Five Richest Bitcoin Investors: Who Are the Top BTC Millionaires?

Who are the top Bitcoin (BTC) millionaires? Bitcoin Investors who found it early are the luckiest bunch.

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 may have forced several early investors to cash out, it has helped investors who arrived later to accumulate coins at lower prices.

The key ingredient here was the belief in the potential of Bitcoin and that its prices would rise again, making them Bitcoin millionaires in the process.

Table of Contents Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Top Five Bitcoin Millionaires
3. Methodology for Bitcoin Millionaires List
4. The Bottom Line
5. FAQs
6. References

Show Full Guide

Table of Contents

1. Key Takeaways
2. Top Five Bitcoin Millionaires
3. Methodology for Bitcoin Millionaires List
Show Full Guide
4. The Bottom Line
5. FAQs
6. References

Top Five Bitcoin Millionaires

At the time of writing with Bitcoin trading at $41,200, an individual is required to own about 24 Bitcoins to become a Bitcoin millionaire. On-chain data compiled by bitinfocharts showed that there were 87,758 wallet addresses with Bitcoin holdings worth over $1 million as of 19 January 2024.

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.

As of 30 September 2023, MicroStrategy held 158,400 Bitcoins, making it the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin. At the time of writing, MicroStrategy’s Bitcoin holdings were valued at $6.79 billion.

Although Saylor is not compelled to disclose, he tweeted in October 2020 that he personally held 17,732 Bitcoin tokens, which would amount to about $760 million at the time of writing.

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 and Cameron Winklevoss

The story of 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 Winklevoss brothers’ Bitcoin holdings? Well, the Winklevoss twins went on to use $11 million of the settlement money to buy Bitcoin in April 2013, when Bitcoin was trading at just over $100.

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 $3 billion each at the time of writing.

"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

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 Twitter (now 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 13% stake. As of 30 September 2023, 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.

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 and fintech company Block. Dorsey resigned as the chief executive of Twitter about a year before the company was sold to Elon Musk.

is known to be 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 2023 quarter report, the company sold Bitcoin worth $2.42 billion to customers.

As of 30 September 2023, Block held Bitcoin worth $216 million based on observable market prices, the company said. Dorsey, who is the largest shareholder at Block with a 9% stake, has not disclosed his personal Bitcoin holdings.

I only have bitcoin https://t.co/C24xNJxuFB

— jack (@jack) February 5, 2019

5. Justin Sun

Justin Sun is a crypto entrepreneur who is best known as the founder of 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. As of 16 January 2024, Sun held over 1,600 Bitcoins worth about $71 million.

The majority of Sun’s $1.4 billion crypto holdings were held in wrapped staked ether (WSTETH) worth over $460 million, stablecoin USDD worth $281 million and Tron’s native token TRX worth over $232 million.

I have bought 4145 #Bitcoin with $152,818,183 at average price $36,868.

— H.E. Justin Sun 孙宇晨 (@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 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 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.

FAQs