Thousands of new bitcoin millionaires were added this past year after the multiple rallies the digital asset saw. At its peak, it only required 14.5 bitcoins for a holder to be a BTC millionaire, much lower than it had ever been in the past. Due to this, the number of bitcoin millionaires rose quickly and tens of thousands of new millionaires were added to the tally.
Now, however, with the recent price crash, a lot of bitcoin millionaires have lost their millionaire status. Given that the digital asset has lost almost 50% of its all-time high value, the number of millionaires has dwindled greatly in a short period of time.
There Are 30,000 Less Bitcoin Millionaires
When bitcoin hit its $69,000 all-time high, the number of bitcoin millionaires shot up quickly. For the first time, there were over 108,000 BTC millionaires given the low number of coins required to reach the millionaire status. All was well for a while and these 108,886 addresses kept their millionaire status. That is until the market crash that began in December 2021 and carried well into January of the new year.
BTC trending at $37,000 | Source: BTCUSD on TradingView.com
In the next two months, the price of BTC would suffer greatly and by extension, these bitcoin millionaires would be hit hard. This was exactly the case as about 30,000 BTC were no longer millionaires in the span of two months. At last count, the number of BTC addresses that held at least a million dollars worth of bitcoin had crumbled to 80,409.
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Bitcoin whales with larger balances also suffered due to the crash. These whales who held more than $10 million at the time of the peak were cut down by 40%. The number had fallen from its high of 10,587 to 6,960 as of today.
Who’s Holding? Who’s Not?
With any market crash, there will always be those who scramble to cash out their holdings due to fear of further downtrend. This has been the case with bitcoin. Liquidations did not help matters either as almost $1 billion in liquidations were recorded following the market crash. Nevertheless, there are those who hold their bitcoins through thick and thin, bear market or bull market.
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BTC still possesses one of the highest holder rates in the crypto space. More than half (59%) of all BTC holders have been holding their coins for more than a year, a very impressive number given that the digital asset had touched multiple all-time highs in the past year.
Holder sentiment still remains largely skewed towards bullish and accumulation patterns, especially among whales, are ramping up in recent times. Of the entire bitcoin in circulation, whales hold 10% of that supply. This number is always inching up as more big players enter into the market and try to hold a larger share than their competitors.
Featured image from Live Trading News, chart from TradingView.com