If we look at the history of the Bitcoin network, for many years the number of addresses with a balance of more than 0.1 BTC only grew. This simple indicator was a convenient benchmark to judge whether the user base was expanding.
Only towards the end of 2023 did the trend begin to change. The number of such wallets is no longer increasing. Between December 2023 and the current data, the difference is already more than one hundred thousand addresses, from 4,548,107 to 4,443,541.
Currently, there are fewer addresses with a balance above 0.1 BTC than there were two years ago. At the end of 2023, this indicator reached its maximum values, after which growth stopped. Throughout 2024, it practically stagnated, and by 2025, it began to decrease noticeably and reached minimums for a two-year period.
For a metric that previously almost always moved upwards and was considered a reliable sign of network expansion, such a picture looks like a change in the behavior of part of the users.
The decrease appears significant not only in absolute figures. A drop of 2.3% turned out to be significantly stronger than the decrease in the number of addresses with a balance of 0.01 BTC, where the indicator fell by only 0.7%. This indicates that over the past two years, investors have become more cautious about holding large sums in one wallet and are more often distributing assets among multiple addresses.
This two-year rollback in this metric has not occurred even once throughout the history of observations, and the current dynamics appear unprecedented for it.
Where are the holders with a balance above 0.1 BTC disappearing to?
If looking only at on-chain data, it may seem that the number of users storing the equivalent of several thousand dollars in Bitcoin on hardware wallets like Ledger, Trezor, or Coldcard is decreasing.
But in fact, it is impossible to determine this. On-chain statistics do not provide an answer to the main question: has the number of people holding amounts less than 0.1 BTC really decreased?
The situation today is vastly different from the early years of Bitcoin's existence. Back then, almost all BTC was held on personal addresses. Now, investors access the price of BTC through thousands of other instruments. Among them are centralized exchanges, exchange-traded funds, derivatives, corporate treasuries, and many other intermediaries that hold assets in aggregated form.
Because of this, it is impossible to divide such a general pool of BTC and understand how much Bitcoin belongs to a specific user or even to a separate category of holders.
New ways to distribute BTC among addresses
Storing Bitcoin on hardware wallets still remains the most straightforward and calm option for those who want to keep the asset with themselves. However, investors are increasingly choosing instruments that do not require interaction with traditional wallets at all. ETFs and other exchange products have become popular precisely because they meet the formal requirements of retirement accounts while providing access to the price of BTC without manual storage.
Against this background, the culture of security within the cryptocurrency itself has also changed. Assets are still held in the same way, but they are now distributed differently. Instead of one storage point, users are increasingly spreading their funds across multiple addresses. Sometimes this entire structure is managed by one private key through an extended public key, which allows for the generation of a chain of addresses without additional hassle.
Such methods are becoming the norm. Because of this, the need to keep an amount above 0.1 BTC at one address is gradually disappearing, regardless of how many assets the investor actually owns.
Nevertheless, the dynamics of this indicator still provides an interesting insight into how the behavior of Bitcoin network users is changing.
If previously many sought to accumulate large sums at one address, starting from 2023, the trend has shifted in the opposite direction. Over the past two years, the number of such addresses has steadily decreased.
