About 11.1 million bitcoin, or roughly 55% of the nearly 20.1 million BTC mined, is held in addresses that Galaxy Research cannot link to an exchange, fund, government or any other known entity, according to the firm’s October snapshot.
The data suggests that a large share of Bitcoin’s supply may still be controlled outside clearly identified institutional channels, even as the asset has gained broader acceptance on Wall Street. Galaxy said the unattributed coins could belong to individuals, institutions the firm has not identified, or holders who can no longer access them.
Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of research, said the number shows self-custody remains widespread. In his view, many people still hold their own bitcoin keys rather than leaving coins with exchanges, funds or institutional custodians.
Thorn wrote on X: 「More than half of all BTC supply is sitting in addresses with no known attribution despite all the institutionalization and centralized ownership over the years, still a ton of bitcoin (maybe even most) is held by individuals in self-custody.」
In this context, self-custody means holding your own bitcoin keys instead of keeping coins with an exchange or a fund.
Unnamed wallets seen as a sign of long-running retail participation
Xapo Bank, a bitcoin-focused bank, replied to Thorn’s post and said the large amount of BTC held in unnamed wallets shows retail investors have been in the market for more than a decade. The bank described bitcoin as a market that grew from the bottom up, with retail participants arriving first and institutions following later.
Xapo Bank wrote: 「And why bitcoin is for the people and people ‘can be their own bank’ Retail have been here for over a decade. Everyone else still catching up.」
The 55% unattributed share does not all point to long-term individual holders
Galaxy’s classification does not mean the full 55% belongs to individuals holding their own coins for the long term.
Part of that supply could be lost coins sitting in wallets whose owners forgot their keys or have died.
Some of the coins may have been mined in Bitcoin’s early years by miners other than the one associated with the Patoshi pattern, a set of early mined blocks that researchers link to a single miner, Bitcoin’s anonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto.
Some holdings may also belong to institutions Galaxy has not identified, including funds, companies and OTC desks. OTC desks are brokers that arrange large bitcoin trades privately away from exchanges. Other coins may sit in custody structures that spread assets across many addresses, making them harder to trace.
The other 45% is tied to named holders, including major institutions
The remaining 45% of supply can be linked to known names, including exchanges, ETFs led by BlackRock, the U.S. government and the largest single holder, 「Satoshi Nakamoto (Patoshi Pattern),」 with 1,123,658 BTC. Galaxy tracks those coins separately as 「the Satoshi-era miner pattern.」
The report also explains that BTC is the native token of the Bitcoin blockchain, a public ledger that allows anyone, anywhere, to send and receive money. Miners verify transactions and add them to the ledger, earning newly issued BTC as a reward.
A bitcoin address functions much like an account number on that public ledger. Anyone can see how many coins sit at an address, while the owner’s identity remains hidden. Research firms such as Galaxy try to assign ownership by tracking wallets known to belong to exchanges, funds and other large holders.
For all the attention around ETFs, the biggest slice of bitcoin supply is still the one that no one can confidently name.