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There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is h

There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses. It's not unlikely the same reasoning (i.e. 40% of coins on top 1000 addresses) is used for the larger claim. But that says very little. A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many users, in the same way a bank vault can contain money from many individuals. It's quite likely that the top addresses are held in a (semi) custodial function by parties like Coinbase or Kraken, which have hundreds of thousands to millions of customers, but may store their users' coins on a number of addresses that's a tiny fraction of their user count. Regardless, unequal wealth distribution isn't entirely unique to bitcoin, either. The top 1% worldwide own about 50% of the world's wealth, the richest 10% own about 85%.

prophesi 9y ago
> There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses. Yeah, I really dislike that the title sounds like it's a fact.
- tomxor 9y ago
  > Yeah, I really dislike that the title sounds like it's a fact. I do wonder how much people try to manipulate perception with media to serve their trading interests... fake news is so easy these days. Just look at what happened yesterday: a bunch of online news outlets output a bunch of speculation about the new 15,000 high, over the next 12 hours it created a sort of bubble going up to ~17,000 that popped and re-established it's original price point at ~15,000. It's possible the opposite is being attempted here: trying to create a short term crash bubble, so they can get ready to buy on the down, before re-establishing it's original natural market value.
malikNF 9y ago
While I agree with you, it would be hard to dismiss the title of the article since looking at the btc rich list there's quite a few addresses with low number of transactions, but massive amounts of btc in them. https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....
- IkmoIkmo 9y ago
  Well that's sort of my point... me a large amount of coins stored in a low-transaction account would to me be characteristic of reserve-type funds stored by big exchanges. In fact, many parties like Coinbase have come out and openly stated that only a small percentage of their users' coins move around, and therefore the vast majority can, and is, stored in 'air gapped cold storage'. i.e. on private keys that never touched a network of any kind. This could result in a few cold storage addresses which carry funds for orders of magnitude more users, rather than a few individuals. In fact, if you follow your own link you'll find many of the addresses are in fact identified as belonging to exchanges like Kraken or Bitfinex cold wallets. e.g. the second richest address is a $1.9 billion Bitfinex wallet. So I don't think the title of the research '1000 people own 40%' is hard to dismiss at all. It could well be true, but a mere list of addresses isn't proof to that claim.
emiliobumachar 9y ago
"A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many users" Only in a context of mutual absolute trust, in both honesty and security competence. Any person who has the password can transfer the whole wallet contents to a new wallet that they alone control, while maintaining plausible deniability. Any person who unwillingly compromises the password to a third party has compromised the entire wallet.
- ric2b 9y ago
  > Only in a context of mutual absolute trust, in both honesty and security competence. Not at all, look up multi-signature addresses. There are addresses where you need N-of-M signatures to move the coins. So for example you could have a 6-of-10 multi-sig wallet for a company, so that a majority of the executives were necessary but the money wouldn't be lost if up to 4 of them lost their keys or went rogue or whatever.

prophesi 9y ago

> There's absolutely no source to the claim that 40% is owned by 1000 people. Only at the very end of the article we see a lateral claim, that 17% of bitcoin is held in just 100 addresses. Yeah, I really dislike that the title sounds like it's a fact.

tomxor 9y ago
> Yeah, I really dislike that the title sounds like it's a fact. I do wonder how much people try to manipulate perception with media to serve their trading interests... fake news is so easy these days. Just look at what happened yesterday: a bunch of online news outlets output a bunch of speculation about the new 15,000 high, over the next 12 hours it created a sort of bubble going up to ~17,000 that popped and re-established it's original price point at ~15,000. It's possible the opposite is being attempted here: trying to create a short term crash bubble, so they can get ready to buy on the down, before re-establishing it's original natural market value.

malikNF 9y ago

While I agree with you, it would be hard to dismiss the title of the article since looking at the btc rich list there's quite a few addresses with low number of transactions, but massive amounts of btc in them. https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html https://bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses....

IkmoIkmo 9y ago
Well that's sort of my point... me a large amount of coins stored in a low-transaction account would to me be characteristic of reserve-type funds stored by big exchanges. In fact, many parties like Coinbase have come out and openly stated that only a small percentage of their users' coins move around, and therefore the vast majority can, and is, stored in 'air gapped cold storage'. i.e. on private keys that never touched a network of any kind. This could result in a few cold storage addresses which carry funds for orders of magnitude more users, rather than a few individuals. In fact, if you follow your own link you'll find many of the addresses are in fact identified as belonging to exchanges like Kraken or Bitfinex cold wallets. e.g. the second richest address is a $1.9 billion Bitfinex wallet. So I don't think the title of the research '1000 people own 40%' is hard to dismiss at all. It could well be true, but a mere list of addresses isn't proof to that claim.

emiliobumachar 9y ago

"A bitcoin address after all can be shared by many users" Only in a context of mutual absolute trust, in both honesty and security competence. Any person who has the password can transfer the whole wallet contents to a new wallet that they alone control, while maintaining plausible deniability. Any person who unwillingly compromises the password to a third party has compromised the entire wallet.

ric2b 9y ago
> Only in a context of mutual absolute trust, in both honesty and security competence. Not at all, look up multi-signature addresses. There are addresses where you need N-of-M signatures to move the coins. So for example you could have a 6-of-10 multi-sig wallet for a company, so that a majority of the executives were necessary but the money wouldn't be lost if up to 4 of them lost their keys or went rogue or whatever.