Bitcoin: Who’s *Really* Winning? 🧐

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Oh, the delightful irony! It appears the common folk, those charmingly unsophisticated individuals, have had a rather splendid fifteen years to accumulate Bitcoin before the titans of Wall Street deigned to notice it. Now, these paragons of financial acumen are discovering that securing a portion of this digital gold requires, shall we say, a rather substantial expenditure. How very… pedestrian. As River so astutely observed, they’ll have to ‘pay up.’ One almost feels a touch of sympathy. Almost.

The Curious Case of Bitcoin Ownership

According to River’s rather pretty visualization (one does appreciate a well-executed chart, don’t you agree?), these individual holders – bless their independent spirits – still command a respectable 67.0% of the total supply, amounting to a rather generous 14.06 million BTC. Wall Street, governments, and those ever-so-important corporations? A paltry 13.8%, a mere trifle! One suspects they are terribly upset. 🤭

The dissection of this distribution is, frankly, fascinating. Businesses cling to 1.15 million BTC (5.5%), while funds and those fashionable exchange-traded whatsits control 1.43 million BTC (6.8%). And the governments? A modest 314,000 BTC (1.5%). One wonders what they intend to do with it all… undoubtedly something terribly sensible, I presume.

Then we have the intriguing category of “Satoshi/Patoshi,” a rather mysterious 968,000 BTC (4.6%) attributed to the early days of mining. One imagines a shadowy figure, a digital phantom, hoarding their treasure. And let’s not forget the “Lost Bitcoin” – 1.57 million BTC (7.5%) – presumably vanished into the ether, a testament to human fallibility. A delicious tragedy! There’s also 1.11 million BTC (5.3%) ‘To Be Mined’, just patiently waiting for its moment.

The clever folks at River have thoughtfully separated the lost, the unmined, and the legacy holdings, thereby highlighting the rather inconvenient truth for ‘big business’: scarcity. They must, you see, ‘pay up’. The sheer audacity! 🙄

And, naturally, the corporate hordes are scrambling to join the party, launching “Bitcoin treasuries” and other ingenious vehicles to funnel funds into this digital realm. How utterly predictable.

Governments, too, are dabbling – the United States leading the charge with a respectable 198,000 BTC, followed by China (194,000 BTC), the United Kingdom (61,000 BTC), Ukraine (46,000 BTC) and even Bhutan (a mere 11,000 BTC). One hopes they don’t attempt to regulate it into oblivion. That would be dreadfully boring.

Naturally, there’s some disagreement on the exact figures, a minor quibble over classification methods. River, rather conservatively, believes the Chinese government only possesses 15,000 BTC, recovered from a rather scandalous affair involving something called Plustoken. Oh, the dramas of the digital age!

As of this very moment, BTC is trading at a rather inflated $116,451. One shudders to think what the aesthetes might say. 💸

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2025-07-26 02:04