For the first time in Bitcoin’s history, a long-running growth trend has flipped.
Blockchain data reported by Protos.com shows that the number of Bitcoin addresses holding more than 0.1 BTC has fallen over a two-year period something that hasn’t happened since Bitcoin launched in 2009.
From December 8, 2023, to this month, that number slipped from 4,548,107 to 4,443,541 addresses, a 2.3% decline. Until now, wallets with at least 0.1 BTC had grown every year through 2023, only seeing short-lived pullbacks lasting a few months at most.
This time, the drop is more sustained.
Bigger Wallets Shrink Faster Than Smaller Ones
Interestingly, smaller wallets have been more resilient.
Addresses holding 0.01 BTC or more declined by just 0.7% over the same period. That suggests that the sharper drop is happening among holders with somewhat larger balances not tiny “dust” wallets, but not whales either.
In other words, mid-sized holders appear to be adjusting their behavior more than smaller ones.
Why the Numbers Don’t Tell the Whole Story
At first glance, fewer addresses with 0.1 BTC or more might sound bearish. But the reality is more complicated.
Bitcoin’s ecosystem looks nothing like it did in the early years. Today, exposure to BTC can come through:
- Centralized exchanges
- Bitcoin ETFs and other exchange-traded products
- Derivatives platforms
- Corporate balance sheet strategies via treasury companies
- A range of institutional and retail investment products
All of this means a lot of Bitcoin is now held indirectly. Coins are pooled together in large addresses controlled by custodians, not by individual users with one address each. On-chain, it’s much harder to tell how many people ultimately own how much BTC.
As a result, a decline in addresses with >0.1 BTC doesn’t automatically mean fewer believers or less demand it often reflects how people choose to hold Bitcoin in a more mature market.
Rise of ETFs and Regulated Products
Another big factor: regulation and retirement planning.
Many investors now prefer ETFs and exchange-traded products that fit neatly into retirement accounts and traditional portfolios. Directly holding Bitcoin in a hardware wallet typically doesn’t meet those requirements.
So instead of self-custodying 0.1 BTC or more, some investors are:
- Buying spot or futures-based Bitcoin ETFs
- Holding BTC exposure inside pension or retirement accounts
- Letting custodians manage keys and security
On-chain, that can look like a decline in individually controlled mid-sized addresses even as overall exposure to Bitcoin continues to spread.
Security Practices Have Grown Up
Bitcoin users have also become more sophisticated about security. Rather than stacking a lot of BTC in a single address, holders now often use techniques such as:
- UTXO consolidation to tidy up fragmented outputs
- Extended public keys (xPubs) to distribute funds across multiple receiving addresses under one master key
- Layered or embedded wallet structures to segment risk
- Advanced schemes like XOR-based seed phrase splitting, where multiple seed parts must be combined to recover a wallet
These methods reduce the need and the risk of concentrating large amounts in a single address, regardless of how much BTC someone owns overall.
In that sense, fewer “chunky” addresses above 0.1 BTC can be a side effect of better security hygiene, not just changing sentiment.
What This Metric Still Tells Us
Even with all these caveats, the drop is still meaningful. For over a decade, the number of addresses with at least 0.1 BTC mostly moved in one direction: up. The recent decline breaks that pattern and hints at a shift in how people interact with Bitcoin on-chain.
At minimum, the data suggests:
- More BTC is flowing into custodial and pooled setups
- Self-custody behavior and address management are evolving
- On-chain metrics need to be read alongside market structure changes, not in isolation
The bottom line: Bitcoin wallets holding over 0.1 BTC may be declining, but that doesn’t necessarily signal fading interest. Instead, it reflects a maturing ecosystem where infrastructure, regulation, and security practices are reshaping how and where people choose to hold their coins.
