11,000 on-chain entities represent 55% of volume on the Bitcoin network
Recent reports showed that more than 55% of Bitcoin volume is owned by only 11,043 entities on the network. While 50 miners are responsible for 50% of hash power.
When we start to talk about Bitcoin then the first thing that comes to our mind is Decentral & Blockchain. But how much decentralized we are with bitcoin, research giving controversial statements. Because the majority of the Bitcoin volume is owned by limited numbers of entities, that is enough to prove that Bitcoin market manipulation is easily possible.
Recently the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) published a report on Bitcoin miners and owners in the on-chain Bitcoin network.
According to research, crypto exchanges own around 75% volume of the Bitcoin on-chain network.
The most shocking fact, report shows that only 1000 top crypto investors own 15.9% of the volume of the current circulation. 15.9% is equal to 3 million BTC. After this, 9000 Investors own 2 million Bitcoins on the on-chain network, which is around 10.6%.
The authors of the research claimed that the Bitcoin market remained centralized until new changes in the market e.g recent BTC 2021 bull cycle.
“The Bitcoin ecosystem is still dominated by large and concentrated players, be it large miners, Bitcoin holders or exchanges.”
And if we look at the individual Bitcoin holders then there are around 8.5 million BTC or 45.1% of supply.
Researchers researched the Bitcoin miners. Shockingly 10% of the Bitcoin miners have governance in 90% of the Bitcoin mining hash power.
And the most strange fact was, only 50 miners ( 0.1% network miners) are responsible for the 50% mining hash power. And this is a clear indication of how much Bitcoin is at risk if any high profile bad actor tries for the forced hard fork.
We know very well that 51% majority of the miners are enough to facilitate attacks on the network. However, Researchers didn’t state on this matter whether these high-level miners may decide to attack the network. Also, we don’t think that such a hypothetical situation will occur.
If we look at the report of the Cambridge University’s Bitcoin Electricity Consumption Index (BECI), then we find that mining hash power was distributed in the whole world after the crackdown of China on crypto operations, which was responsible for 75% hash power all over the world.
Read also: Grayscale’s Bitcoin Trust outperformed over newly launched ETFs
