The Crypto Wealth Report 2026 Methodology

How the Crypto Wealth Figures Are Calculated

We build every wealth figure from public blockchain and market data and show each step so that the calculations can be repeated using the sources below. User counts and market values are taken from the published sources shown. We start with a hard count: on 31 August 2026, 123,222 Bitcoin addresses held at least USD 1 million on the public ledger.¹

The next stage converts addresses into individuals. We remove addresses belonging to exchanges and funds, which hold coins for millions of clients;⁷ remove coins that are lost, estimated at up to a fifth of all Bitcoin;¹⁴ consolidate the multiple addresses that a single owner typically holds;² and add back holders who own Bitcoin only through exchange-traded funds and therefore never appear directly on the ledger.^3,4

Each step starts with a published figure and applies a stated range to account for uncertainty. At the billionaire level, the largest holders are also checked by name. Last year’s figures are used only as cross-checks on the new methodology. They do not enter the calculations, and no year-on-year change is reported.

The Figures, Row by Row

Bitcoin millionaires: 92,272

A Bitcoin millionaire holds at least USD 1 million in Bitcoin, equivalent to 12.82 Bitcoin at the price on 31 August 2026. The ledger showed 123,222 addresses at or above this threshold.¹

Three published findings convert this into a count of individuals: the largest addresses belong mainly to exchanges and funds rather than individuals; up to a fifth of all Bitcoin is estimated to be lost, concentrated in old, high-value addresses;¹⁴ and a single owner often holds several addresses.² This leaves 61,272 individuals holding Bitcoin directly. Adding those who hold only through exchange-traded funds^3,4 gives 92,272, with a range of 74,000 to 114,000. Further details on the calculation of the ranges are provided below.

Crypto millionaires: 135,694

A crypto millionaire holds at least USD 1 million in any cryptocurrency, not only Bitcoin. Excluding stablecoins, whose supply sits largely in exchange and settlement balances rather than personal portfolios, Bitcoin accounts for 68% of crypto market value.^11,21 Assuming that holders at this wealth level hold Bitcoin in approximately the same proportion as the market, we divide the Bitcoin figure by this share:

92,272 ÷ 0.68 = 135,694

This gives a range of 132,000 to 154,000.

Centi-millionaires: 290

These are individuals with crypto holdings of at least USD 100 million. Above this level, the ledger consists almost entirely of exchange and fund wallets. The count is therefore derived from the shape of the wealth distribution. Extending this distribution to USD 100 million and adjusting for the proportion of large addresses estimated to belong to individuals gives approximately 290 centi-millionaires, with a range of 260 to 320.

Billionaires: 23

The largest cryptocurrency holders can, in some cases, be identified by name. Five individuals have publicly known holdings of more than USD 1 billion in crypto coins. Allowing for large holdings on the ledger that fall outside the lost-coin estimate but have no publicly identified owner gives a central estimate of 23, with a range of 17 to 34. Coins held by companies, such as Strategy’s treasury, are not counted as individual wealth.

Bitcoin Tiers: 92,272 Millionaires, 151 Centi-millionaires, and 9 Billionaires

These figures count individuals whose Bitcoin holdings alone exceed each threshold. The millionaire figure is derived directly from the Bitcoin ledger and amounts to 68% of all crypto millionaires.

Among the five known billionaires, two hold Bitcoin¹³ and three hold other coins, mainly stakes in their own networks. We therefore estimate the Bitcoin share of the 23 billionaires at 40%, giving 9, within a range of 7 to 14.

For centi-millionaires, we use a Bitcoin share of 52%, between the 68% share at the millionaire level and the 40% share at the billionaire level:

290 × 0.52 = 151

The decline in Bitcoin’s share as wealth rises is consistent in direction with earlier editions of the Crypto Wealth Report.

Crypto Users: 742 Million, of Whom 371 Million Hold Bitcoin

We derive this figure from the ledger. Funded Bitcoin addresses grew by 4.9% in the year to 31 August 2026.^1,20. Applying that growth rate to the published mid-2025 Bitcoin ownership count — 354 million of 708 million crypto owners¹⁹ — gives 371 million Bitcoin owners. At Bitcoin’s 50% share of owners, this implies 742 million crypto owners overall.

Users are individuals who hold any amount of crypto. The crypto wealth tiers above represent the upper end of that population.

Market value: USD 2.62 trillion across all crypto, including stablecoins, of which USD 1.56 trillion is in Bitcoin, representing a 60% share (68% once stablecoins are excluded, which is the basis used for the millionaire count).¹¹

Methodology in Detail

This section sets out each adjustment in full, including the published source and value, the arithmetic, and the range of uncertainty. Central estimates are shown as calculated. The endpoints of each range are rounded because they indicate how far a figure could reasonably move rather than representing separately calculated results.

Bitcoin Millionaires

We read the distribution on 31 August 2026, when Bitcoin was valued at USD 78,008.^1,11 At that price, the USD 1 million threshold is:

1,000,000 ÷ 78,008 = 12.82 Bitcoin

A total of 123,222 addresses held at least this amount.

Four adjustments convert addresses into individuals. Each adjustment is based on a published figure and applied within a stated range. Each calculation can be reproduced from the figures shown and is rounded to the nearest whole number.

• Remove institutional and custodial addresses. Arkham identifies the main custodians and their Bitcoin holdings as Coinbase, 982,000; BlackRock, 747,000; Binance, 705,000; Fidelity, 433,000; and the US government, 325,000.⁷ These holdings are concentrated among the largest addresses in this range, and the four largest addresses are all exchange cold wallets.¹
  
  Bitcoin treasury companies such as Strategy, with more than 800,000 Bitcoin, hold their coins largely with these same institutions, so these coins are also removed at this stage.¹⁰
  
  Together, the five custodial holdings amount to approximately 3.2 million Bitcoin, or roughly one sixth of all Bitcoin, with treasury-company holdings included within these custodial totals. Arkham attributes these holdings to separate entities: the Coinbase figure represents coins held for its exchange customers, while spot exchange-traded fund holdings in Coinbase custody are attributed to the relevant issuer, such as BlackRock. The figures therefore do not overlap.
  
  The 20,094 addresses holding more than 100 Bitcoin, where custodial wallets are concentrated, account for 16% of the address count on their own.¹ An academic study that manually classified every address holding more than 1,000 Bitcoin found that intermediaries held roughly one third of Bitcoin in circulation at the end of 2020.¹⁶
  
  We estimate that institutional and custodial addresses account for between 15% and 30% of the total, using 22% as the central estimate:
  
  123,222 × 0.78 = 96,113
• Remove lost and long-dormant coins. Published estimates place permanently lost Bitcoin at between 2.3 million and 4 million, equivalent to approximately 11% to 19% of the 21 million supply cap. These coins are concentrated in old, high-value addresses.¹⁴ Satoshi Nakamoto’s roughly 1 million Bitcoin, which have remained untouched since 2010, are among them.¹³
  
  A 2026 court filing enumerates 39,069 long-dormant addresses holding 3.8 million Bitcoin. Approximately 17,000 of these fall outside the Satoshi-era pattern, with a median balance of close to 50 Bitcoin.¹⁷
  
  Compared with the 96,113 addresses remaining after the previous adjustment, this represents approximately 18% of the count. Not every dormant address exceeds the USD 1 million threshold, however, so we remove between 10% and 25%, using 15% as the central estimate:
  
  96,113 × 0.85 = 81,696
• Consolidate multiple addresses per individual. Glassnode’s clustering maps 28.4 million funded addresses to 23.1 million owners, equivalent to 0.81 owners per address across the network.²
  
  Large holders tend to spread their holdings across more addresses than the network average. For this group, we therefore use a range of 0.70 to 0.81. At the central estimate of 0.75:
  
  81,696 × 0.75 = 61,272
• Add back holders who never appear on-chain. US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds hold 1.26 million Bitcoin.³Of this, 79% is outside institutional 13F filings — the quarterly holdings reports required of large US investment managers — indicating holdings by retail and private investors.⁴ This represents approximately 990,000 Bitcoin, worth approximately USD 77 billion at the reading price.
  
  Assuming that between 40% and 55% of this amount is held in individual accounts above the USD 1 million threshold, with an average holding of between 13 and 21 Bitcoin per account, gives a range of approximately 19,000 to 42,000 individuals.
  
  For the central estimate, we assume that half is held in qualifying individual accounts, at an average of 16 Bitcoin per account:
  
  495,000 ÷ 16 = approximately 31,000
  
  Ordinary exchange-account balances are not added back because they cannot be separated from the custodial holdings removed in the first adjustment. This keeps the estimate conservative. Of the four adjustments, this one relies most heavily on judgment, which is reflected in the range.
  
  The three on-chain adjustments give 61,272 individuals holding Bitcoin directly. The off-chain add-back increases the total to:
  
  61,272 + 31,000 = 92,272
  
  Moving the adjustments within their stated bounds, without combining every extreme assumption simultaneously, gives a range of 74,000 to 114,000.
  
  A further cross-check tests the order of magnitude. It is deliberately simple and does not use the power-law fit described below, so it remains independent of the tail analysis. It uses the 145,100 Bitcoin millionaires published in the Crypto Wealth Report 2025. That figure was produced with a different methodology and is not comparable with this year’s count, but it is the only previously published benchmark readers will have seen, so it is used here only to test whether the new method produces a figure of a plausible size, not to measure change from last year. Revaluing it one-for-one for Bitcoin’s 26% decline since June 2025 gives approximately 107,400:
  
  145,100 × 0.74 = approximately 107,400
  
  This represents an upper bound because holders who were only just above the USD 1 million threshold would also fall below it as the price declined. The 2026 estimate of 92,272 falls below this level.^5,6

Crypto Millionaires

Bitcoin accounts for the majority of individual crypto wealth, but not all of it. We use Bitcoin’s share of crypto market value excluding stablecoins: USD 1.56 trillion in Bitcoin compared with USD 2.30 trillion in crypto once approximately USD 0.31 trillion in stablecoins is excluded, giving a share of 68%.^11,21 Stablecoins are excluded from this step because much of their supply is held in exchange, trading, and settlement balances rather than in personal portfolios, including in custodial wallets already removed above. Including the market-wide stablecoin share would therefore overstate the proportion typically held in an individual portfolio.

We assume that holders at the USD 1 million threshold hold Bitcoin in approximately the same proportion as the market. We therefore divide the Bitcoin millionaire figure by 68%, using a range of 60% to 70%. The lower end allows for stablecoins that individuals do hold:

92,272 ÷ 0.68 = 135,694

Range: 132,000 to 154,000.

Crypto Centi-Millionaires

For crypto holdings above USD 100 million, almost every address belongs to an exchange or fund. We therefore estimate the size of this tier from the shape of the wealth distribution.

Personal crypto wealth follows a power law. The ledger shows 123,222 addresses above USD 1 million and 15,522 above USD 10 million,¹ a decline of approximately eight times for each tenfold increase in wealth, equivalent to a Pareto exponent of 0.90.

Extending this fitted line gives approximately 1,960 addresses above USD 100 million and approximately 250 above USD 1 billion. The actual ledger thins more rapidly than the fitted line at the largest values, so these figures are used as working estimates, with the ranges below reflecting the uncertainty.

The estimated individual share of these addresses decreases with wealth, from approximately half at USD 1 million — 61,272 individuals from 123,222 addresses — to approximately 9% at USD 1 billion, anchored by the billionaire estimate below.

At slightly below 15% at the USD 100 million level, using a range of approximately 13.5% to 16.5%, the calculation gives 290 crypto centi-millionaires, with a range of 260 to 320.

The tail is derived from the Bitcoin ledger and used as a proxy for crypto wealth as a whole. The billionaire anchor includes named non-Bitcoin fortunes, while the range allows for holders whose wealth is concentrated mainly outside Bitcoin. Revaluing the tier for the year’s market decline produces a similar range.

Crypto Billionaires

The largest holders in the crypto billionaire tier can, in some cases, be identified by name. Five individuals have disclosed or on-chain holdings of more than USD 1 billion in crypto coins, and none has subsequently been reported as having sold those holdings.^8,9,13,15 These five individuals therefore provide a verified floor.

Other well-known individuals are sometimes estimated to fall within this tier.¹³ Where holdings cannot be traced on-chain or confirmed through disclosure, however, they are included within the allowance for unidentified holdings rather than in the named floor.

The power-law tail indicates approximately 250 addresses above USD 1 billion. Labeled custodians account for almost all of  these,^1,7 leaving approximately 17 unlabeled holdings whose owners are not public.

Not every such wallet belongs to a single individual, and not every unidentified crypto fortune is held on the Bitcoin ledger. Allowing for both factors gives a central estimate of 23 billionaires, within a range of 17 to 34. The lower end assumes that more of the unidentified wallets are custodial, while the upper end allows for more fortunes held outside the Bitcoin ledger.

Satoshi Nakamoto’s approximately 1 million Bitcoin would place the holder at the top of the list. However, the coins have not moved since 2010, fall within the lost-supply estimate described above, and cannot be attributed to an identified individual. They are therefore excluded.

The Bitcoin figures for the upper wealth tiers follow from the same analysis. At the millionaire level, the Bitcoin count is derived directly as described above, while the all-crypto count is calculated by dividing it by Bitcoin’s 68% share.

At higher wealth levels, Bitcoin’s share declines for an observable reason: the largest crypto fortunes tend to comprise founders’ holdings in their own networks’ tokens rather than diversified portfolios.

Of the five known billionaires, three hold mainly their own networks’ tokens and two hold Bitcoin. Applying a 40% Bitcoin share to the central estimate of 23 crypto billionaires gives:

23 × 0.40 = 9

This gives a range of 7 to 14 Bitcoin billionaires across the 17 to 34 range for the overall tier.

At the centi-millionaire level, the Bitcoin share falls between the 68% measured at the millionaire threshold and the 40% estimated at the billionaire threshold. We use a central share of 52%:

290 × 0.52 = 151

Using a range of 45% to 60% gives between 130 and 174 Bitcoin centi-millionaires.

Earlier editions of the Crypto Wealth Report showed Bitcoin shares declining in the same direction across the three tiers, at 60%, 56%, and 47%, respectively. However, those crypto wealth statistics were produced using a different methodology. The earlier figures are therefore used only as a directional cross-check and are not directly comparable with the 2026 estimates.

Users and Market Value

User counts are derived from the ledger and calibrated against the published ownership series.

Funded Bitcoin addresses, calculated as the sum of the distribution bands, stood at 56,517,090 on 31 August 2025 and 59,270,123 on 31 August 2026. This gives a one-year growth factor of:

59,270,123 ÷ 56,517,090 = 1.0487^1,20

Crypto.com’s ownership series, which combines on-chain data with estimation models, placed global crypto ownership at 708 million in mid-2025, including 354 million Bitcoin owners.¹⁹

Applying the annual growth in funded Bitcoin addresses gives:

354 × 1.0487 = 371 million Bitcoin owners

Bitcoin represented 50% of crypto owners in mid-2025¹⁹ and 49% at the end of 2025.¹⁸ Using the 50% mid-2025 share gives:

371 ÷ 0.50 = 742 million crypto owners

This approach adjusts the published ownership count using the observable on-chain component while holding the custodial ownership split constant. Given growth in exchange-held ownership through exchange-traded funds, this represents the more conservative interpretation.

These figures include individuals holding any amount of crypto and are independent of the wealth-tier estimates above.

Market values are taken from the market data as at 31 August 2026: USD 2.62 trillion across all crypto, including stablecoins, of which USD 1.56 trillion is Bitcoin, representing a 60% share.¹¹

Inputs and Assumptions

The main inputs and market context, each supported by a source, are as follows:

• Bitcoin declined from USD 105,869 in June 2025 to USD 78,008 on 31 August 2026, a fall of 26%.
• Ethereum declined from USD 2,548 to USD 2,441, a fall of 4%.
• The broad altcoin market declined from USD 0.94 trillion to USD 0.45 trillion, retaining approximately half its value.^6,11,12
• The Bitcoin address distribution showed 123,222 addresses above USD 1 million and 15,522 above USD 10 million.¹
• Custodian and institutional holdings are identified using published attribution data.^7,10
• The estimated permanently lost Bitcoin supply is between 2.3 million and 4 million Bitcoin.¹⁴
• The address-to-owner ratio used as a network-wide reference point is 0.81.²
• US spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds hold 1.26 million Bitcoin, with 79% outside institutional 13F filings.^{3, 4}

Last year’s published figures are used only for the revaluation cross-check.⁵

Sensitivity

The widest uncertainty range applies to the Bitcoin millionaire estimate, at 74,000 to 114,000, reflecting the conversion from addresses to individuals.

The all-crypto millionaire figure introduces an additional uncertainty around the Bitcoin share divisor, which ranges from 60% to 70% around the central estimate of 68%. This produces a range of 132,000 to 154,000.

The crypto centi-millionaire estimate varies with the individual share applied to the upper tail, producing a range of 260 to 320.

The billionaire estimate is anchored by five named holders and an allowance for unidentified wallets, giving a range of 17 to 34.

The Bitcoin split within the two highest tiers has the widest proportional range: between 7 and 14 Bitcoin billionaires and between 130 and 174 Bitcoin centi-millionaires.

The ledger counts are read directly at the measurement date, so individuals who entered the relevant balance bands during the year are automatically included.

Notes

The crypto wealth statistics in the Crypto Wealth Report 2026 are produced from public blockchain and market data using the methodology described above.

Market data and the ledger distribution are both as at 31 August 2026.

Earlier editions of the Crypto Wealth Report used a different estimation methodology and are therefore not directly comparable with the 2026 edition. No year-on-year growth is reported. The methodology explainer describes what has changed and why.

Bitcoin held by companies, including Bitcoin treasury companies, is treated as institutional wealth and is not counted as individual wealth.¹⁰ The personal holdings of company founders are counted where they are separately disclosed.

The crypto wealth statistics cover both Bitcoin holdings and total cryptocurrency holdings. Stablecoins are excluded from the market-share calculation because much of their supply represents exchange and settlement balances rather than personal holdings.

References

¹  BitInfoCharts, ‘Bitcoin Rich List and Balance Distribution’ (accessed 31 August 2026). bitinfocharts.com/top-100-richest-bitcoin-addresses.html

²  Glassnode, ‘How Many Entities Hold Bitcoin?’ (address-to-entity clustering). research.glassnode.com/bitcoin_holders/

³  Bitbo, US spot Bitcoin ETF holdings tracker. bitbo.io/treasuries/us-etfs/

⁴  CoinShares, Bitcoin 13F Q1 2026 Report. coinshares.com/insights/research-data/bitcoin-13f-q1-2026-report/

⁵  Henley & Partners, Crypto Wealth Report 2025 (last year’s figures, used as a cross-check). henleyglobal.com/publications/crypto-wealth-report-2025

⁶  Binance, BTCUSDT and ETHUSDT monthly and daily candles (June 2025 and August 2026; the link opens BTCUSDT; change the symbol to ETHUSDT for the Ethereum series). api.binance.com/api/v3/klines?symbol=BTCUSDT&interval=1M

⁷  Arkham, ‘Who Owns the Most Bitcoin 2026’ (custodian and institutional holdings). info.arkm.com/research/who-owns-the-most-bitcoin-top-btc-holders-2026

⁸  Arkham, ‘The 10 Richest Crypto Holders (Individuals) 2026’. info.arkm.com/research/the-10-richest-crypto-holders-individuals-2026

⁹  XRPScan, XRP ledger account balances and labeled accounts. xrpscan.com/balances

¹⁰  BitcoinTreasuries.net, public-company Bitcoin holdings. bitcointreasuries.net/

¹¹  CoinGecko, live prices, market capitalization, and Bitcoin dominance. coingecko.com/en/global-charts

¹²  CoinMarketCap, historical market snapshot, 15 June 2025. coinmarketcap.com/historical/20250615/

¹³  River, ‘Who Owns the Most Bitcoin’ (named holders; Satoshi Nakamoto’s dormant holdings). river.com/learn/who-owns-the-most-bitcoin/

¹⁴  BitGo, estimates of permanently lost Bitcoin (survey of published estimates). bitgo.com/resources/blog/bitcoins-invisible-burn-lost-coins-outpace-new-supply/

¹⁵  Datawallet, ‘CZ Net Worth: Crypto’s Richest Man’ (Changpeng Zhao’s disclosed holdings). datawallet.com/crypto/cz-net-worth

¹⁶  Makarov, I., and Schoar, A., ‘Blockchain Analysis of the Bitcoin Market’, NBER Working Paper 29396 (classification of individual and intermediary holdings). nber.org/papers/w29396

¹⁷  Bitcoin Magazine, report on the 2026 court filing enumerating 39,069 long-dormant Bitcoin addresses (Galaxy Research data). bitcoinmagazine.com/news/anonymous-plaintiff-seeks-legal-bitcoin

¹⁸  Crypto.com, Crypto Market Sizing Report 2025 (global cryptocurrency and Bitcoin owners). crypto.com/en/company-news/global-cryptocurrency-ownership-reaches-741-million-in-2025

¹⁹  Crypto.com, Crypto Market Sizing Report H1 2025 (owners at mid-2025). crypto.com/us/research/crypto-market-sizing-report-h1-2025

²⁰  BitInfoCharts, Bitcoin distribution history (balance distribution at previous dates). bitinfocharts.com/bitcoin-distribution-history.html

²¹  DefiLlama, total stablecoin market capitalization (accessed 31 August 2026). defillama.com/stablecoins