Tech

27% of bitcoins are held by 0.01% of wallets

A study has just revealed that of the 19 million Bitcoins currently in circulation, around 27% were controlled by a tiny part of the wallets. Only 0.01% of wallets would hold a quarter of the cryptocurrency.

bitcoin money

A recent study by the National Bureau of Economic Research suggests that Bitcoin has developed his own “1%” group which will probably reap most of the gains in the years to come. Indeed, only 0.01% of Bitcoin wallet holders would control around 27% of the currency in circulation.

This percentage of 27% corresponds to around 5 million Bitcoins of the 19 million in circulation, which represents around 232 billion dollars (205.5 billion euros) currently. By comparison, the richest 1% of people in the United States control “only” about a third of the country’s total wealth, the Journal notes.

To read also – Bitcoin: a bug briefly turned all cryptocurrency holders into billionaires!

Bitcoin is still a very centralized currency

The study, led by finance professors Antoinette Schoar of the MIT Sloan School of Management and Igor Makarov of the London School of Economics, aims to demonstrate that bitcoin is not as decentralized as one might think. ” Despite its 14 years of existence and the hype it has generated, it is still a very concentrated ecosystem. ”Ms. Schoar said. This new report is therefore quite alarming for the crypto community, because the main Bitcoin advocates have promoted decentralization as one of the biggest tenets of the Bitcoin network.

Indeed, when it was created in 2009, Bitcoin displayed the desire to offer an independent currency with centralized power. However, although it is created by decentralized “mining” by computers, a large portion of Bitcoins are still held by a fraction of existing wallets.

All the profits from the rise in the price of Bitcoin therefore go to a very small group of people, called “Whales” in the crypto community. It is also known that this small group of owners could also lose a lot of money. Indeed, the Bank of England has already warned that Bitcoin could lose all its value if new regulations were to be put in place.

Source: Blockchain analysis of the bitcoin market

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