Bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrencies, with a market cap of over $1.3 trillion. With such a valuation, it’s no surprise that the largest Bitcoin holders have jaw-dropping balances — billions of dollars worth of Bitcoin per wallet. In this article, we’ll look at the Bitcoin Rich List and try to identify the top 10 Bitcoin holders. Whenever possible, we’ll provide more insights about each address.
Bitcoin Rich List and Top 10 Holders in 2024
Let’s take a look at the top 10 holders on the Bitcoin Rich List and learn more about these Bitcoin giants.
1. Binance Cold Wallet
Holdings: 248,598
BTC Value: $16.4 billion
Address: 34xp4vRoCGJym3xR7yCVPFHoCNxv4Twseo
The largest Bitcoin holder is the wallet controlled by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange. Binance is the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume and number of users, so it’s no surprise that it has the world’s largest Bitcoin wallet. At the time of writing, the wallet holds 248,598 BTC, which is over 1.2% of all Bitcoin in circulation. It has been active since October 2018. As a cold wallet, the wallet is used to store Binance customers' Bitcoin for the long term. The wallet rarely makes outgoing transactions - at the time of writing, the last outgoing Bitcoin transaction from the wallet was about 8 months ago. However, when the wallet does send Bitcoin, the amounts are quite substantial, with one as much as 21,600 BTC.
2. Bitfinex Cold Wallet
Holdings: 180,010
BTC Value: $11.9 billion
Address: bc1qgdjqv0av3q56jvd82tkdjpy7gdp9ut8tlqmgrpmv24sq90ecnvqqjwvw97
The second largest Bitcoin holder is another cold wallet, this time belonging to the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange. Founded in 2012, Bitfinex remains a mainstay in the cryptocurrency exchange industry despite often being the subject of controversy, such as the 2016 hack and criticism of Bitfinex’s USDT stablecoin. This wallet is in a similar situation to the number one cold wallet on our list, Binance. It rarely sends any Bitcoin, and when it does, the transaction amounts are large. Occasionally, the wallet receives large transfers — for example, it received a massive 50,000 BTC transaction in February 2020.
3. Binance Cold Wallet #2
Holdings: 142,776
BTC Value: $9.4 billion
Address: 3M219KR5vEneNb47ewrPfWyb5jQ2DjxRP6
Binance’s second-largest Bitcoin cold wallet dates back to November 2018. Over the years, the wallet has received several large deposits, as well as considerable withdrawals. As of this writing, the address holds over 142,000 BTC. However, the total volume of transactions using this wallet is 4,539,816 BTC, which is about a quarter of all circulating Bitcoin. Notably, the amount of BTC stored in this wallet has increased dramatically over the past six months, jumping from 73,047 BTC to 142,776 BTC. At the same time, the wallet has jumped from the ninth largest individual wallet on the Bitcoin blockchain to the third largest.
4. Robinhood Wallet
Holdings: 136,295
BTC Value: $9 billion
Address: bc1ql49ydapnjafl5t2cp9zqpjwe6pdgmxy98859v2
According to blockchain analytics platform Arkham Intelligence, the third largest Bitcoin wallet belongs to the Robinhood trading platform. However, as of August 28, 2023, Robinhood has not publicly confirmed that it owns the wallet. According to Arkham Intelligence, the wallet is actually managed by Jump Trading, which acts as a custodian for the funds. Starting in May 2023, the wallet began receiving a series of large transactions. In each transaction, the wallet received between 1,600 and 1,900 BTC. The wallet stopped receiving these large transactions on June 30 and has only received very small transactions since then.So far, the wallet has only made one outgoing transaction, sending a small amount of 0.051 BTC in May 2023.
5. FBI Wallet (BTC from the 2016 Bitfinex Hack)
Holdings: 94,643
BTC Value: $6.2 billion
Address: bc1qazcm763858nkj2dj986etajv6wquslv8uxwczt
This wallet, currently controlled by U.S. federal authorities, contains BTC stolen from the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange in 2016. The wallet was first activated in February 2022, when Ilya Lichtenstein and Heather R. Morgan were charged with conspiracy to launder stolen Bitcoin in the hack. All of the large transactions from this wallet were made on February 1, 2022. Since then, the wallet has only received transactions containing trace amounts of Bitcoin and has never sent any BTC to date. As the investigation into the Bitfinex hack and the prosecution of those suspected of laundering the stolen BTC continue, we will likely see some very interesting transactions from this wallet in the future.
6. Mt. Gox Hacked Wallet
Holdings: 79,957
BTC Value: $5.3 billion
Address: 1FeexV6bAHb8ybZjqQMjJrcCrHGW9sb6uF
This wallet was controlled by the hacker who compromised the now-defunct Mt. Gox cryptocurrency exchange. In August 2023, former Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles tweeted the following: “I hereby certify that the 79,956.55 Bitcoin sent to the 1Feex address on March 1, 2011 was transferred from the original MtGox Bitcoin wallet without proper authorization and is considered stolen property belonging to MtGox and used by MtGox creditors for profit.”
Aside from this massive transaction of the stolen 79,956 BTC, the wallet has only received a handful of transactions since then. Interestingly, despite being created back in 2011, no Bitcoin has been sent from this wallet.
7. Unidentified Owner #1
Holdings: 79,000
BTC Value: $5.2 billion
Address: bc1qd4ysezhmypwty5dnw7c8nqy5h5nxg0xqsvaefd0qn5kq32vwnwqqgv4rzr
The owner of the seventh-largest Bitcoin address is unknown. However, we do know that a large amount of Bitcoin has changed hands in the past few months — the total amount of BTC controlled by this wallet has increased from 59,300 BTC to 79,000 BTC since the beginning of 2024, an increase of nearly 20,000 BTC (more than $1.3 billion at current exchange rates).
8. Unidentified Owner #2
Holdings: 78,317
BTC Value: $5.2 billion
Address: bc1q8yj0herd4r4yxszw3nkfvt53433thk0f5qst4g
It is not clear who owns the eighth-largest Bitcoin wallet. The wallet first became active on March 24, 2024, when a whale with the letter and number sequence "37XuVSEp" was traced to transfer 94,504 BTC to two wallets.
After the initial transactions, the wallet was largely idle, only receiving small amounts of BTC periodically, likely from random Bitcoin holders who wanted to gain some influence by being associated with one of the largest BTC addresses.
9. Tether Cold Wallet
Holdings: 75,354
BTC Value: $5 billion
Address: bc1qjasf9z3h7w3jspkhtgatgpyvvzgpa2wwd2lr0eh5tx44reyn2k7sfc27a4
According to leading blockchain research firm Arkham Intelligence, the seventh-largest Bitcoin wallet is none other than Tether, the company behind the popular USDT stablecoin. The wallet received several transactions involving thousands of BTC from Bitfinex’s hot wallet account.
10. Upbit Cold Wallet
Holdings: 73,090
BTC Value: $4.9 billion
Address: 1Ay8vMC7R1UbyCCZRVULMV7iQpHSAbguJP
We round up the list of the largest Bitcoin addresses with another cold wallet belonging to a cryptocurrency exchange (Upbit). The wallet has seen a steady increase in balances over the past few years and currently holds nearly $5 billion worth of BTC. However, before crypto intelligence firm Arkham Intelligence identified Upbit as the wallet owner, there had been much speculation about Mr.100's potential identity as the wallet became known in the community.
Speculations about the identity of Mr.100's wallet owner varied, ranging from a billionaire to a bank preparing to enter ETH, and even a wealthy Gulf country quietly accumulating BTC.
As we can see, the Bitcoin rich list is quite fascinating. Of course, there are wallets used by leading cryptocurrency exchanges such as Binance and Bitfinex, but there are also wallets that are associated with unfortunate events in Bitcoin's history, the most famous of which is the exchange hack.
Who owns the most Bitcoin?
The largest single Bitcoin wallet is controlled by the Binance cryptocurrency exchange, with more than 248,000 BTC. Overall, though, the largest Bitcoin holder is likely to be investment firm BlackRock, which holds more than 370,846 BTC as part of its Bitcoin spot ETF investment product. In addition, we can't forget the pseudonym used by the inventor of Bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto. According to some estimates, Satoshi Nakamoto may own more than 1 million BTC, although more conservative estimates put his holdings at between 600,000 and 700,000 BTC.
How many people own 1 Bitcoin?
There are more than 1,000,000 addresses on the Bitcoin blockchain that own at least 1 Bitcoin. However, this question cannot be answered accurately because the same person or company can own any number of Bitcoin addresses.
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