Bitcoin Wallets: For the first time in Bitcoin’s history, the number of wallets holding more than 0.1 BTC has fallen over a two-year period — a surprising shift for a metric that had consistently grown since 2009. New blockchain data from Protos.com shows a 2.3% drop, highlighting changing user behavior as the Bitcoin ecosystem continues to mature.
According to the report, Bitcoin addresses holding at least 0.1 BTC fell from 4,548,107 in December 2023 to 4,443,541 this month. While the difference may look small, it marks a notable turning point: this specific wallet tier had never seen a multi-year decline until now.
Interestingly, the trend isn’t uniform across all wallet sizes. Addresses with 0.01 BTC or more slipped by only 0.7% in the same period, showing that larger balance wallets saw a steeper reduction. Analysts suggest this may reflect how Bitcoin ownership is increasingly shifting from self-custody to institutional products and diversified security setups.
Throughout most of Bitcoin’s history, the number of small and mid-sized wallets grew steadily, dipping only during short market downturns. That growth peaked in late 2023, then flattened through 2024 before sliding to today’s two-year low.
So what changed? The Bitcoin landscape looks very different from its early days. A wide range of financial services — including centralized exchanges, ETFs, derivatives platforms, and corporate treasuries — now offer exposure to BTC without requiring users to hold coins directly on-chain. Since assets held by these intermediaries are pooled together, it’s harder to measure actual investor distribution using wallet address counts.
Self-custody tools like Ledger, Trezor, and Coldcard certainly still exist, but more investors have been choosing ETFs and other compliant products that fit into retirement portfolios — something raw Bitcoin addresses cannot do.
Another factor is evolving security behavior. Crypto holders are increasingly using advanced techniques to spread funds across multiple addresses rather than keeping large balances in a single wallet. These include UTXO consolidation, extended public keys (xPub setups), embedded wallet structures, and even XOR-based multi-seed systems. Such methods improve privacy and security, but they also reduce the number of higher-balance addresses visible on-chain.
While the drop in 0.1 BTC wallets doesn’t necessarily mean fewer people hold Bitcoin, it does highlight how investor habits and custody practices continue to evolve. As Bitcoin’s financial infrastructure grows more sophisticated, on-chain wallet metrics are becoming just one part of a much bigger picture.
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