Financial news

In the last year, crypto has become a touchy subject for many. One key driver of the seeming reduction in faith in the potential of cryptocurrency appears to have been the fall in the value of Bitcoin (BTC). However, as the price chart falls, the number of Bitcoin holders is on the rise.

November 2021 saw Bitcoin’s price reach an all-time high exceeding $65,000. One year later, however, the crypto’s price had fallen dramatically, trading for slightly over $16,000 for one Bitcoin. A fall of over 70 per cent could easily have discouraged most away from investing in or holding the crypto.

Despite this, data from cryptocurrency data company CryptoPresales shows that the number of unique addresses holding more than one BTC has jumped by 20 per cent year-over-year, recently reaching over 981,000.

The crypto analytics platform Glassnode explained that there are now over 155,000 investors holding more than 10 BTC. This figure represents five per cent more than in January last year. While the huge drop spelt big losses for a number of investors, the price reduction is being used by new investors to get in on the crypto.

In total, there are now 116 investors who currently hold 10,000 BTC or more in their crypto wallets. This figure is 28 per cent more than one year previous, highlighting that the lowered prices have encouraged many to add to their existing amounts.

Number of active investors continues to rise  

Overall, the number of active addresses in the Bitcoin network has risen by 3.6 million since January 2022. With millions of new people beginning to engage with Bitcoin in the turbulent crypto market, it appears that the future of the coin could remain bright.

However, despite an impressive rise in active addresses, the pace of the rise dropped compared to that of the same period in 2021. Between 2021 and 2022, 6.6 million new addresses with balances above zero joined the Bitcoin network.

The Bitcoin network reached 39.6 million active addresses in January 2022. The addition of the 3.6 million addresses to the network saw this rising to a total of 43.3 million.

Overall, the number of Bitcoin investors has risen and looks to continue to rise in the near future. However, regarding addresses holding significant amounts of the cryptocurrency, totals have dropped slightly. While the number of accounts holding 10,000 BTC rose, addresses with more than (or equal to) 100 BTC and 1,000 BTC decreased.

The number of investors with a Bitcoin balance of 100 BTC or more sat at 16,090, a minor reduction of 0.3 per cent from the previous year.

Similarly, those with a balance more than or equal to 1,000 BTC totalled 2,035. This equalled a five per cent decrease from the previous year. While this could indicate that some of Bitcoin’s bigger players cut their losses, it is clear that the number of Bitcoin owners continues to grow.