New to Bitcoin? Start at 1.1
5.5Lesson 5 of 6
Who holds bitcoin
This lesson answers
- Who owns the most bitcoin?
- How many people own bitcoin?
- How much bitcoin do exchanges hold?
- Do governments own bitcoin?
- What is the biggest bitcoin address?
The chain shows how bitcoin is spread across addresses, but never whose they are. What we know about owners comes from the owners themselves: exchanges, funds, companies and governments that publish their addresses or report their holdings.
What the chain shows
At block 972,307, on 20 October 2026, every unspent bitcoin was grouped by address. 57,242,435 addresses held some bitcoin.
| Addresses | How many | Share of all bitcoin |
|---|---|---|
| Holding 1,000 BTC or more | 2,034 | 36% |
| Holding 1 BTC or more | 936,256 | 85% |
| Holding less than 0.001 BTC | 32,346,261 | 57% of all addresses, a tiny share of bitcoin |
Why that isn't a list of people
An address is not a person. An exchange can keep the coins of millions of customers in a handful of large addresses, while one person with a normal wallet can have dozens of small ones. Funds and companies often use a custodian that does the same. So the table says a lot about how coins are stored and little about how many people own bitcoin or how evenly. Surveys, not the chain, are the usual source for how many people own any.
Holders who say what they hold
| Exchanges | Some publish the addresses that hold their customers' coins, often called proof of reserves. Binance's list includes the largest single bitcoin address on the chain. |
|---|---|
| Funds | In January 2024 the US allowed funds traded on stock exchanges to hold bitcoin directly. They report how much they hold, mostly as totals rather than addresses. |
| Companies | Some public companies hold bitcoin and report the amount in their financial statements. A few have shown addresses: in 2025 the chief executive of Tether, a company that issues dollar tokens, posted one of its bitcoin addresses. |
| Governments | Most government holdings come from bitcoin seized in criminal cases. In March 2025 the US said it would keep bitcoin it had forfeited as a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve. El Salvador publishes its holdings on its own website. |
- Holds
- …
- Transactions
- …
- Separate pieces
- …unspent outputs
Binance lists this address in its published proof-of-reserves file. The coins in it are held for the exchange's customers, not by one person.
See it on satoshis.watch →Reading such claims
A published address can be checked by anyone on the chain, which makes it stronger evidence than a statement alone. It still shows only coins at that moment. It doesn't show what the holder owes, or other coins it hasn't listed. Labels that explorers and analysts put on unpublished addresses are their estimates, and they are sometimes wrong.
Check yourself
Practice, not a test. Think of your answer first, then reveal it.
1A few thousand addresses hold over a third of all bitcoin. Does that mean a few thousand people do?Reveal
No. Many of the largest addresses belong to exchanges and funds that hold coins for millions of customers, and one person can have many addresses.
2How can you check an exchange's published reserve address?Reveal
Look it up in any block explorer. The balance and history are on the chain for anyone to see.
3What can't a published address list show?Reveal
What the holder owes to others, and whether it holds other coins it hasn't listed.
Sources
- Balance bands: a Bitcoin node's snapshot of every unspent output at block 972,307 (20 October 2026), grouped by address.
- Binance's proof-of-reserves address file, published on its website; OKX's proof of reserves.
- Tether: its chief executive's post on X, 1 April 2025.
- El Salvador: the National Bitcoin Office's own site.
- United States: the executive order of 6 March 2025 establishing a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.
- Spot bitcoin funds: U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, statement on their approval, 10 January 2024.