Despite Bitcoin’s growing acceptance on Wall Street, the cryptocurrency market still faces a fundamental mystery: who actually owns most of the world’s Bitcoin?
According to an October snapshot from Galaxy Research, approximately 11.1 million Bitcoin (BTC), representing roughly 55% of the total supply, remains unattributed to known owners. The coins sit in blockchain addresses whose identities have not been reliably linked to individuals, companies or other identifiable entities.
The finding offers a striking contrast to Bitcoin’s expanding presence in traditional finance. As exchange-traded funds (ETFs), institutional investors and professional custodians become increasingly involved in the market, a substantial share of the cryptocurrency remains outside the reach of publicly identified ownership records.
Galaxy Research’s head of research, Alex Thorn, believes the figures highlight the continued importance of individual investors who choose to hold their Bitcoin independently rather than rely on centralised financial intermediaries.
However, the data also comes with an important caveat: unattributed Bitcoin does not necessarily belong to individual investors. Some coins may be lost, while others could be controlled by institutions that blockchain researchers have yet to identify.
More Than Half of Bitcoin’s Supply Has No Known Attribution
Galaxy’s October snapshot classified approximately 11.1 million BTC as unattributed, accounting for around 55% of Bitcoin’s supply.
The classification refers to coins held at addresses that researchers have not successfully connected to known owners. It does not mean the Bitcoin is invisible on the blockchain or that its transactions cannot be observed.
Bitcoin operates on a public ledger, allowing anyone to inspect transactions and balances associated with individual addresses. What the ledger generally does not reveal by itself is the real-world identity of the person or organisation controlling those addresses.
This distinction is central to understanding Galaxy’s findings.
Blockchain analysis firms can sometimes identify wallet owners by examining publicly disclosed addresses, transaction patterns and connections to known exchanges, investment funds and other large holders. When a wallet can be reliably linked to an identifiable entity, its holdings may be classified as attributed.
When researchers cannot establish that connection, the coins remain unattributed.
The result is an unusual situation in which Bitcoin ownership is transparent in one sense but difficult to establish in another. The movement of coins can be publicly visible even when the people or institutions behind those transactions remain unknown.
Galaxy Research Says Self-Custody Remains a Major Part of Bitcoin
Thorn views the large volume of unattributed Bitcoin as evidence that self-custody remains widespread despite the industry’s growing institutional presence.
In a post on X, he highlighted the contrast between the expansion of centralised ownership structures and the substantial amount of Bitcoin that remains in addresses without known attribution.
“More than half of all BTC supply is sitting in addresses with no known attribution despite all the institutionalization and centralized ownership over the years, still a ton of bitcoin (maybe even most) is held by individuals in self-custody,” Thorn wrote.
Self-custody means that Bitcoin holders control their own private keys rather than entrusting their assets to an exchange, fund or third-party custodian.
These keys provide the authority to spend or transfer the Bitcoin associated with a wallet. Anyone who controls the relevant private keys can generally authorise transactions, while anyone without them cannot move the funds through the normal Bitcoin protocol.
For supporters of the cryptocurrency, self-custody represents one of Bitcoin’s defining features: individuals can hold and transfer an asset without depending on a traditional bank to maintain their account.
However, self-custody also comes with responsibilities. Losing access to the necessary keys can make funds permanently inaccessible, while compromised keys can expose a holder’s Bitcoin to theft.
Galaxy’s findings are consistent with the possibility that individual self-custody remains significant, but the attribution data alone cannot establish exactly how much Bitcoin is held by individuals.
Xapo Bank Says Retail Investors Were There First
Xapo Bank, a bank focused on Bitcoin services, responded to Thorn’s comments by emphasising the long-standing role of retail investors in the cryptocurrency market.
The bank argued that the large volume of coins in wallets without publicly identified owners reflects the fact that individual investors have participated in Bitcoin for more than a decade.
“And why bitcoin is for the people and people ‘can be their own bank’ Retail have been here for over a decade. Everyone else still catching up,” Xapo Bank wrote.
The response reflects a widely held view among Bitcoin supporters that the market developed from grassroots participation before attracting substantial attention from major financial institutions.
In Bitcoin’s early years, individuals could acquire, mine and transfer the cryptocurrency without the involvement of the institutional infrastructure that now surrounds digital assets.
Over time, exchanges, investment funds, publicly traded companies and regulated financial products expanded access to Bitcoin for a wider range of investors.
The introduction and growth of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the United States further strengthened its connection to traditional financial markets, allowing investors to gain exposure through familiar brokerage accounts.
Yet institutional adoption does not necessarily mean that individuals have stopped holding Bitcoin independently.
Some investors continue to favour self-custody because it gives them direct control over their assets. Others may prefer the convenience of exchanges and professional custodians.
The available attribution figures do not establish which approach dominates among the owners of unidentified wallets, but they illustrate how difficult it remains to map Bitcoin’s entire ownership structure.
How Bitcoin Addresses Work and Why Owners Can Remain Anonymous
Bitcoin’s public ledger records transactions and the movement of coins between addresses.
A Bitcoin address can be compared loosely to a bank account number: it identifies where Bitcoin can be received and allows observers to examine associated transactions and balances.
The comparison has limitations, however. Unlike a conventional bank account, a Bitcoin address does not automatically disclose the account holder’s legal name or identity.
Users can generate multiple addresses, and a single person or organisation may control many of them. Consequently, counting addresses does not provide a reliable count of individual Bitcoin owners.
This creates a challenge for researchers attempting to estimate who holds the cryptocurrency.
Galaxy and other blockchain analysis firms examine known wallet connections, transaction histories and other available evidence to attribute addresses to exchanges, funds, companies and significant individual holders.
But attribution is not always straightforward. An institution may distribute its holdings across numerous wallets, while an individual may use several addresses to manage personal funds.
Some wallets may also have little publicly identifiable transaction history, making it difficult to connect them to a particular owner.
As a result, the Bitcoin blockchain offers a transparent record of transactions without necessarily providing a complete picture of the people and organisations behind them.
Why the 55% Figure Does Not Mean All Those Coins Belong to Retail Investors
Although the large share of unattributed Bitcoin supports the possibility that self-custody remains widespread, it would be misleading to conclude that all 11.1 million BTC belong to individual investors.
Several different categories of holdings may contribute to the total.
1. Bitcoin that may be permanently lost
Some coins may sit in wallets whose owners have forgotten their private keys, lost access to their devices or died without leaving a way for others to recover the funds.
Bitcoin associated with such wallets may remain visible on the blockchain even when nobody can spend it.
However, identifying a wallet as inactive does not prove that its coins are lost. An owner may simply be holding the Bitcoin for the long term.
2. Early Bitcoin mined before the market matured
Some unattributed holdings may originate from Bitcoin’s early mining years, when the network had relatively few participants and the cryptocurrency had not yet attracted widespread commercial attention.
Researchers have also examined early mining activity associated with the so-called Patoshi pattern, a grouping of early Bitcoin blocks linked by some researchers to a single miner and commonly discussed in connection with Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
Galaxy tracks the Satoshi-era miner pattern separately in its ownership classifications, so these holdings should not automatically be treated as part of the general unattributed category.
3. Institutions that researchers have not identified
Some Bitcoin could belong to investment funds, private companies, brokers and over-the-counter (OTC) trading desks.
OTC desks arrange large transactions directly between counterparties rather than executing them through publicly visible exchange order books.
Such businesses may hold or manage Bitcoin through wallet arrangements that are not easily connected to a publicly known entity.
If researchers cannot establish the relevant ownership links, those holdings may remain unattributed even when a professional organisation controls them.
4. Complex custody arrangements
Large institutions sometimes distribute assets across multiple addresses for operational, security or accounting reasons.
When those connections are not publicly disclosed or cannot be reliably established through blockchain analysis, researchers may struggle to determine whether different addresses belong to the same organisation.
This can make institutional holdings appear less concentrated than they actually are.
These possibilities demonstrate why unattributed Bitcoin should be understood as an uncertainty in ownership identification rather than proof of any single ownership pattern.
Who Owns the Other 45% of Bitcoin?
Galaxy’s snapshot also identifies a substantial portion of Bitcoin’s supply through its known ownership classifications.
According to the figures provided, approximately 45% of the supply has been attributed to identifiable entities or recognised categories.
These include cryptocurrency exchanges, exchange-traded funds led by BlackRock, the United States government and major early Bitcoin holders.
The Satoshi-era miner pattern is listed separately, with 1,123,658 BTC attributed to that category in Galaxy’s snapshot.
The distinction is important because Bitcoin’s supply is distributed across very different types of holders.
Exchanges may hold assets on behalf of customers, ETFs hold Bitcoin to support their investment products, governments may control cryptocurrency acquired through seizures or other proceedings, and individual investors may maintain their own wallets.
Even where a wallet is associated with a known institution, the ultimate beneficial ownership of the coins may be more complicated than the address label suggests.
For example, Bitcoin held by an exchange may represent customer assets rather than the exchange’s own investment position.
Accordingly, attribution does not always mean that every coin in a category is economically owned by the named organisation.
What the Findings Mean for Bitcoin’s Future
The findings arrive as Bitcoin continues to develop from a relatively niche digital asset into an investment recognised by major financial institutions.
The growth of ETFs, professional custody services and institutional participation has made Bitcoin more accessible to investors who prefer traditional financial products.
Yet Galaxy’s analysis suggests that the public record of known ownership still covers only part of the market.
For analysts, this creates challenges when measuring market concentration, estimating the influence of different investor groups and assessing how much Bitcoin may be available for trading.
At the same time, the findings reinforce an important feature of Bitcoin: its public ledger can reveal the movement of assets without necessarily identifying the people behind them.
Whether the unattributed supply is primarily held by individuals, lost in inaccessible wallets or controlled by unidentified institutions remains uncertain.
The 55% figure therefore offers a compelling snapshot of what researchers know about Bitcoin ownership—and, just as importantly, what they do not know.
Despite the headlines surrounding institutional adoption, a substantial portion of Bitcoin’s supply remains outside the reach of confident public attribution. That uncertainty is a reminder that even in a market built on a transparent blockchain, identifying the people behind the money can remain remarkably difficult.
Disclaimer: This article is for informational and educational purposes only and should not be considered financial, investment, trading or tax advice. Cryptocurrency markets are volatile, and digital asset investments involve significant risks, including the potential loss of capital. Figures and ownership classifications reflect the reported Galaxy Research snapshot and may change as new information becomes available. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified financial adviser before making investment decisions.
