According to data from Chain.info, currently only five centralized exchanges hold approximately 10.6% of the circulating supply of Bitcoin (BTC).
Currently, the five major centralized exchanges Coinbase, Huobi, Binance, OKEx, and Kraken hold more than 1.96 million Bitcoins.
Probably because of its custodial service, Coinbase holds the largest number of bitcoins so far, with 944,904 bitcoins currently distributed in approximately 4.39 million different wallet addresses on the platform.
Huobi ranks second, with 323,665 bitcoins held in 901,600 different wallet addresses. Binance ranks third, with a total of 270,961 bitcoins distributed among its nearly 2.7 million wallet addresses. OKEx has a total of 276,184 bitcoins in 339,000 wallet addresses, while Kraken holds 126,510 bitcoins, distributed among its 672,000 wallet addresses.
There are seven other exchanges: Bitflyer, Bittrex, Bitfinex, Poloniex, Coincheck, Gate.io, and Bitstamp, holding a total of 210,000 Bitcoins.
The data shows that many users are still more willing to bear the security risks associated with surrendering most of their assets to centralized exchanges, despite the decentralization of cryptocurrencies and the popular phrase in the crypto community: “It’s not your private Key, it’s not your Bitcoin”.
Chainalysis recently estimated that 3.7 million bitcoins that have not been in circulation for more than five years may have been lost, so the number of bitcoins held by the five major centralized exchanges may actually far exceed 10% of the total supply. If this is true, then the top five centralized trading platforms currently host nearly 15% of the total Bitcoin supply.
