Looking for the Bitcoin Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the big rise?

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According to public data analysis, the institution with the most bitcoin holdings is Grayscale, with more than 600,000 bitcoins; and the individual with the largest holdings is Satoshi Nakamoto, with about 1 million bitcoins.

Original title: “[ChainDeEx Exclusive] At the beginning of 2021, who is in control of Bitcoin? 》
Written by: Wang Xinyu

Who is in control of Bitcoin? Who is the biggest stakeholder? Who gets the most profit from it? In the future, how will Bitcoin chips continue to flow? People have been exploring the question of the global Bitcoin holdings ranking.

As of press time, Bitcoin was on the Binance Exchange, and the price of the BTC/USDT trading pair once again exceeded 34,000 US dollars.

In the past two months, Bitcoin asset prices have soared, leading the return of the bull market in the entire global crypto asset industry. Institutions entering the market, consensus strengthening, hedging arbitrage, asset hedging, loose monetary macro environment, and increasing channels connecting crypto and traditional financial markets, all signs indicate that Bitcoin is no longer confined to a small-scale capital game.

Who is in control of Bitcoin? Who is the biggest stakeholder? Who gets the most profit from it? In what pattern will Bitcoin’s chips continue to flow in the future?

People have been exploring the question of Bitcoin holdings rankings, but most of the answers use data that are too old or the dimensional design is not scientific, and it is difficult for people to get valuable references. Therefore, Linkedde wrote an article specially, trying to answer this question at this point in time.

First of all, we must admit that due to the anonymity of encrypted assets, any “holding list” cannot be 100% accurate.

There are two reasons: First, few big BTC users put all their assets in the same address, and most of them disperse their assets in different addresses; secondly, although the information on the BTC chain is transparent, few big players will Publicize your BTC address to the outside world. Therefore, it is almost impossible for us to know who the big BTC holders are and their true identities from the data on the chain.

We only try to identify true and false as much as possible through open data, self-consistent analysis dimensions, and industry visits to make the form relatively accurate.

Linkedde arranges the BTC holding list based on the following three dimensions. The three main dimensions are: 1. The ranking of the number of BTC held by institutions or organizations. 2. The ranking based on the latest balance of a single storage address on the BTC chain. 3. The ranking of the number of BTC held by natural persons as the main body.

Global institutions and organizations BTC holding list

First of all, let’s take a look at the top ten Bitcoin holding institutions based on comprehensive analysis of public data. The following will be analyzed for you one by one.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?List of global institutions and organizations BTC holding positions (Landex mapping)

The latest data shows that the current total holdings of these top ten institutions have reached 1.185 million bitcoins, accounting for 6.37% of the current BTC circulation. According to the data that can be searched, at the beginning of 2020, the holdings of these top 10 institutions were 478,000, and the total increase in one year was 606,000 BTC.

Data research process

Linkedde found two more authoritative BTC holding rankings (sorted by company and organization) websites, bitcointreasuries and kevinrooke .

The Bitcoin Treasuries website collects BTC holdings of more than 40 companies around the world, along with data sources. It can be seen from the website that most of the data update time is concentrated in the second half of 2020, and most of the data sources are reports issued by various companies themselves.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

Another website is called Kevin Rooke. The list of BTC holders on this website collects 38 entities. In addition to the companies and funds on the previous website, it also includes individuals and “other” categories (such as Wrapped BTC).

Judging from the number of gray BTC holdings, the website of Kevin Rooke has a faster update speed, and it also includes sources for readers to verify.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?Combining the data from the two websites, Linkde has created TOP10 BTC holdings (sorted by company and organization)

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?List of global institutions and organizations BTC holding positions (Landex mapping)

On the Kevin Rooke website, we saw the “Chinese Government” and the “U.S. Government”. The BTC positions held by the two governments are actually funds confiscated in two illegal cases.

In the Plustoken MLM case involving a total of 4.2 billion US dollars, the number of BTC confiscated by the Chinese government reached 194,000. According to a report from Sina Finance on December 1, “This bitcoin has been entrusted to an off-exchange company for liquidation.

After being converted into Renminbi and turned over to the State Treasury, it is not said when it will be disposed of, but it depends on the progress of the case. The high probability is that it was sold 6 months ago. “

The US government confiscated nearly 70,000 bitcoins from the black market website “Silk Road”, which was presumably transferred to a new address in early November: bc1qa5wkgaew2dkv56kfvj49j0av5nml45x9ek9hz6. The position of this address ranks fifth. As of press time, this bitcoin has not been moved or realized.

Therefore, the Chinese government was removed from the form we created, and the U.S. government was retained.

Below, we will explain one by one the top 10 position entities in the list.

Grayscale Bitcoin Trust

First of all, the number one is undoubtedly Grayscale Bitcoin Trust. From its latest Twitter release, it can be understood that as of December 30, 2020, the total scale of Grayscale Bitcoin Trust reached 16 billion U.S. dollars, which is approximately equivalent to 607,000 bitcoins, accounting for nearly 3.26% of the current total circulation of BTC.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

In contrast, at the beginning of 2020, the amount of funds under management of Grayscale BTC Trust was only 1.96 billion. Based on the currency price of 7,500 US dollars at the time, Grayscale’s BTC holdings at the beginning of this year were approximately 260,000, accounting for the amount of BTC in circulation at that time. 1.43% of the amount. In 2020, the number of BTC held in Grayscale has increased by 347,000.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?Data source: https://twitter.com/Grayscale/status/1214306695226306562

Block.one

Block.one is a software company. Established specifically for EOS development. The main contributor to EOSIO software development.

Block.one and EOS are best known for conducting a one-year token crowdfunding between June 2018 and June 2019, generating a total fundraising of 4 billion US dollars.

Although many other token crowdfunding transactions face strict supervision, resulting in fines, termination of activities and even refunds to investors, Block.one was able to settle US regulatory fees by reaching a settlement. In the end, the SEC imposed a civil fine of $24 million, accounting for only 0.6% of crowdfunding proceeds.

The latest data on Block.one’s Bitcoin holdings comes from a report entitled “Thiel-Backed Crypto Startup Pays Out 6,567% Return” published by Yahoo Finance on May 22, 2019.

According to the report, “According to people familiar with the matter, Block.one holds up to 140,000 bitcoins, making it one of the largest holders of original cryptocurrencies. In an email, the company stated that as of As Bitcoin rebounded this year on May 15th, the aforementioned cryptocurrency losses due to liquidity have been fully recovered.”

The chain found that a month ago, netizens on Reddit also asked: “In 2019, Block.One was reported to have 140,000 BTC. Does anyone know their cold wallet address? If they are now (November 14, 2020) Japan) and have the same amount of BTC, then their market value has already surpassed EOS.”

A netizen replied: “Now the address with the most balance (140,000) on the BTC chain belongs to Huobi’s cold wallet, so Block.one may have scattered its BTC assets in different addresses, or the balance may have been less than 14 Million.”

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

Wrapped BTC

WBTC is a Bitcoin derivative asset. It is a Bitcoin issued on the Ethereum network. It can be understood as 1 WBTC = 1 BTC. This is like USDT being pegged to the U.S. dollar. WBTC is anchored to Bitcoin to realize value transfer, so that Bitcoin can be used indirectly on the Ethereum network.

Every time a bitcoin is mortgaged to the smart contract, a WBTC is automatically generated; on the contrary, every time a bitcoin is redeemed, a WBTC is destroyed. WBTC is mainly used by BTC holders to participate in the DeFi project in the Ethereum ecosystem.

As mentioned in the previous article, the rise of Bitcoin is also closely related to WBTC. The liquidity mining effect stimulated the increase in the demand for WBTC, and WBTC further led to the increase in demand for Bitcoin, which promoted the increase in the effect of Bitcoin purchases in the secondary market and led to the increase in Bitcoin prices.

On the official website of WBTC, you can also find all the BTC custody addresses of the WBTC agreement:

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

As of press time, the number of bitcoins in the WBTC agreement is 113,225.6419.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?Data source: https://WBTC.network/dashboard/order-book

According to Debank data, at the beginning of 2020, the number of BTC locked positions in WBTC was only 589. In 2020, the BTC holdings of the WBTC agreement increased by 190 times.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

MicroStrategy

MicroStrategy Incorporated is a US listed company that provides business intelligence, mobile software and cloud-based services. The company was founded in 1989 by Michael J. Saylor and Sanju Bansal to develop software for analyzing internal and external data in order to make business decisions and develop mobile applications.

On August 11, MicroStrategy announced that it had invested USD 250 million in Bitcoin; on September 8, MicroStrategy announced another USD 175 million purchase of Bitcoin. So far, the company’s investment in Bitcoin has reached USD 425 million.

On December 21st, CEO Michael Saylor announced on Twitter that MicroStrategy purchased approximately 29,646 bitcoins for US$650 million in cash. So far, MicroStrategy BTC’s total holdings have reached 70,470.

Interestingly, this position is currently worth approximately US$2.044 billion, and Michael Saylor specifically pointed out in Twitter that MicroStrategy only spent US$1.125 billion to buy these BTCs.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

In contrast, at the beginning of 2020, there was no news of MicroStrategy investing in Bitcoin. Linkede searched for the words “MicroStrategy”, “BTC” and “Bitcoin” in the interval from January to June 2020, but did not see any valid information.

American government

“Silk Road” is an online black market that sells drugs, stolen credit cards, and even murders. It was closed by the US government in 2013. The founder of the Silk Road was formally sued in 2015, but left a huge mystery worth 1 billion US dollars.

The Criminal Investigation Department of the U.S. Internal Revenue Service hired a third-party company to analyze Bitcoin transactions on the “Silk Road”. It was later discovered that these Bitcoins were owned by a person named “Inpidual X” who had previously used hacking methods from the dark web. Take these bitcoins.

In November of this year, this asset was seized by the US law enforcement agency and transferred to the following address: bc1qa5wkgaew2dkv56kfvj49j0av5nml45x9ek9hz6.

Source: BBC News

CoinShares

CoinShares is the largest digital asset management company in Europe, with two main Bitcoin funds under its umbrella:’Bitcoin Tracker One’ and’Bitcoin Tracker Euro’. According to CoinShares official website data, as of press time, the two products have a total of 1.84 billion US dollars in assets under management and 55,797 bitcoins in contract.

In contrast, historical data on its official website shows that on January 2, 2020, the total assets under management of the two products under CoinShares totaled 6.76 million U.S. dollars. Combined with the current currency price, the contract was 900 BTC.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?Data source: https://coinshares.com/etps/xbt-provider/bitcoin-tracker-euro ; https://coinshares.com/etps/xbt-provider/bitcoin-tracker-one

Celsius

Celsius is a centralized lending platform. In simple terms, it allows you to borrow crypto assets and get income. The lending process is all done on the Celsius App. Up to 33 different cryptocurrencies are supported on Celsius’ App.

Celsius official website stated that depositing Bitcoin can get up to 6.2% annualization. At present, Celsius’ total assets under management reach 4.833 billion U.S. dollars (all cryptocurrencies including BTC). It’s a pity that Linkde did not find the specific number of its BTC holdings, so it chose to use the data from the Kevin Rooke website. We don’t know the data at the beginning of the year.

BitMEX Insurance Fund

In simple terms, BitMEX uses insurance funds to avoid automatic deleveraging in traders’ positions. BitMEX has developed an insurance fund system to help ensure that winners receive expected profits while still limiting the falling liabilities of losing traders.

When a trader holds an open leveraged position, if his maintenance margin is too low, his position will be forced to liquidate (ie liquidation).

Unlike traditional markets, traders’ profits and losses do not reflect the actual price at which they close their positions in the market. On BitMEX, if a trader is liquidated, his equity related to the position will drop to zero.

According to the official website of BitMEX, as of December 30, 2020, the total amount of BTC held by its insurance fund was 37,053. Compared with the 33,491 BTC at the beginning of 2020, BitMEX purchased a total of 3,500 bitcoins in 2020.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

Tezos Foundation

Tezos is a distributed blockchain platform for smart contracts and distributed applications. It has raised $230 million worth of Bitcoin and Ethereum through crowdfunding, making it the second largest cryptocurrency crowdfunding in history.

Tezos will release the semi-annual update report of the foundation. In the latest update published on July 31 this year, we can see that its BTC holdings are 24,518. Its new semi-annual report will also be updated soon, when Lende will update this list of positions.

In contrast, at the beginning of 2020, the Tezos Foundation’s BTC holdings were 31,846, which is the only institution in the list whose BTC holdings did not rise but fell.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

Galaxy Digital

Galaxy Digital is a listed cryptocurrency investment bank with blockchain investment as its main business and financial transparency. It was founded by the legendary Wall Street hedge fund manager and billionaire Mike Novogratz (Mike Novogratz).

The company’s main business is to provide asset management services for third-party investors, such as raising funds in the form of funds.

It can be seen in its report for the third quarter of 2020 that Galaxy Digital currently holds a total of 16,402 bitcoins, an increase of 5000 bitcoins compared to the beginning of the year.

Since its latest report for the fourth quarter of 2020 has not yet been released, it is temporarily impossible to know the current number of Galaxy Digital’s latest BTC holdings. After the update, Linkdede will also update this position list.

Galaxy Digital has always been committed to becoming the “Goldman Sachs in the cryptocurrency field.” Mike Novogratz is an avid believer of Bitcoin and often promotes Bitcoin on social media. In an interview with CNN, it even called on new investors to invest 2% to 3% of their net assets in Bitcoin.

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?

BTC single chain address balance list

Looking for the Bitcoin Giant Whale in Three Dimensions: Who is the biggest winner behind the surge?List of BTC address balances on a single chain

This table shows the top ten wallet addresses with balances on the BTC chain. Three of them are exchange cold wallet addresses. The sixth place is the Bitcoin confiscated by the US government mentioned above. The other 6 wallets are behind the scenes. The owner did not have a clear answer.

Natural person BTC holding list

Unlike companies, there is no disclosure data for individual bitcoin holdings, and there are different opinions on large bitcoin holdings online. The following data comes from an article titled “Bitcoin’s Top Ten Billionaires” by TravelbyBit in April 2020.

Satoshi Nakamoto (tentatively designated as a natural person)

Satoshi Nakamoto is a pseudonym used by Bitcoin developers or groups, and is recognized by the Bitcoin community as the individual with the most BTC assets. In 2013, a netizen named “Sergio” published an article speculating on the number of BTCs owned by BTC creator Satoshi Nakamoto.

The article pointed out that from January 3, 2019 to January 25, 2010, Satoshi Nakamoto dug up a total of 1 million Bitcoins. As of January 4, 2021, the total value of these BTCs is approximately 31.8 billion U.S. dollars . And Satoshi Nakamoto has never touched these bitcoins.

On the Bitcoin Forum, some users pointed out that these bitcoins owned by Satoshi Nakamoto are scattered among 10,000 to 20,000 BTC addresses.

However, it is worth noting that the author of the article Sergio issued a statement in the article, stating that he cannot be 100% sure that the entity that owns these BTCs is Satoshi, but it is certain that these 1 million BTCs belong to the same entity.

Moreover, the entity has been mining since block 1, and its mining hardware performance remains the same as in the genesis block.

Winklevoss Brothers

Tyler Winklevoss and Cameron Winklevoss (Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss) are called Winklevos twins. They used to be Olympic rowers and venture capitalists, and founded a social networking site ConnectU in early 2002.

In 2008, they sued Mark Zuckerberg for stealing their ideas, because Zuckerberg only founded Facebook in 2004, and the twins received a $65 million settlement fee.

Later the two brothers began to invest in Bitcoin startups, such as Bitcoin payment processor company BitInstant, and many other companies. In 2014, they launched the cryptocurrency exchange Germini, which allows users to buy, sell and store digital assets. It is said that they owned nearly 1% of Bitcoin in 2013, and are currently worth more than 6.72 billion US dollars.

Michael Novogratz (Micheal Novogratz)

Michael Novogratz is a former hedge fund manager who was listed as a billionaire by Forbes in 2007 and 2008.

Before he retired from an investment company, he started investing in cryptocurrencies. He later became the CEO of Galaxy Investment Partners, a cryptocurrency investment company. As early as 2012, his net worth was approximately US$500 million.

In 2017, he mentioned that he owns 20% to 30% of his wealth in Bitcoin and Ethereum, and obtained more than $250 million in profits. It is controversial that he believes that cryptocurrency is a bubble, but he will continue to invest in different cryptocurrency projects.

Chris Larsen

Chris Larson is a business executive and angel investor. He has co-founded many technology startups in Silicon Valley.

He is the co-founder of Ripple, a company that aims to help promote banks that use blockchain technology for international payments. His cryptocurrency net worth is approximately 7.5 billion to 8 billion U.S. dollars.

Joseph Lubin (Joseph Lubin)

Joseph Rubin is an entrepreneur who co-founded companies such as EthSuisse. EthSuisse aims to expand the functionality of blockchain databases.

He also founded ConsenSys, a company that develops blockchain software for the Ethereum blockchain. According to Forbes, his cryptocurrency net assets are valued at between 1 billion and 5 billion U.S. dollars. Rubin is actively involved in the development of solutions to solve governance issues in the blockchain industry.

Zhao Changpeng (CZ)

Changpeng Zhao (community code CZ) is the founder and CEO of Binance, the world’s most traded cryptocurrency exchange. Changpeng Zhao has a background in computer science.

Before starting to adopt cryptocurrency, he worked at Tokyo Stock Exchange and Bloomberg Tradebook, developing trading-related software. He has been involved in various cryptocurrency projects since 2003, including serving as the CTO of OKcoin.

In 2017, Changpeng Zhao founded Binance and raised US$15 million through an ICO. Changpeng Zhao ranked third on the list of “Forbes” “Cryptocurrency Richest Man” in 2018. His net assets were valued at US$1.4 billion in September 2018.

Matthew Roszak

Matthew Rosezak is an investor and entrepreneur. He claims to be the first person to award Bitcoin to Richard Branson and Bill Clinton.

He is a founding partner of Tally Capital, a private investment company. The company has a portfolio of more than 20 projects in the blockchain field, such as Blockstream, Civic and Factom. His net worth is valued at 800 million U.S. dollars.

Anthony Di lorio

Anthony DiLorio is a Bitcoin entrepreneur and early investor. He is the co-founder of Ethereum and has been active in the cryptocurrency field from the very beginning. After learning about Bitcoin in the Free talk live podcast, he bought the first Bitcoin in his life for $9.73 in 2012.

He has also invested in other cryptocurrencies such as Qtum, VeChain and Zcash. Forbes estimates that his net worth in 2018 will be between US$750 million and US$1 billion.

Brian Armstrong

Brian Armstrong is the co-founder and CEO of Coinbase, the largest cryptocurrency. Coinbase raised $300 million when it first launched in October 2018.

Coinbase has grown steadily, gaining 8 million new users in 2019, and since its launch, the exchange has generated approximately $2 billion in transaction fees. According to “Forbes” reports, his net worth is approximately $1 billion.

Brock Pierce

Brock Pierce is an entrepreneur who co-founded Blockchain Capital, a venture capital company. The company raised $85 million in 2017 through two venture capital funds. During the 2017 ICO boom, Pierce launched EOS and raised 700 million US dollars.

It is the largest ICO project since 2017. The project is marketed through Block.one, a company co-founded by Pierce and others. “Forbes” magazine listed Pierce as the “Top 20 Richest People in Cryptocurrency” in February 2018. His net worth is between 700 million and 1.1 billion US dollars.