Millions of Bitcoin Sit Without Identified Owners, Reshaping the Supply Picture

Galaxy’s October analysis estimates that 11.1 million Bitcoin, or roughly 55% of the cryptocurrency’s supply, sits in wallets with no confirmed ownership attribution. The figures suggest that individual investors may continue to control a large portion of Bitcoin, despite the growing involvement of Wall Street and institutional investors.

Bitcoin has increasingly gained acceptance among traditional financial firms, investment funds and professional custodians. Yet blockchain analysts still cannot determine who owns a significant share of the available coins. The unidentified holdings could belong to private investors, institutions that have not been identified or people who have lost access to their wallets.

Alex Thorn, head of research at Galaxy, believes the figures demonstrate the continued popularity of self-custody. This approach allows Bitcoin holders to manage their own private keys rather than entrusting their assets to exchanges or third-party custodians.

In a post on X, Thorn pointed out that more than half of Bitcoin’s supply remains in addresses without known ownership labels, even after years of institutional adoption and growth in centralized custody. He suggested that individuals may still hold a substantial portion of all BTC.

Xapo Bank shared a similar perspective, arguing that the data reflects the long-standing participation of retail investors. Individual users were active in Bitcoin markets for more than a decade before traditional financial institutions significantly expanded their presence.

Bitcoin’s decentralized structure allows people to transfer value without depending on conventional financial intermediaries. Miners validate transactions and record them on the public blockchain, earning newly issued BTC in return.

Although transactions and wallet balances are visible on the blockchain, the identities behind individual addresses are not automatically disclosed. Research firms such as Galaxy analyze transaction activity and wallet connections to associate addresses with known exchanges, investment funds and other major holders.

What Could Explain Bitcoin’s Unidentified Supply?

The finding that 55% of BTC remains unattributed does not mean all those coins belong to individual investors who are intentionally holding them for the long term.

Some Bitcoin may be permanently inaccessible because owners have forgotten their private keys or died without leaving recovery information. Such coins remain visible on the blockchain even when they can no longer be transferred.

Other holdings may date back to Bitcoin’s early mining era. Some could belong to miners outside the group associated with the Patoshi pattern, a collection of early blocks that researchers believe was mined by a single entity commonly linked to Bitcoin’s pseudonymous creator, Satoshi Nakamoto.

The unidentified total may also include assets held by institutions that Galaxy has yet to identify. These could include funds, companies and over-the-counter trading desks that arrange large transactions outside public exchanges. Custodians that distribute Bitcoin across multiple wallet addresses may also make ownership harder to trace.

Galaxy has attributed the remaining 45% of the supply to identifiable entities or categories, including crypto exchanges, BlackRock-led ETFs and the U.S. government. Its analysis separately lists the Satoshi-era miner pattern at an estimated 1,123,658 BTC.

The figures underline an important distinction in Bitcoin’s evolving market: institutional investment is becoming increasingly visible, but ownership of much of the supply remains uncertain. While blockchain records reveal where coins are held and how they move, they do not always establish who controls them.