Bitcoin Q&A: Wealth Distribution Statistics

What are your thoughts on wealth distribution / concentration in Bitcoin? Addresses are not people! The majority of addresses are used anonymously / pseudo-anonymously, so clustering is very difficult. Exchanges or payment processors may be holding the funds of hundreds of thousands of people in only a few addresses; at the same time, a single person could be controlling thousands of addresses with very small amounts, or a single address may be a multi-sig that is controlled by more than one person.

Chapters
0:00 What are your thoughts on the fact that only 15 million bitcoin addresses hold more than $1 and less than 5 million hold more than $100 worth?
1:18 You cannot make these conclusions from statistics that divide or cluster addresses and values
3:56 The question wasn't really about concentration of wealth. It was about how most people don't own their coins. Isn't that very dangerous to the network if there was a hack?

Cryptocurrencies in general do have poor Gini coefficients (i.e. unequal distribution) when compared to society as a whole, especially because we are still in the very early stages of adoption. However there is no sound evidence to support most of the internal wealth distribution statistics being published in the media. The implications of large numbers of bitcoin being held in very few addresses has greater implications for the storage security of custodians -- and the risk of an expensive hack -- than it does for wealth distribution.

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This was part of the first monthly live Patreon Q&A session on November 27th, 2017. If you want early-access to talks and a chance to participate in the monthly live Q&As with Andreas, become a patron: Patreon: aantonop

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and respected figures in bitcoin.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonop Twitter: aantonop
Website: https://antonopoulos.com/

He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters.

THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internet-Mon...

[NEW] THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v2: https://www.amazon.com/Internet-Money...

MASTERING BITCOIN: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Bi...

[NEW] MASTERING BITCOIN, 2nd Edition: https://www.amazon.com/Mastering-Bitc...

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