The banking crisis and the winter would have been the main drivers.
According to the analysis firm Glassnode, wallets with the amount of 1 BTC or more have experienced exponential growth during the last few months. This would be a clear indication that people took advantage of the low prices of 2022 to invest in this digital currency.
Last year, a severe winter hit the cryptocurrency market, sending the price of Bitcoin into a significant crash. From the $69,000 per coin reached in 2021, BTC fell to around $16,000 per unit. Although detractors of digital currencies pointed to this as the end of that cryptocurrency, the reality is that it has recovered, at least in part.
While part of the community panicked and sold their holdings for BTC, another number took advantage of the low prices. The latter allowed portfolios with at least one coin to reach a staggering one million. One of the things that this fact demonstrates is the confidence and maturity of this asset.
Rise of Wallets with More than 1 BTC
According to a study by the aforementioned firm, the figure of one million wallets with 1 BTC or more was reached on May 13. As already mentioned, as the price of Bitcoin fell, the number of people willing to get the figure of a coin in their portfolios increased.
Notably, the growth peaks of these portfolios were reached at times of greatest collapse. For example, in June the number of one-coin wallets rose sharply after the crash of Terra and the subsequent bankruptcy of numerous platforms. In the same way, in November, with the fall of FTX, another spike in the growth of these addresses was also experienced.
From early February, when Bitcoin crashed for the first time since its 2021 peak, to now, it has been added by 190,000 new wholecoiners, the holders of portfolios or wallets with 1 BTC or more.
It is worth mentioning that this figure should not be interpreted as a surge in retail purchases. Although this could be plausible, there are also numerous cases where multiple wallets of a coin belong to a single owner. Be that as it may, the number of such addresses continues to grow disproportionately every time there is a big stumble in the price of the pioneering digital currency.
Driving the Banking Crisis
If one element accelerated the growth of the so-called whole-coiners, though, it was the banking crisis at the beginning of March. With significant banks like SVB and Signature Bank failing, users panicked and proceeded to withdraw millions in deposits. Consequently, much of those withdrawals went to the cryptocurrency market.
Thus, Bitcoin, as well as other digital currencies, began to be seen as reserves of value in the face of complex situations. At the same rate of price growth, the nascent wallets with one or more digital currencies were also placed.
According to data from CoinGlass, cited by CoinTelegraph, almost 2 million bitcoins are in the portfolios of large platforms such as Binance or Coinbase. Likewise, some 3 million BTC would have been lost forever to deceased people who took the keys to their graves, as well as to people who lost or completely forgot them. This is good news for holders of 1 BTC or more in their wallets.
By Audy Castaneda
