Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2014; its figures on bitcoin supply, price, ownership concentration and the number of bitcoin millionaires date from late 2013 or early 2014, as does the comparison with global wealth distribution.
If in the real world we have the richest 1% of the population controlling 39% of all global wealth, bitcoin is no different. As for the distribution of wealth among bitcoin holders, according to a study by the Bitcoin community, the top 1% controls a massively disproportionate amount compared with the rest of the users.
According to the community, there are currently 11.8 million bitcoins in total, and the combined wealth of 790 users is 5.9 million bitcoins. If we convert that into dollars at an average price of $500 per bitcoin, it comes to a total of $2.95 billion.
Given that the number of bitcoin millionaires has fallen from 930 to 790, we could deduce that 140 people have already cashed in their wealth: they might have bought their bitcoins when the price was low, or they might have been scared off by the problems and doubts currently surrounding the currency.
One thing is clear: there is not much difference between the world of bitcoin and the world of Wall Street that bitcoin enthusiasts attack so much, because bitcoin also has its rich, its smart alecks, its professional speculators, those who try their luck and don’t find it and, at the other extreme, the “suckers” and the outraged (#occupybitcoin).
It is very hard to know how many real investors there are in bitcoin, although according to one member of the community, in 2012 there were about 500,000 addresses. Today there could be many more, or fewer, since other users admit that they themselves have used more than 100 addresses.
See also: What bitcoin is and isn’t, explained in four quotes
Featured image: Zach Copley, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Flickr.
