A growing number of bitcoins accumulates in the hands of active individual users, not companies or long-term investors, according to the company Chainalysis.
Analysts found that 4.8 million of bitcoins, or about 32% of the current issue of cryptocurrencies (minus lost coins) as at 31 August were personal wallets, demonstrating a certain level of activity. This is a significant increase compared to the end of 2017, when these wallets were 3.8 million of bitcoins, or 26% of emissions.
“More and more people like to keep a cryptocurrency of their own. Accordingly, a much larger part of the coins liquid. Many people who have bought in the past year, continue to buy smaller volumes,” said economist Chainalysis Philip Gradwell. “They are willing to spend, if they have the opportunity. We have overcome the first obstacle to the spread of bitcoins and distributed among the people.”
Despite these changes, a large part of bitcoins continues to be on the wallets whose owners are passive investors, whether institutions or individual users. 6.3 million coins are in the wallets, the activity of which is not observed for more than a year, said Chainalysis. In addition, one person may belong to multiple wallets, so the actual number of users willing to use cryptocurrency for payments, it can be estimated only approximately.
Economist Chainalysis Kimberly Grauer argues that the distribution of investment and design of the purses begins to stabilize with time, and the news reports no longer have such a strong influence on the indicator, as it was last year.
“We do not observe abrupt transitions of capital among the investment accounts and accounts that are actively used for implementation of transactions,” she said. “It is a sign of the growing market and reduce volatility.”
Analysts also found that in the period from December to August the number of bitcoins that are on the purses of different services, such as exchanges of cryptocurrency, has increased by only 93 299. Simultaneously, the amount of bitcoins to the personal wallet has grown to approximately 1 million, which allows to conclude that the number of those using individual solutions for storage, is growing faster than the number of speculators.
Gradwell, argues that capital in the bitcoin ecosystem become more dispersed, partly due to the fact that long-term investors transferred their new speculators in the late last and early this year. He estimates that of the 28.5 million existing bitcoin wallets only 150 000 keep 10 bitcoins or more.
“Half of the available bitcoins is still in the hands of investors, but the concentration has fallen,” he added.
Earlier research by the center showed that 55% of all bitcoins are in the wallet balance above the 200 BTC.
Discuss current news and events on the Forum
Source
