Who are the top Bitcoin (BTC) millionaires? The luckiest bunch are Bitcoin Investors who found it early.
Over the last decade, Bitcoin’s price explosion has made millionaires out of early investors. Was it all luck or incredible market foresight? Most importantly, these early investors in Bitcoin believed in the principles of decentralization and peer-to-peer financial system championed by the cryptocurrency.
While Bitcoin’s highly volatile market prices are always prone to significant fluctuations, investors’ views are glued to the BTC price chart even more than usual, as the coin is beating its own all-time highs of $89,500 at the time of writing.
Who will be the biggest winners from the record Bitcoin rally? In this article, we look at the top 5 Bitcoin millionaires and their BTC holdings.
Key Takeaways:
- Founders of publicly-listed companies that have amassed Bitcoin holdings dominate the Bitcoin millionaires list.
- Michael Saylor and his company MicroStrategy together hold Bitcoins worth over $7 billion.
- Elon Musk’s crypto holdings include Bitcoin, Ether, and Dogecoin.
- Winklevoss Twins’ early bet on Bitcoin paid dividends.
- Jack Dorsey holds only Bitcoin
- Justin Sun’s Bitcoin holdings are not as big as his altcoin holdings.
Largest Bitcoin Holders
On-chain data compiled by BitInfoCharts showed that there were 131,511 wallet addresses with Bitcoin holdings worth over $1 million as of November 12, 2024.
According to this website, tracking Bitcoin billionaire and millionaire wallets, the biggest Bitcoin holders are linked to the Binance and Bitfinex crypto exchanges.
Top 5 Bitcoin Millionaires
1. Michael Saylor
Michael Saylor is an American entrepreneur and Bitcoin advocate who is known to be one of the biggest holders of Bitcoin. Saylor owns Bitcoins through his personal holdings and through his business software company MicroStrategy, which he co-founded in 1989.
Saylor currently holds the post of executive chairman at MicroStrategy. Under Saylor, MicroStrategy has pursued a corporate strategy to acquire and hold Bitcoin using company profits, excess cash, and debt. The company is listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange, hence it discloses its Bitcoin holding details every quarter.
On November 11, 2024, Microstrategy announced it had a total of 279,420 Bitcoins.
Bitcoin acquisition period: October 31, 2024 – November 10, 2024
Total Bitcoins acquired: ~27,200
Total purchase amount: $2.03 billion
Average price per Bitcoin: $74,463 (including fees and expenses)
Funding source: Proceeds from the issuance and sale of Shares under the Sales Agreements
Total Bitcoins held (as of November 10, 2024): ~279,420
Total purchase amount for holdings: ~$11.9 billion
Average price per Bitcoin for holdings: $42,692 (including fees and expenses)
MicroStrategy has acquired 27,200 BTC for ~$2.03 billion at ~$74,463 per #bitcoin and has achieved BTC Yield of 7.3% QTD and 26.4% YTD. As of 11/10/2024, we hodl 279,420 $BTC acquired for ~$11.9 billion at ~$42,692 per bitcoin. $MSTR https://t.co/uCt8nNUVqd
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) November 11, 2024
How Much BTC Does Michael Saylor Have?
Although Saylor is not compelled to disclose, he tweeted in October 2020 that he personally held 17,732 Bitcoin tokens. This stake amounts to about $1.54 billion at the time of writing, which makes him one of the largest BTC holders.
Some have asked how much #BTC I own. I personally #hodl 17,732 BTC which I bought at $9,882 each on average. I informed MicroStrategy of these holdings before the company decided to buy #bitcoin for itself.
— Michael Saylor⚡️ (@saylor) October 28, 2020
2. Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss
The story of famous crypto millionaires, the Winklevoss twins, goes back to the founding years of social media giant Facebook (now Meta Platforms). As the story goes, the Winklevoss twins and their classmate Divya Narendra came up with the idea for a social network for university students called ConnectU during their time at Harvard.
The Winklevoss twins and Narendra later sued Mark Zuckerberg for allegedly stealing their idea to create Facebook. The lawsuit was eventually settled for a sum of $65 million.
Why is the Facebook story relevant to the Winklevoss brothers’ Bitcoin holdings?
How Much BTC Do Winklevoss Twins Have?
Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss have not disclosed their personal Bitcoin holdings. According to Forbes’ estimates, the twins own 70,000 Bitcoins each, which would amount to over $6 billion each at the time of writing. This stake places Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss among Bitcoin’s top holders.
"We found Bitcoin in Ibiza of all places, on holiday in the summer of 2012. We started digging into it and learning about it when we got back to the States. Pretty quickly, the light bulb turned on; there's that “aha” moment because the more we dug into Bitcoin, three things… https://t.co/LrQPuZ2RQH pic.twitter.com/vfVuCGdflQ
— Cameron Winklevoss (@cameron) June 20, 2023
3. Elon Musk
What about Elon Musk’s crypto holdings?
Tech entrepreneur and the richest person in the world Elon Musk is a notorious crypto enthusiast, more specifically a Bitcoin and Dogecoin (DOGE) investor. The crypto faithful follow Musk for his active X presence, where he occasionally shares his views on cryptocurrency. His tweets carry a lot of influence and have moved crypto markets in the past.
Musk owns Bitcoin through his company, Tesla, where he is the largest shareholder with a 22.3% stake.
As of the third quarter of 2024, Tesla owned “digital assets” worth $184 million, the company’s quarterly results showed. The figure was much lower than $1.5 billion Tesla invested in Bitcoin in January 2021 under its corporate investment policy. Musk later introduced Bitcoin payments for car purchases at Tesla in March 2021.
How Much BTC Does Elon Musk Have?
Musk has not disclosed his personal Bitcoin holdings. He tweeted in March 2022 that he owns Bitcoin, Ether (ETH) and DOGE.
As a general principle, for those looking for advice from this thread, it is generally better to own physical things like a home or stock in companies you think make good products, than dollars when inflation is high.
I still own & won’t sell my Bitcoin, Ethereum or Doge fwiw.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 14, 2022
4. Jack Dorsey
Jack Dorsey is the co-founder of micro-blogging site Twitter (now X) and fintech company Block. Dorsey resigned as the chief executive of Twitter about a year before the company was sold to Elon Musk.
Dorsey is known as a Bitcoin maximalist who champions “truly censorship resistant technologies” like peer-to-peer payment network Bitcoin, decentralized social media protocol Nostr, and privacy-protecting browser Tor.
Dorsey’s company – Block – frequently buys Bitcoin and sells it to buyers through its financial services platform Cash App.
According to Block’s September 2024 report, the company’s Bitcoin revenue for the 3rd quarter amounted to $2,42 billion.
As of September 30, 2024, and December 31, 2023, the Company held approximately 245 and 384 bitcoins, respectively, for operating purposes with a fair value of $14.9 million and $16.7 million, respectively, to facilitate the purchases and sales of bitcoin on behalf of Cash App customers.
How Much BTC Does Jack Dorsey Have?
Dorsey, who is the largest shareholder at Block with an 8.42% stake, has not disclosed his personal Bitcoin holdings.
I only have bitcoin https://t.co/C24xNJxuFB
— jack (@jack) February 5, 2019
5. Justin Sun
Another name in our top Bitcoin millionaires list is Justin Sun, a crypto entrepreneur who is best known as the founder of the blockchain protocol Tron (TRX). Sun is also known for his close association with Beijing-headquartered crypto exchange Huobi.
Blockchain analytics firm Arkham Intelligence identified the crypto wallet addresses used by Sun, and hence, we were able to learn about Sun’s crypto holdings.
How Much BTC Does Justin Sun Have?
As of November 2024, Sun held over 1,401 Bitcoins worth about $123.32 million.
The majority of Sun’s $1.39 billion crypto holdings were held in staked ether (STETH) worth over $350.9 million, stablecoin USDD worth $276.44 million, and Aave Ethereum WETH (AETHWETH) worth over $240.17 million.
I have bought 4145 #Bitcoin with $152,818,183 at average price $36,868.
— H.E. Justin Sun 🍌 (@justinsuntron) May 19, 2021
Methodology for Bitcoin Millionaires List
Before reading Techopedia’s list of top Bitcoin millionaires, do bear in mind that investors in Bitcoin are not obliged to disclose their personal holdings, therefore it is very difficult to accurately list the top Bitcoin holders in the world.
Furthermore, there is a misconception that blockchain technology’s transparent nature makes it easy to learn about an individual’s crypto holdings. While wallet account details are transparent, each account is represented by alphanumeric characters, making it impossible to link the wallet to its owner.
Keeping this in mind, we have used publicly disclosed information to list the top five Bitcoin millionaires. We excluded the following Bitcoin holders:
- Those who own over $1m worth of Bitcoin through their personal holdings and companies.
- Fund management and custodial companies like GrayScale and Coinbase.
- Bitcoin’s pseudonymous founder, Satoshi Nakamoto, despite unverified reports that Nakamoto holds about 1 million Bitcoins.
- Famous crypto personalities, including Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, due to a lack of information about their Bitcoin holding.
The Bottom Line
Our list of the top five Bitcoin millionaires is by no means a comprehensive one. There are many Bitcoin whales, who could be the richest Bitcoin owners, that prefer to keep their Bitcoin holdings a secret.
Disclosing personal crypto holding details often leads to individuals being targeted by hackers, scammers, and tax authorities. The power of blockchain allows crypto holders to choose to remain anonymous.
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References
- Top 100 Richest Bitcoin Addresses and Bitcoin distribution (BitInfoCharts)
- MicroStrategy Announces BTC and ATM Activity Raised $2.03 billion; Purchased 27,200 BTC; Now Holds 279,420 BTC with BTC Yield of 26.4% YTD (Microstrategy)
- Cameron Winklevoss (Forbes)
- 2024 Q3 Quarterly Update Deck (Digitalassets.tesla)
- United States Securities and Exchange Commission Washington, d.c. 20549 Form 10-K (Sec)
- United States Securities and Exchange Commission Washington, d.c. 20549 Form 10-Q (S29.q4cdn)
- Block Inc 13F Hedge Fund and Asset Management Owners – WhaleWisdom.com (Whalewisdom)
- Justin Sun (Intel.arkm)