An article in the Wall Street Journal states that 0.01% of lucky bitcoin addresses control 27% of all bitcoins in circulation (i.e. 19 million coins), according to a recent study by the Bureau of Research.

Approximately 0.01% of Bitcoin holders control 27% of the total of 19 million Bitcoins in circulation at http://t.co/W5umX0e0zp

– * Walter Bloomberg (@DeItaone) December 20, 2021

5 million BTC held by 10,000 Bitcoin wallets

Research has found that a whopping 5 million Bitcoin ($ 232 billion) are controlled by just 10,000 crypto wallets. According to the latest data, Bitcoin is owned by around 114 million wallets worldwide.

Nineteen million bitcoins have been mined and are in circulation, and about a third of that BTC is held by just 0.01% of the wallets.

“Bitcoin is a very centralized ecosystem”

A study conducted by professors from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and the London School of Economics analyzed every transfer made on the BTC blockchain in the coin’s 13-year history.

They believe that because of the high concentration of large amounts of BTC in very few addresses, BTC is a highly centralized system. Hence, they believe that Bitcoin is prone to systemic risk. In addition, all profits from the BTC price increase are left to a very small group of people. In the field of cryptocurrencies, they are called whales.

The wealth of Bitcoin miners and exchanges has skyrocketed recently

Despite the fact that Bitcoin emerged in 2008 after it was created by the mysterious Satoshi Nakamoto and literally anyone with a high level of IT skills can turn their PC into a button and start mining Bitcoin, as mentioned above, BTC today is very great centralized.

Bitcoin trading takes place mainly through centralized exchanges: Binance, Coinbase, Huobi, etc. Mining has become so expensive that only large companies can afford to “mint” new bitcoins for the network by making transactions on the blockchain to verify.

As a result, the study found, crypto exchanges and BTC miners skyrocketed last year and this year as the price of the top cryptocurrency went from $ 5,000 in March 2020 to nearly $ 69,000 in November this year jumped.