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DickingAround
Haha. As if there was any realistic link between addresses and people. They're even designed to be one-time-use..
setr
Wouldn't that imply we should see significantly less centralization than this? At the very least 4% holding 96% implies something isn't being used right..
mkwldbttr
Author states that 1 address does not necessarily equals one person, but for some reason does this down in the article instead of an upfront disclaimer.
sowbug
That's common knowledge, both for Bitcoin and elsewhere. How could any digital asset (Bitcoin, email account, social media account) guarantee a 1:1 mapping to humans?
sogen
Is this a pie chart??
tpeo
Jesus, who thought that chart was a good idea?
detaro
Doesn't explain what set of addresses they actually looked at. All addresses ever in use? All addresses currently holding value?

Also not sure what that's supposed to mean:

> And that’s the issue. There’s only a very limited number of bitcoin wallet providers out there.

Might be confusing exchanges and wallets?

conception
You don't have to look at each address, you can just trace which addresses have been used through the block chain.
detaro
... yes? It's still relevant and missing info which of the addresses that have been used they looked at.
thaytch
Although the pie chart is a bit skewed because there are many exchanges that hold custody of coins in (multi-sig) cold storage, Bitcoin's distribution is not as dispersed as most would have liked it to be. That's largely because people were able to mine the currency in silence during 2009-10 where adoption and therefore difficulty were miniscule. I think one of the most annoying things people keep coming up with is doing airdrops for their altcoins based on the distribution to registered Bitcoin addresses. Byteball keeps doing this and therefore favors and privileges large Bitcoin holders. That's one of the most unfair ways to distribute a new cryptocurrency, especially for people that haven't had the privilege to have known about Bitcoin early.
Zarath
This looks pretty bad, but I would like to see how it changes after subtracting Satoshi coins, exchanges, etc. I'm sure it still wouldn't be that great.
grwthckrmstr
If this is even remotely representative of how Bitcoin wealth is distributed amongst individuals (not addresses)...
K0balt
This article is an exercise in ignorance. Wallet providers? Does he not even understand the concept of personal wallets? Anybody that keeps a significant amount of money in a hosted wallet outside of specific circumstances (I. E. trading) is not only doing it wrong, they are being extremely foolish. And it looks like he's counting dust wallets and orphaned wallets.

Maybe he should have learned something about the subject matter before writing an "authoratative" article.