Replies (132)

I neither confirm nor deny that I know of anyone who does that.
Are we talking in one single addy or multiple addys as a total? Either way it’s a small number compared to the general human population
Buckleys's avatar
Buckleys 6 months ago
I'm guessing it's less than 21 million people
dustygrooves's avatar
dustygrooves 6 months ago
I know a fair bit of freedom loving people and I can’t think of one that does. I’d say 1:1000 is the ratio.
waxwing's avatar
waxwing 6 months ago
I'm really surprised it's that large.
GJM's avatar
GJM 6 months ago
As of July 16 2025, according to @BTC Frame there are 982,878 addresses with 1 or more BTC. My estimate is that approx 75k do self custody.
Yeah I think the assumption is that each wallet address is a different person. So we can probably safely reduce any cold storage projections by at least 50%.
Rosetta Cypher's avatar
Rosetta Cypher 6 months ago
Precisely. Some people are whole coiners that do not have a single address greater than 1 BTC.
GJM's avatar
GJM 6 months ago
So I think I understand what you are hinting at in relation to the original question. You are suggesting for example, that 800k addresses (vast bulk) are controlled by one person. So the last 200k addresses could be controlled by 50-75k people? Is that a decent guess? So in reference to the original question, how many of these holders self custody?
Andy's avatar
Andy 6 months ago
From my sphere of influence, 4, that I know of... But this is only because I took the time to explain to them why it is so essential to do self custody using a hardware wallet. Most people don't get this, even those already falling through the rabbit hole. I always try to stress the fact that a hardware wallet costs around 100 USD (84.000 sats) nowadays. That is laughably cheap in comparison to the amounts a bitcoiner could end up stacking during its lifetime.
R's avatar
R 6 months ago
32,467
I have no idea the number, but there are plenty of OG's who have tons of addresses they control. Maybe 1k addresses. So that's a 1000:1 ratio. But again, I have no idea the actual number(s).
cactus blossom 's avatar
cactus blossom 6 months ago
More than the subset of people holding UTXOs larger than1 BTC
Self custody = less than 21 million Exchange & Custodians = 63 Million + It's why use as a MOE is upmost importance. Anyone sending more than 0.00042 should be settling on chain at current fees
AlwaysGoobin's avatar
AlwaysGoobin 6 months ago
Given your relationships with Bitcoin companies you very well might have the best data to guess. My guess is ~100-150k people
If you’re talking about running your own node true self custody . . . 5k or less
What ever the number is it needs to be more. According to this article there are around 52 million "every day" millionaires in the US worth between $1-5M. It should be trivially easy for these people to own and self custody one bitcoin (except of course the obvious 21M BTC reason). We need more easy to use self custody wallets like Unchained, Casa, AnchorWatch, Proton, Bitkey, Liana, Sparrow, etc. Bring on all the projects with what ever models/trade-offs work to somehow put the keys in users hands.
Average Geo's avatar
Average Geo 6 months ago
Well, since the plague of boating accidents, a lot fewer that I thought…
El Guirri's avatar
El Guirri 6 months ago
Definitely less than 0.26% of the human population
From that we have an around 600mi bitcoin users included those from exchanges
I suppose it doesn’t. To answer your question I’d surmise less than 10k. Fiat price is out of reach for the average joe to get 100,000,000 sats. Stay humble.
2,128k on exchanges 1,107k to be mined 1,123k from Satoshi 1,300k ETF 890k Treasury companies Left with 15 million btc Probably 3 million lost 12 million remanning in self custody Total users estimate in hundred of millions Assuming 600 million users end 20% with self custody we have also 12 million users So 12 million coins for 12 million users Using Pareto's theory 20% of the users own 80% of the coins 9,6 mi for 2,4 million users Assuming another time 7,68 mi btc for 480k users So I guess something about 1mi users held 1 btc or more in self custody
Yoshi Yaya's avatar
Yoshi Yaya 6 months ago
Like eleven or twelve people, I met them all at a party once.
cactus blossom 's avatar
cactus blossom 6 months ago
Half the shit you just listed are paid products. Self custody has never been easier and does not require any 3rd party. The keys are already in users hands - use them.
What are the odds the government has an extensive list of said hodlers? Probably a good idea to coinjoin.
ODELL's avatar ODELL
how many people do you think self custody more than one bitcoin?
View quoted note →
You're right, digging in a bit most of these "every day" millionaire likely have it all in illiquid assets, mainly their houses. But these people do have the option to downsize a little and not use their primary residences as their only long term savings accounts. A related article from last year says there are around 5.5M people in the US with more than $1M in liquid, readily investable assets. I doubt many of them own, let alone self custody any bitcoin.
Easier said than done. Most people don't know anything about bitcoin, money, technology, or anything else they'd need to self custody without the help of a 3rd party. I'd much rather recommend paid services that help people use self-custody than leave them to figure it out on their own. But by all means if you want to train your friends and family and co-workers how to use the available free options please do. We need more people doing that too, but it's a big responsibility.
Most of those "millionaires" have their wealth tied up in real estate. This cohort moving their wealth to bitcoin would mean a crash in real estate prices and only a certain amount of first movers would be able to migrate the purchasing power 1:1 or slightly below.
SamuelB's avatar
SamuelB 6 months ago
Buying Bitcoin and giving the keys away is almost like paying for a single mother with child from another man and knowing that she still fucks with him
Default avatar
Quackman 6 months ago
Maybe an interesting datapoint: I live in a town of 20-30k people with an extremely close and tight community. Very few people move away, and families are generally big and very close. In the shitcoin summer of 17-18, everybody and their mother was taking about the next hypecoins and the insane gainz they would make if coin X went to value Y. Every family gathering featured an obligatory half hour discussion of who knew the guy who made the biggest gainzz, and recommendations for the next altcoin moonshot. FOMO was par for the course, so many people piled in blindly. In short: *a lot* of people were into trading “crypto” at the time. If I had to make an educated guess, I’d say north of 50% of people/couples 18-35 were in on it. On a personal note: pretty much every one of my friends, cousins and colleagues was buying at the time. In the 2020 Ledger leak, I decided to do a quick search for my town to see how many people this affected and maybe give them a heads up. The search returned a total of 1 result.. a guy I happened to know, who shitcoined his BTC away (or so he says; maybe this was his “boating accident” escape) So this was at a time where the average Joe could still afford 1 BTC with “disposable income”. I know there are more hardware wallets than Ledger, and resellers are a thing, but based on the above, I would guesstimate very few people actually self custody, let alone more than 1 BTC.
Count me out guys, I got an offer from Larry and Brian I couldn't refuse 🥹 Good news tho, I'm starting a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve Company, they're all the rage these days don't you know 😂 We're calling it "The Smarter Strategy Treasury Planet" 💪
Den Yellek's avatar
Den Yellek 6 months ago
Obviously its less than this but I calculate that if addresses were distributed as evenly as possible then the current maximum self custody whole coiners is 2,382,481. This is because there are 996,285 addresses holding one or more bitcoin and together they hold a total of 18,507,569 bitcoin. This leaves 1,386,196 left given the current supply. So if we say that each address with over one bitcoin is held by a different person and all the other bitcoin is evenly distributed so that each person holds a total across their addresses of one bitcoin then the total is 996,285 + 1,386,196 = 2,382,481. Obviously wrong but a theoretical maximum.
That’s more savings than most have, and many of those with >BTC would not have been able to squirrel away 1BTC at 2024 (probably even earlier) and beyond price. So most don’t have that. To investigate how many have their savings in it you could frame it as ‘how many people self custody their own life savings?’
Narbeg's avatar
Narbeg 6 months ago
In my opinion, we will see a decrease in self-custody as the price of #Bitcoin increases. Holding over 100,000 USD worth of BTC at home is too big of a responsibility for most people. I hope I'm wrong.
FreeYoda's avatar
FreeYoda 6 months ago
It is an absolute crazy thing to see how many literally choose slavedom to prevent responsibilities.
What do you think is the message of that, or the consequence? Does this mean still massive opportunity for of bitcoiners?