according to Data from Arkham Intelligence collected by WuBlockchainSatoshi Nakamoto’s addresses still contain approximately 1,096 million bitcoins — worth about $71 billion at current prices — making the creator of the pseudonym the largest single entity to own bitcoin. The original pool of mined coins, untouched since Bitcoin’s early days, remains a silent foundation beneath a market that has since been reshaped by exchanges, funds and government seizures.
The numbers paint a clear picture of where supply actually stands now. Coinbase controls approximately 981,000 BTC. Michael Saylor’s Strategy (the company formerly known as MicroStrategy) owns 844,000 BTC, an accumulation driven by the company’s treasury strategy. Various BlackRock funds – primarily through its spot Bitcoin ETF – have raised around 732,000 BTC. Binance, the world’s largest exchange by trading volume, has about 675,000 BTC. Then there is the US government, which owns 325,000 bitcoins obtained largely through asset seizures linked to criminal investigations.
Exchanges and ETFs became the new supply base
The collapse reveals a fundamental change in Bitcoin ownership. More than a decade ago, the majority of coins were controlled by individuals and early miners. Today, addresses with the largest balances are dominated by a combination of central locations and institutional tools. Coinbase and Binance alone hold more than 1.65 million Bitcoin, an amount that rivals Satoshi’s estimated stash. This focus leads to increased conversations about counterparty risk, especially when an exchange holds client assets in opaque ways. The emergence of spot Bitcoin ETFs in the US has accelerated this trend, pushing huge amounts of Bitcoin into institutional custodial structures managed by a few companies.
The open question is what happens if any of these large pools are suddenly forced to move funds, whether due to a regulatory action, a security breach, or a strategic decision. The cryptocurrency market has seen a series of selling pressures caused by large exchange outflows before, but the scope here is far greater than anything seen during past exchange crises.
State holdings add a regulatory wildcard
The US government’s share of 325,000 bitcoins varies in type. Unlike stock exchanges or investment managers, the government does not have a mandate to hold assets for clients; They carry them as evidence or proceeds of crime. The Justice Department has a history of selling seized bitcoin in batches, sometimes through auction, sometimes through open market sales. These sales have historically caused short-term price disruptions. As lawmakers debate the future of cryptocurrency legislation, including… The landmark bill that Wall Street banks are currently trying to kill-Bitcoin Fed’s huge stance creates policy contradiction. The government, which is debating how to regulate digital assets, is also one of the largest involuntary holders of the same assets.
Other governments are beginning to face similar situations as they expand enforcement against ransomware networks and darknet markets. For example, Germany has liquidated large portions of Bitcoin it seized in previous cycles. How major economies decide to handle these stocks can affect market liquidity beyond any single regulatory provision.
Undeclared variable: Satoshi keys
No discussion of Bitcoin concentration is complete without acknowledging that Satoshi’s approximately 1.1 million Bitcoins may never move. The wallets attributed to the creator have been dormant for more than a decade, and many analysts believe the private keys were either lost or intentionally destroyed. However, the mere existence of those currencies creates a permanent premium of uncertainty. Any on-chain movement from those titles will almost certainly result in panic selling, regardless of the intent behind the move. The fact that the market is pricing Bitcoin as a trillion-dollar asset class without concrete evidence of its creator’s activity is a testament to how deep the “Satoshi dormancy” assumption runs.
The Arkham snapshot also shows that the two largest single addresses of the wallet belong to Binance’s cold storage, holding approximately 249,000 BTC and 181,000 BTC respectively. These are functionally part of Binance’s combined holdings, but the concentration in just two addresses highlights how few points of failure there are when it comes to holding a large exchange. While blockchain is still a distributed ledger, the practical custody map increasingly looks like a traditional financial network with a small number of meganodes.
What then matters is how these balances develop. As demand for ETFs continues and exchanges compete for institutional clients, the classification may change further. But one thing is clear: The era of purely decentralized retail ownership has given way to a landscape where the largest Bitcoin balances reflect corporate treasuries, asset managers, and governments — a structure that carries risks of both maturity and concentration.
