Viewing Bitcoin Wallet Rankings: bitinfocharts.com

Hello, this is Bitpunk. Today we'll look at the rankings of Bitcoin wallets around the world. Because of how blockchains work, anyone can visit bitinfocharts.com and see wallet addresses and how much each one holds. As you can see in the screenshot below, the wallets ranked 1st to 3rd each hold more than 100,000 bitcoins, which makes them what we call whales. But on closer inspection, they turn out to be exchange wallets belonging to Binance, Bitfinex and the like.

Now, let's look at the distribution. Hmm. In terms of percentages, 0.01% hold 40% of the total. Let's be a bit generous and go up one more row. Even so, people who make up almost 0% own 18% of the total. If we take the exchanges out of this, about 600,000 BTC drops off, and still fewer than the top 0.01% own more than half of all bitcoins. You can see that Bitcoin's distribution, as the leading coin, is quite at odds with the value of decentralization that everyone shouts about whenever blockchain comes up. Of course, because of the halving, Bitcoin is structured so that early miners inevitably ended up with a lot of bitcoins. (I know you're thinking the same thing I am: "If only I'd found out about it a little earlier.")

They say that in the early days, even a home computer could mine 10 BTC a day, so anyone who mined a few for fun back then has mined more bitcoin than an individual could ever mine in a lifetime from now on. Of course, the price of Bitcoin back then was very different from what it is now.

In any case, Bitcoin is currently extremely centralized, and it's becoming more and more centralized. Well, it's obvious that even in the current situation, a whale with money could come in and sweep up the bitcoin. Little by little, bitcoin is flowing into exchange wallets. You might ask whether all of that belongs to individuals, but considering that exchanges earn at least over KRW 300 billion a year, and knowing that most of that revenue comes from fees (paid in KRW/USD/bitcoin), when you look at the actual holdings in the top 1–3 exchange wallets, you have to wonder how much bitcoin is really distributed among individuals.

Going forward, it doesn't look like Bitcoin's centralization problem will be solved easily. Is it time for a second Satoshi to appear? By the way, I found this out while looking for Satoshi memes: Ash from Pokémon has another name, and it's Satoshi? Ash, for the sake of world peace, could you give us small-time investors just 1 bit?