Now I have not a clue how reliable the data presented in this article is but it's accessible via coinmarketcap.com and it appears to be provided by IntoTheBlock.
According to said data, 88.09% of Bitcoin supply is controlled by retail buyers, and as seen in the meme above, whales control is really small — 1.25%.
First off, everybody who's done the research knows that Satoshi is currently the largest holder, even though that piece of the supply has been officially tagged a “dead supply.”
Now if we move on from that, we do still have whale size holdings like Microstrategy. To get to my point here, I don't know what is the defined details that determines what said data considers a whale but my guess is that it isn't just a factor of controlling more than 1% of the supply.
Notwithstanding, most of said public top holders are evidently categorized under investors here and they account for 10.66% of the circulating supply.
Looking at these numbers just makes me think, if bitcoin was a proof of stake chain, this supply distribution would truly be something. Well fun fact, I found that a blockchain I often considered a dead chain with high stakes investors due to low big moves in the space happens to have rather close to Bitcoin's supply distribution ratio, but that's a story for another day.
In a lot of ways, these numbers explain why Bitcoin is the way it is. A high concentration of retail could mean high volatility, but this belief quickly feels untrue when you discover that more than 70% of Bitcoin holders have been holding for more than a year.
Having ruled that out the door, the only left indicator is that Bitcoin has a strong community penetration, there's a lot of faith in Bitcoin being long-term valuable so much that retail heavily holds.
This would also mean that the majority of price swings have been the work of a small network of traders, about 6.04% of active addresses.
Monolithic With Earned Media
Bitcoin's rigidity has been its biggest selling point for years, especially because it directly influences its security as a network, this Monolith design has earned Bitcoin extensive media coverage, with a mix of positive and negative sentiments.
But the thing about free marketing whether good or bad is that it's marketing nonetheless and drives curiosity.
Bitcoin to a huge portion of the world is “new” and that in itself influences how people react to learning about it for the first time.
New knowledge often feels great, and drives interest. Bitcoin is not like fiat, there's thousands of articles written with concepts of how it can solve a generation-long financial and governance problems. What do you think the reaction of the average human to such information will be?
Everybody will want in. And this places bitcoin on a trajectory to $10 million a unit, essentially making each sat worth $0.10.
Hello micropayments on Bitcoin, and just like that, we have a decentralized trillion dollar borderless payment system. Surely it will be expensive, but that's where the centralized layer 2s come in.
The way this looks, it's either you own a piece of it on-chain, using it as a wealth hedge or you wait to transact with it off-chain through centralized systems.
Bitcoin is the alpha, it always has been, but this doesn't mean other crypto assets won't perform well, there's just different purposes being served. That said, one thing I speculate could happen whether or not bitcoiners like it is that the supply will be expanded above 21 million off-chain to enable effective use in international banking.
Matter of fact, bitcoiners or maxis may not even care because it will only make them richer.
Question is: will consumers accept this or even care? Time will tell. $100k has been made, the next seemingly impossible target is $1 million, but it will get there.