder of bitcoin. They operate 9 mining farms with an average daily mining output of 24.4 bitcoins. According to the latest quarterly filing as of March 31, 2023, Marathon Digital's bitcoin holdings are 11,466.

Tesla reportedly holds 10,700 Bitcoins. The data was originally disclosed in Tesla's February 2021 10-K filing, which revealed that Tesla spent 7.5% of its cash to purchase $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. The company initially said it would also begin accepting Bitcoin as payment for its products, but quickly abandoned the plan, citing climate change. As the crypto market crashed in 2022, Tesla sold 75% of its Bitcoin holdings in the second quarter of 2022, generating a loss of $140 million. Tesla's Bitcoin holdings have not changed since then.

Finally, let’s look at Voyager Digital, a public company founded in 2018 that filed for bankruptcy in 2022 due to market volatility and the default of a $350 million USDC and 15,250 Bitcoin loan from Three Arrows Capital. According to Voyager’s last quarterly filing as of March 31, 2022, the company held 25,171 Bitcoins. According to Arkham’s research on Voyager, at the time of writing, the number of Bitcoins they hold on-chain is 5,855.

4. Private companies holding Bitcoin

Mt. Gox was a Japan-based Bitcoin exchange that suffered a massive Bitcoin hack in 2014, leading to its closure and bankruptcy. Over the years, the appointed trustee has been able to find some of the lost Bitcoins, and creditors are expected to be partially repaid in 2023. The Mt. Gox wallet currently holds 137,892 Bitcoins.

As of March 31, 2023, Tether, the issuer of the stablecoin USDT, recently announced a circulating supply of $83.4 billion and held $1.5 billion in Bitcoin. In the first quarter of 2021, Tether announced a net profit of $1.48 billion and stated that starting in May, they will regularly distribute up to 15% of realized net operating profits to purchase Bitcoin.

5. Exchange-traded funds and trusts

Grayscale is an asset management company that provides a range of products for the public market. The company is a subsidiary of Digital Currency Group, and according to the most recent quarterly filing, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust holds 628,932 bitcoins. All digital assets in Grayscale's financial products are also stored under Coinbase's custody.

Although spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) are not yet available in the United States, Canada's Purpose Investments allows investors to hold underlying Bitcoin through its ETF products without having to self-custody any Bitcoin. As of June 9, 2023, the Purpose Bitcoin ETF holds 22,756 Bitcoins.

6. Which government owns the most Bitcoin?

Unlike most countries that have seized and held Bitcoin after criminal arrests, El Salvador and the Central African Republic have boldly adopted Bitcoin as legal tender. El Salvador purchased 2,546 Bitcoins for $108 million. Furthermore, in November 2022, Salvadoran President Nayyib Bukele announced that the country would also purchase 1 Bitcoin per day. Assuming they continue to purchase Bitcoin at this frequency, El Salvador will achieve a holding of 2,791 Bitcoins by the end of the year.

Ukraine has also received $22.8 million in Bitcoin donations since the start of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. According to data released by the Ukrainian government in April 2021, more than 700,000 public officials in Ukraine also claim to own Bitcoin, with some owning as many as 18,000 Bitcoins. Ukrainian public officials are said to own a total of 46,351 Bitcoins. While Bitcoin held by public officials is not strictly owned by the government, the fact that public officials widely and publicly hold Bitcoin is itself unusual and significant.

Bhutan has been mining Bitcoin since 2019, and in May 2023, Bhutan’s sovereign wealth fund Druk Holding and Investments announced a $500 million partnership with Bitdeer to expand its Bitcoin mining operations. Given Bhutan’s geographical advantages, the country has built many hydroelectric power plants along glacial rivers. The country will now use its cheap and abundant hydropower to mine Bitcoin and invest the profits in the country’s development.

7. Confiscation

However, in terms of government holdings associated with forfeiture, the United States tops the list with a wallet size of 205,515 Bitcoins. These Bitcoins were seized by the FBI from the Bitfinex hack and the Silk Road marketplace and Silk Road hacker James Zhong. The U.S. government has liquidated approximately 10,000 Silk Road Bitcoins for $215 million and announced plans to liquidate the remaining 41,000 Silk Road Bitcoins in four batches in 2023.

In 2017, the Bulgarian government seized a total of 213,519 Bitcoins following a criminal crackdown. At the time, these Bitcoins represented 1% of the circulating supply and were worth $3.3 billion. After the crackdown, rumors spread that the Bulgarian government auctioned off all of these Bitcoins in the following months. However, it remains unclear whether this is true.

In November 2020, Chinese authorities seized 194,775 bitcoins from the operators of the PlusToken Ponzi scheme. The bitcoins were added to the state treasury, but it is unclear whether China still holds the bitcoins or has sold them.

In July 2022, Finland liquidated 1,889 bitcoins seized from criminal activities before 2018. Finnish customs still holds 90 bitcoins and an unknown number of other tokens and is currently awaiting a court decision.

8. Crypto Exchanges

According to Coinbase's first quarter 2023 filing, Coinbase holds $55.6 billion in Bitcoin on behalf of its customers, which includes all customer assets and institutions custodied by Coinbase. Coinbase also invests 10% of its net income in a diversified portfolio of crypto assets, and as of March 31, 2023, it held $261.5 million in Bitcoin itself. In addition, Coinbase holds $8.8 million in Bitcoin for operations.

For security reasons, most of Coinbase's Bitcoin wallets remain private. However, according to Arkham's existing research, Binance and Bitfinex are the two largest Bitcoin exchange holders, with more than 600,000 and about 200,000 Bitcoins, respectively. These cold wallets host customer deposits and generally do not represent ownership of the exchange. Binance and Bitfinex together hold more than 4% of the circulating supply of Bitcoin.

9. The largest anonymous Bitcoin whale wallet

In addition to crypto exchanges, there are many anonymous Bitcoin billionaire wallets that hold large amounts of Bitcoin. The activity of these wallets varies, with some actively involved in transactions while others have been dormant for a long time, leaving people wondering if the wallet owners still have access.

Of the eight wallets analyzed, five are dormant, while the remaining three have seen both inflows and outflows over the past year. Interestingly, six of the Bitcoin Billionaire wallets were created after January 2018.

The table below shows the largest anonymous Bitcoin holders, showing the amount of Bitcoin they hold, as a percentage of the circulating supply, as well as the wallet status and some observations about the wallet.

Top anonymous Bitcoin whale wallets holding more than $1 billion:

10. Conclusion

Bitcoin started out as a niche project for cryptography enthusiasts and has now grown into a globally important financial asset held by numerous companies, individuals and governments. The appeal of holding Bitcoin is that it is decentralized, ensuring that no one person can own the entire Bitcoin network, making it prohibitively expensive for even the most determined attacker to gain full control of the Bitcoin network.

The maximum supply of Bitcoin is 21 million, a fundamental aspect of the project’s design that ensures that Bitcoin remains a scarce asset that cannot be inflated by printing money. Given that an estimated 3.7 million Bitcoins are permanently lost in some inaccessible wallets, the actual total supply of Bitcoin is even lower.