How many people own 1 Bitcoin?

As institutional investors‘ interests continue to grow in Bitcoin (BTC), the ability to hold one whole coin could start to concentrate among these high-capitalized players. This would happen amid an increased demand for Bitcoin, which has a limited maximum supply of 21 million units, expected to be fully circulating by 2140.

Notably, one Bitcoin costs approximately $29,500, and there are close to 19.52 million BTC circulating, both at the time of publication.

It is important to say that Bitcoin is a pseudonymous network, and one single individual can control multiple addresses without a known link between them. Therefore, it is factually impossible to know how many people own 1 BTC.

Bitcoin (BTC) distribution. Source: BitInfoCharts.com

1 Bitcoin population similar to Ottawa or Abu Dhabi

Interestingly, if we considered the number of addresses as the BTC population, the number of addresses that own at least 1 Bitcoin would be equal to capital cities such as Ottawa in Canada, or Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, both with around 1 million population.

This population holds around $534.54 billion in value considering Bitcoin price by press time, which is more than 100 billion dollars higher than the $415 billion GDP of the whole United Arab Emirates.

However, this capital is concentrated in an even smaller number of people who own 1 Bitcoin or more. According to the website BuyBitcoinWorldwide.com, each person owns, on average, between 3 to 10 cryptocurrency wallets and hundreds of different addresses.

Besides that, the same website affirms that the vast majority of addresses are controlled by custodians, like cryptocurrency exchanges. With just a small percentage of all the Bitcoin addresses belonging to economically active wallets owned by private people on the network.