By James Davis
Who holds the most BTC? It is a question that you have likely asked yourself at some point. Well, lucky for you, we have much-needed answers in this article. Keep reading to find out the largest institutional and individual Bitcoin holders in 2024.
Largest BTC Wallets
One of the effective ways of discovering who holds the most Bitcoins in 2024 is identifying wallets with huge BTC balances. In our research, we found five wallets with BTC balances of between 100,000 and one million. They account for about 3.4% of the circulating supply.
Two of the leading five BTC wallets belong to crypto exchange Binance. But this does not mean that the platform owns the BTC because there is a good chance most of the Bitcoins it holds belong to its users.
Meanwhile, 103 wallets hold BTC balances of between 10,000 and 100,000. Their combined BTC holding is 2,271,986, which accounts for 11.59% of the circulating supply.
BTC Distribution
As of January 2024, over 19.4 million Bitcoins have been added to the circulating supply. However, the number of BTC available for trading could be far less, given that crypto close to four million Bitcoins have been sent to a burn address, meaning they are lost forever.
Individuals Who Hold the Most BTC
Satoshi Nakamoto
The Bitcoin creator has never revealed their identity. So, they could be a team of developers or just a person who used their cryptographic skills to create the world’s most famous digital currency.
But how much BTC does Satoshi Nakamoto hold? As the Bitcoin creator and the first miner, Nakamoto is said to have mined over 20,000 blocks before disappearing in 2011. They collected over one million BTC as mining rewards and stored them in multiple wallets. Notably, Nakamoto has never spent a single BTC, and based on the current price of the coin ($43,000), they are definitely one of the Bitcoin billionaires in 2024.
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss
After these Winklevoss twins abandoned plans to invest in Facebook over a decade ago, they injected their money into several crypto businesses and bought a number of digital currencies, including Bitcoin. The two launched their crypto exchange Gemini in 2014. At the time, they had already acquired 70,000 Bitcoins, becoming part of the BTC early adopters.
Michael J.Saylor
He is the CEO of business intelligence company MicroStrategy. Saylor began investing in BTC in 2019. He currently owns 17,720 Bitcoins. Along with offering several cloud-based services and software, his company has also made huge bets on Bitcoin, which we will discuss later.
Tim Draper
Draper is a well-known traditional investor, having injected funds into several successful companies like Skype and Tesla. But did you know that he’s also a firm believer of Bitcoin? In 2014, he spent over $19 million to buy 30,000 BTC.
Governments With Largest Bitcoin Holdings
Several governments have, in recent years, invested heavily in Bitcoin. For instance, El Salvador, which recognizes BTC as a legal tender, holds more than 50,000 coins. Other governments are holding Bitcoins after seizing them from the dark web. Two of them are the American and Bulgarian governments, which hold 200,082 BTC and 213,000 BTC, respectively.
Public Companies With the Highest BTC Balances
MicroStrategy: This is the largest institutional Bitcoin holder. The business intelligence company holds over 188,900 BTC.
Marathon Digital: It is a popular mining company trading under the MARA ticker on NASDAQ. Per CoinGecko’s data, Marathon Digital owns about 13,500 BTC.
Galaxy Digital: This crypto research company is believed to be holding over 11,000 BTC.
Tesla: Carmaker Tesla isn’t left behind in regards to owning Bitcoin. Its CEO, Elon Musk, is a huge fan of digital currencies. At one point, he announced that Tesla had started accepting BTC as payment. The company currently holds roughly 10,500 BTC.
What is in Store for BTC in 2024?
Crypto analysts expect Bitcoin to perform tremendously this year, with the main catalysts being the approval of Bitcoin spot ETF and the Bitcoin halving event.