Scott Melker, host of “The Wolf of All Streets” podcast, revived his “Bitcoin rich list” in his Aug. 29 newsletter—a table showing how BTC is spread across wallets of different sizes.
Melker said he last compiled the list in 2023, and his latest version offers a snapshot of how Bitcoin ownership has changed over the past two years.
Summary
- Addresses holding at least 1 BTC account for the top 98% of holders, Melker says.
- The most significant two-year change is that the number of addresses holding up to 0.0001 BTC has doubled.
- The price of becoming a wholecoiner is growing year after year; hardcore bitcoiners say it’s never too late to invest in BTC.
You don’t have to be a ‘wholecoiner’
Melker claims that owning 0.1 BTC makes a person one of the top 8% holders.
Also, you don’t have to be a “wholecoiner” — a person holding at least 1 BTC — to become a top-tier Bitcoin owner. Why? When BTC is traded at around $110,000 (its current price is $108,500) even owning 0.1 BTC makes you richer in Bitcoin than 92% of all other Bitcoin holders.
And holding one Bitcoin or more puts you above 98% of all holders.
This data doesn’t exclude holdings stored on the wallets of the crypto exchanges. Of 20 addresses holding the largest amounts of BTC (between 36,000 and nearly 250,000 bitcoins), only eight belong to unidentified entities.
Generally, the data shift between 2023 and 2025 is not drastic. Melker notes that in two years, the overall number of Bitcoin addresses grew by 10 million, reaching over 56 million.
The most notable change is an inflow of addresses holding between 0.00001 and 0.0001 BTC. It grew from 3.5 million to 6.9 million. “That makes sense, as more people start small,” Melker says, adding:
“That stability is actually healthy. It shows Bitcoin ownership distribution is maturing.”
From the additional data attached to Melker’s write-up, we can learn that the amount of Bitcoin dust reached an all-time high in 2025 at 1.58 thousand BTC. Bitcoin dust refers to leftovers, too small to be sent due to an insufficient amount to pay transaction fees.
Meanwhile, the dormant wallet chart indicates:
- 12.5 million of Bitcoin (over half of the total supply) are still for a year.
- Over 10 million bitcoins have remained inactive for more than two years.
- Almost 8 million bitcoins have not moved in three years.
The curve showing the amount of BTC on dormant addresses got sharper following the 2024 presidential election after President Donald Trump vowed that America will never sell its bitcoins.
Becoming a wholecoiner in 2025
If holding 0.1 BTC makes someone “Bitcoin rich,” then owning a full bitcoin—the coveted “wholecoiner” status—certainly does too. But the price of becoming a wholecoiner has risen dramatically over time. Buying 1 BTC in 2013 was a very different proposition than buying it in 2025.
At nearly every stage in Bitcoin’s history, skeptics have insisted it was “too late” to buy, arguing that the price had already climbed too high to rise further. Countless stories online reflect this doubt, with many early adopters regretting that they sold too soon. Even back when Bitcoin traded under $100, people hesitated to buy back in because it already felt “expensive.”
One of the most famous examples comes from early adopter Greg Schoen. In 2011, he tweeted that he had bought 1,700 BTC at $0.06 each, only to sell at $0.30. He lamented missing the chance to sell at $8, which would have netted him $13,600 instead of just $510. That tweet became so iconic that Schoen auctioned it as an NFT in 2022. What he couldn’t have known is that by 2025, his 1,700 BTC would be worth more than $180 million.
Today, only a little over 2,000 Bitcoin addresses hold more than 1,000 BTC. Whether Schoen is still among them remains unclear, but his story illustrates a timeless theme in Bitcoin: almost every era feels like it’s “too late”—until the next one arrives.
Top-tier Bitcoin bar
The number of addresses that hold above one Bitcoin (less than 2%) is slightly below one million. According to the UBS Global Wealth Report, 18.1% of adults worldwide hold assets exceeding $100,000.
It signifies that a Bitcoin-rich person is far from being the biggest fiat-rich person. The top-tier bar for bitcoiners is set lower than for the fiat money holders. It reflects how early it is to view Bitcoin as a widely adopted asset used to hold vast fortunes.
Despite all the hype, government adoption, and inflows of institutional money, Bitcoin remains a special interest of a growing, but not yet ubiquitous, group of people.
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