More than 80,000 Bitcoin (BTC) investors have had their millionaire status revoked due to the crypto market downturn, but lower prices mean the number of whole coiners is growing.
Back on Nov. 12, just days after Bitcoin hit a new all-time high of around $69,000, a total of 108,886 BTC addresses reported a balance greater than $1 million, according to data from BitInfoCharts.
Fast forward to the present day, with the price of Bitcoin struggling to hold above $20,000 a mere 26,284 addresses are reported to contain holdings valued at upwards of $1 million, meaning that the number of paper millionaires has declined by more than 75% throughout the last nine months.
The dramatic decline in the price of the flagship cryptocurrency has also impacted the number of whales — those who boast a Bitcoin wallet worth more than $10 million. While there were 10,587 addresses with a minimum cash value of $10 million in Nov. last year, just 4,342 hold the same status today, a decline of 58%.
Despite the decline in the net worth of former BTC millionaires, the bear market has seen more than 13,000 new “wholecoiners” — a wallet that contains one or more BTC — added to the market, bringing the total number of wholecoiners to just over 860,000. This significant spike in the number of whole coiners would suggest that retail investors are accumulating large amounts of BTC while prices tank.
Adding further credibility to the retail accumulation narrative, more than 250,000 addresses have added 0.1 BTC ($2,000) or more to their holdings over the past 20 days according to data from Glassnode.
Related: 71% of high net worth individuals have invested in digital assets: Survey
Bitcoin and the rest of the digital asset market has been negatively impacted by a number of different issues, including increased regulatory scrutiny, sustained geopolitical unrest, rising inflation and interest rate hikes.
Due to the increasing uncertainty around the stability of global markets, commentators seem to agree that the price of risk assets like Bitcoin could continue to suffer over a longer time frame.
At the time of writing Bitcoin is changing hands for $20,005, down 1.63% in the last 24 hours and 37% over the last 30 days, with a total market capitalization of $382 billion, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
