Who plays yo-yo with cryptocurrency?

News website Digital Trends reports that a few billionaire whales in a small pond are getting all the bit fish. No matter how many owners there are and no matter how powerful they consider themselves, most bitcoin assets belong to just a few thousand owners who do not sell them. Although their identities are unknown, they are filthy rich and continue to accumulate more.

Crypto Elite

According to statistics from BitInfoCharts, 13 of the 23 million existing Bitcoin wallets own only a single amount of Bitcoin coins. One and a half thousand wallets hold from 1,000 to 10,000 Bitcoins. And the 11 largest wallets own more than 10,000 Bitcoin. That's tens of millions of dollars in each wallet.

In addition, 87% of all Bitcoins ever mined belong to just 0.5% of Bitcoin wallet owners. 61% of all Bitcoins are owned by just 0.07% of wallets.

The second largest wallet in the world (3D2oetdNuZUqQHPJmcMDDHYoqkyNVsFk9r) contains 163,133 Bitcoins worth about $1.6 billion. It is believed to be a cold storage wallet that belongs to the BitFenix ​​exchange.

There are more than 100 Bitcoin wallets in the world, containing the equivalent of $28.6 billion in Bitcoin. And this is half as much as in December 2017.

The 9th largest Bitcoin wallet in the world, worth about 657 million US dollars, has never left the Bitcoin stored in it, and it has not been replenished since 2014.

“Such wallets are considered “dormant.” They may belong to true long-term holders who want to see what happens next in the market, or they may be Bitcoins that are believed to be lost due to erased hard drives, forgotten passwords and other problems,” says Digital Trends.

Cryptocurrency in Circulation

One of the world’s most heavily stocked Bitcoin wallets increased its holdings by 60,000 Bitcoins in end of 2017. “The owner of this wallet took advantage of the decline in Bitcoin prices. The fourth largest wallet followed a similar pattern in early 2018,” according to Digital Trends.

“Accumulating wealth in a small number of wallets gives their owners incredible power. If the largest owners of Bitcoin wallets decide to cash out, they will cause prices to drop significantly and small investors to watch in horror as their Bitcoin holdings depreciate.

According to Digital Trends, Bitcoin investor Roger Ver has horrified the market by moving tens of thousands of Bitcoins to various exchanges. It was reported that he transferred 25,000 BTC to the Bitfinex exchange account for the purpose of market manipulation.

His public comments about the future of Bitcoin also caused panic: while promoting Bitcoin Cash, the investor warned that many investors may want to get rid of their Bitcoin..

“Along with the transaction cost problem that Bitcoin faced, the above circumstances may also have contributed to the fall in Bitcoin prices in December,” says Digital Trends.