This week saw a notable milestone for bitcoin wallets holding at least one bitcoin (BTC), demonstrating continued long-term optimism for the cryptocurrency despite external market pressures that have driven down bitcoin prices.
The number of bitcoin wallets holding more than one BTC exceeded the one million mark on Monday, according to statistics from Glassnode, a well-known on-chain monitoring tool. This represents a 20% rise since February of the previous year.
According to the statistics, there were an additional 79,000 bitcoin wallets holding one BTC between November and January. This surge happened after prices plunged from over $22,000 to momentarily fall below $16,000 due to the failure of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX.
Although “Bitcoin Request for Comment” (BRC-20) tokens have recently increased in popularity, the number of rich holders has not greatly increased. There have only been 30,000 more wallets uploaded since the BRC-20 token standard was introduced in March, each carrying one Bitcoin.
BRC-By allowing developers to construct tokens on the Bitcoin network, such as lending and borrowing, decentralized finance (DeFi) services are made possible. Due to the need for block space, this increased activity has caused fees on the Bitcoin network to soar, hitting two-year highs. Furthermore, earlier this month, the market value of all altcoins issued on the Bitcoin network rose to $1.6 billion.
Recent market observations show that, in contrast to the enormous number of holders, the bulk of Bitcoin transactions are coming from smaller wallets. The majority of Bitcoin transactions at the peak of 2019 were centered in the $1,000 to $10,000 region, according to Tom Rodgers, Head of Research at ETC Group, indicating a high prevalence of trading activity. However, in the current situation, the majority of Bitcoin transactions—a total of 359.560—were made for less than $1. This spike in smaller transactions suggests a significant rise in Bitcoin velocity, which shows that more users are actively transacting with Bitcoin rather than keeping it in cold wallets as long-term investments.
As indicated by the historic record of over one million wallets holding at least one BTC, Bitcoin continues to garner significant attention and support from individual investors. This suggests that despite continued swings in the general market environment, long-term attitude toward the most popular cryptocurrency is durable.
