Approximately 11.1 million Bitcoin, accounting for nearly 55% of the cryptocurrency’s total supply, sits in wallets whose owners have not been identified, according to Galaxy’s October snapshot. The findings suggest that individual investors may still control a substantial portion of the market despite Bitcoin’s growing presence in traditional finance.
Bitcoin has increasingly attracted Wall Street firms, investment funds and institutional custodians. However, blockchain researchers remain unable to connect a significant share of BTC holdings to specific individuals or organizations. The unattributed coins may belong to private investors, unidentified institutions or people who have lost access to their funds.
Alex Thorn, Galaxy’s head of research, said the figures point to the continued importance of self-custody. Rather than leaving their assets with exchanges or investment firms, many Bitcoin holders retain control of their private keys.
Thorn noted on X that more than half of Bitcoin’s supply remains in addresses without known ownership labels, despite years of institutional participation and the expansion of centralized custody services. He suggested that individuals could still hold most of the cryptocurrency directly.
Xapo Bank also highlighted the role of retail investors, arguing that their participation dates back more than a decade, before major financial institutions began entering the market. The Bitcoin-focused bank said the ability to control funds independently remains one of the network’s defining characteristics.
Bitcoin operates through a decentralized public ledger that allows users to send and receive funds without relying on a central intermediary. Miners verify transactions and add them to the blockchain, earning newly issued BTC as rewards.
Although Bitcoin transactions are publicly recorded, wallet addresses do not reveal the identity of their owners by default. Researchers can monitor balances and transfers, but identifying the people or organizations behind individual addresses requires additional information. Galaxy and other analytics firms use known wallet connections to attribute holdings to exchanges, investment funds and major entities.
Why Unattributed Bitcoin Does Not Tell the Whole Story
The fact that 55% of Bitcoin’s supply remains unattributed does not necessarily mean that individual investors are holding all those coins themselves.
Some Bitcoin may be permanently lost because holders have forgotten their private keys or died without sharing access details. These coins can remain visible on the blockchain even when nobody can spend them.
Other holdings may originate from Bitcoin’s early mining years. Some could belong to miners outside the group associated with the Patoshi pattern, a collection of early blocks that researchers believe was produced by a single miner commonly linked to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.
The unidentified portion may also include institutional assets that Galaxy has not yet connected to specific owners. These could involve investment funds, businesses and over-the-counter trading desks that facilitate large transactions away from public exchanges. Institutions that spread their holdings across multiple wallet addresses can also be difficult to identify through blockchain analysis alone.
Galaxy has attributed the remaining 45% of Bitcoin’s supply to known entities or categories, including cryptocurrency exchanges, BlackRock-led ETFs and the U.S. government. Its breakdown also separately identifies the Satoshi-era miner pattern, estimated at 1,123,658 BTC.
Despite the growing visibility of institutional Bitcoin investment, the largest share of the supply remains associated with addresses whose owners are unknown. The distinction is important: blockchain data can show where Bitcoin sits and how it moves, but it cannot always establish who ultimately controls it.
