How many people are in the 21 Million Club? A Real World Calculation

"After recently seeing the posts about the 21 Million Club and the media write-up about it, I decided to do some digging into the numbers.

As many of you know, the 21 Million Club is a Reddit designation for those Bitcoiners that own 1 BTC or more. The 21 million is reference to the fact that only 21 million BTC will ever be in circulation. However, the designation makes it seem like (especially for newcomers) that there is or can be up to 21,000,000 in this club. Well let's check that and get a real estimate for the number of people in this exclusive club.

We know that there will only ever be 21,000,000 in circulation. However, there are 16,724,975 in circulation as of 12/5/17 according to the most recent data from blockchain[dot]info.

We know from recent studies that there are many bitcoins that are lost forever. I removed the Satoshi coins from the studies and averaged the difference to get an estimate of lost coins, which came to 2,304,824.

So, there are only 16,724,975 - 2,304,824 = 14,420,151 BTC, and therefore only a potential of 14.4 million current 21 Million Club members.

But let's dig deeper into what we know from the blockchain.

Satoshi is believed to have a stash of approximately 980,000. We will assume this as one BTC address and one person.

We can also see the largest holders on the blockchain. These are logged on bitinfocharts[dot]com. You can google "top 100 richest bitcoin addresses" and the site will provide the top 9900 BTC addresses. These 9,900 people account for an estimated wopping 9,870,340 BTC!

So, 14,420,151 [existing BTC] - 980,000 [satoshi BTC] - 9,870,340 [top 9900 BTC addresses] = 3,569,811 BTC. This means that 9,901 addresses hold roughly 78.65% of all the BTC that exists right now. That reduced our 21 Million Club members to 3,569,811 + 9901 = 3,579,711.

But let's dig deeper into some formulas to determine trends since many accounts have more than 1 BTC.

I took the top accounts with a maximum of 10000 BTC and plotted them on a power trendline coming up with the following equation:

y = 11880x -0.925

This formula allowed me to plot the rest of the addresses in 100 address groups. Using that formula and adjusting for the maximum BTC left, we can assume there are 801,713 addresses w/ 1 BTC - 156 BTC. Keep in mind this assumes no addresses with sub-1 BTC.

So, 9901 [largest address holders including Satoshi] + 801,713 [addresses w/ 1 BTC - 156 BTC] = 811,514 Addresses w/ 1 BTC Minimum.

So, the ABSOLUTE LARGEST estimate for the number of people in the 21 Million Club is 811,514. However, it is likely much much lower for the following reasons: 1) The analysis does not account for fractional BTC ownership at all, which is likely a very large portion of the BTC addresses, 2) It does not account for people that may control multiple addresses, which would further reduce the membership, and finally, 3) As time goes on the only people that will be able to purchase 1 BTC will reduce as the price goes up, making fractional ownership more common.

EDIT 1: The number also doesn't take into account distributed ownership. This could distribute in a number of ways but it would likely follow the same curve used for the estimate.

If you are part of the 811,514 or less, consider yourself lucky. You are in the top 0.01% globally. I saw this reported earlier as 0.3% globally, which is WAY OFF."

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