Connect with us

Crypto

Over 60,000 Bitcoin millionaires emerge in 2023, 3x more since January

Published

on

Over 60,000 Bitcoin millionaires emerge in 2023, 3x more since January

Bitcoin (BTC) continues to trade in the green zone as the maiden cryptocurrency endeavors to surge toward a new all-time high, bouncing back from the downturn experienced in 2022. With the resurgence in value, Bitcoin is concurrently fostering an increase in millionaire holders.

Specifically, as of November 12, the number of Bitcoin millionaires stood at 88,628, signifying a substantial increase of 60,544 from the 28,084 millionaires reported on January 5, according to data retrieved by Finbold.

This surge in Bitcoin millionaires marks a threefold increase in 2023, equivalent to a remarkable 215% growth.

Bitcoin distribution among addresses on November 12, 2023. Source: BitInfoCharts

Breaking down the millionaires, the number of addresses holding a minimum of $1 million in Bitcoin sits at 81,962, while addresses with at least $10 million worth of the asset amounts to 6,666.

In contrast, on January 5, 2023, the count of Bitcoin millionaires was 28,084. Among them, 24,279 addresses held a minimum of $1 million worth of BTC. In comparison, 3,805 addresses possessed at least $10 million worth of Bitcoin per data accessed through the Wayback Machine web archive tool.

Advertisement
Bitcoin distribution on January 5, 2023. Source: BitInfoCharts/Wayback Machine

The surge in Bitcoin millionaires is linked to the rally in the asset’s price, which has propelled the digital currency to $37,000 after lingering below the $30,000 threshold for most of the year.

In January, Bitcoin millionaires constituted a rather exclusive group grappling with the prevailing bearish sentiments in the cryptocurrency market. Notably, during that time, Bitcoin faced challenges stemming from macroeconomic conditions and fallout from incidents such as the collapse of the FTX crypto exchange.

Bitcoin aiming for new all-time high

By press time, the value of Bitcoin stood at $37,050, representing a year-to-date growth of over 120%.

Bitcoin YTD price chart. Source: Finbold

Currently, Bitcoin’s surge can be attributed to several factors. Notably, the anticipation of the approval of the first Bitcoin spot Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) has served as a key catalyst for the ongoing rally.

According to a Finbold report, there is potential approval for 12 separate Bitcoin ETF spots over the next week by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Among the applicants is BlackRock (NYSE: BLK), the world’s leading investment firm, which could significantly impact the market upon approval.

Meanwhile, analysts maintain that Bitcoin’s current momentum could lay the foundation for the potential largest bull run in the asset’s history.

Advertisement
Continue Reading
Advertisement
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Crypto

1 Top Cryptocurrency to Buy Before It Soars 1,500%, According to Cathie Wood | The Motley Fool

Published

on

1 Top Cryptocurrency to Buy Before It Soars 1,500%, According to Cathie Wood | The Motley Fool

Is Cathie Wood onto something huge with her latest crypto forecast? Find out why she expects unstoppable growth ahead.

It’s no secret that growth investing mastermind Cathie Wood expects big things from Bitcoin (BTC 0.05%). The Ark Invest fund manager started talking about crypto before she was a household name, and has recently doubled down on her bullish projections again.

In a Bloomberg TV interview last Thursday, Wood reiterated a Bitcoin price target of $1.0 to $1.5 million by the year 2030. But that’s not the whole story. The cool part of Cathie Wood’s Bitcoin coverage is that she keeps explaining her investment thesis in greater detail over time.

Last week’s interview was no exception. So let’s check out Cathie Wood’s latest nuggets of Bitcoin-friendly economic theory.

Why Cathie Wood sees Bitcoin as a bargain buy at $100,000

First, Wood noted that the probability of reaching her existing Bitcoin price targets has increased in 2024. Institutional investors are finally taking digital assets seriously, assisted by new tools like the spot Bitcoin exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that launched in January. Their Bitcoin investments should make a big difference to the asset’s price and stability over the next few years.

Advertisement

“[Large investors] must consider an allocation” these days, because there is a hard cap on Bitcoin production in the long run.

94.3% of all Bitcoin that will ever exist has already been produced and is sitting in crypto wallets around the world. You can’t grab a large slice of the total Bitcoin pie by making or finding more of it as one might do with physical assets such as gold or oil. The iron-fisted law of supply and demand should inevitably drive the price of this limited asset higher, so financial institutions should start building their Bitcoin portfolios before it gets expensive.

In this context, $100,000 per coin doesn’t qualify as “expensive.” Remember, the long-term target price is measured in millions of dollars. Cathie Wood is playing the long game here.

Bitcoin is a valuable accounting tool

Wood also explained that Bitcoin is more than a speculative asset. Rather than the next value-free “tulip bulb craze,” Bitcoin is serving a significant purpose for people who aren’t just expecting it to gain value over time.

“It’s a global monetary system that is rules-based,” she said. “It is private, it is digital, it is decentralized, and it is backed by the largest [computer system] in the world. It’s the most secure network in the world.”

Advertisement

Bitcoin is similar to a global and very detailed accounting system that tracks all the gold in the world, assigning an owner to every sliver of a gold nugget and protects the data with several layers of cryptography. You can’t cancel or change any transactions or ownership records without essentially breaking Bitcoin’s transaction-recording platform. The asset being tracked in this case is not a physical chunk of noble metal, but the computing work that went into generating a unique digital token.

There is an unknown but very real limit to the amount of physical gold in the world, until entrepreneurs find additional sources on asteroids or other planets. At the same time, there will simply never be more than 21 million Bitcoin tokens, and 19.6 of them are already in circulation. In the long run, this system is almost free from inflation — assuming its security holds up against new attack ideas such as quantum computing algorithms.

Cathie Wood is taking the mystery out of her investment thesis for Bitcoin. Image source: Getty Images.

Bitcoin vs. Gold: Different inflation effects

Cathie Wood also highlighted how this inflation-proofing approach differs from gold.

“When the gold price goes up, production goes up — the rate of increase in the supply goes up,” she said. “That cannot happen with Bitcoin. It is mathematically metered to go up 0.9% per year for the next four years, and then the supply growth will be cut in half again.”

Advertisement

Indeed, physical gold mining tends to become more common when the metal’s price is high. Miners want to take advantage of this valuable asset when it makes the most economic sense. The equation is different for Bitcoin miners, who will produce smaller and smaller chunks of the digital asset over time. So the cost of minting new Bitcoins will increase while the number of new coins introduced to the market slows down.

So it’s smarter to put in a maximum production effort as quickly as possible, because the return on your mining machinery and electric power investment will only shrink over the years. The same logic suggests that buying Bitcoin early will be more profitable in the long run. Waiting for a lower buy-in price or easier Bitcoin mining environment almost never makes sense.

Why Bitcoin may deserve a spot in your portfolio

So Cathie Wood underscored her 5-year Bitcoin target of at least $1 million per coin, and she offered more detail on her underlying investment thesis.

Other Bitcoin investors may work with different assumptions that result in various target prices, but the overall market tenor is pretty consistent. Bitcoin looks ready to rise from the recent $100,000 pricing milestone. From major banks to ordinary nest-egg builders, most investors should pay serious attention to these newfangled cryptographic tokens.

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Crypto

Data: BGB's market value rises to 25th place in the cryptocurrency rankings, currently reported at 7.43 billion USD – ChainCatcher

Published

on

Data: BGB's market value rises to 25th place in the cryptocurrency rankings, currently reported at 7.43 billion USD – ChainCatcher

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinMarketCap data, BGB’s market capitalization has risen to the 25th position in the cryptocurrency rankings, currently reported at 7.43 billion USD. BGB briefly touched 5.39 USDT, now quoted at 5.35 USDT, with a nearly 14.02% increase in the last 24 hours, continuing to set a new historical high.

ChainCatcher reminds readers to view blockchain rationally, enhance risk awareness, and be cautious of various virtual token issuances and speculations. All content on this site is solely market information or related party opinions, and does not constitute any form of investment advice. If you find sensitive information in the content, please click “Report”, and we will handle it promptly.

Continue Reading

Crypto

North Korean hackers linked to hack of 4,500 bitcoins from Japanese crypto exchange – SiliconANGLE

Published

on

North Korean hackers linked to hack of 4,500 bitcoins from Japanese crypto exchange – SiliconANGLE

North Korean hackers linked to the infamous Lazarus hacking group have been identified as being behind the theft of more than 4,500 bitcoins from Japanese cryptocurrency exchange DMM Bitcoin earlier this year.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, in conjunction with the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center and National Police Agency of Japan, has revealed that hackers who go by the name of TraderTraitor, an arm of Lazarus, successfully stole the equivalent of $308 million from DMM in May and have detailed how the North Korean hackers did so.

The investigation into the hack found that in late March 2024, a North Korean cyber actor pretending to be a recruiter on LinkedIn contacted an employee at Ginco, a Japanese enterprise cryptocurrency wallet software company. The threat actor sent the target, who maintained access to Ginco’s wallet management system, a URL linked to a malicious Python script under the guise of a pre-employment test located on a GitHub page. The victim copied the Python code to their personal GitHub page and was subsequently compromised.

With the access gained, the TraderTraitor hackers sat patiently, waiting until May to exploit their access. To steal the bitcoin, the actors exploited session cookie information to impersonate the compromised employee and successfully gained access to Ginco’s unencrypted communications system. With this access, it’s believed that the hackers then manipulated a legitimate transaction request from a DMM employee, resulting in the theft of 4,502.9 bitcoin.

The stolen bitcoin was subsequently transferred to TraderTraitor-controlled wallets, which ultimately lead back to the North Korean government.

Advertisement

“The FBI, National Police Agency of Japan and other U.S. government and international partners will continue to expose and combat North Korea’s use of illicit activities — including cybercrime and cryptocurrency theft — to generate revenue for the regime,” the FBI noted in a statement.

The involvement of both North Korea and an arm of Lazarus in the hack comes as no surprise, as the hack of DMM isn’t the first time Lazarus has targeted cryptocurrency exchanges.

In 2022, Lazarus was linked to the hack on the Ronin Network that led to the theft of $615 million in cryptocurrency, and more recently, in July, the group was linked to the theft of $234.9 million in cryptocurrency from India-based cryptocurrency exchange WazirX.

Image: SiliconANGLE/Ideogram

Your vote of support is important to us and it helps us keep the content FREE.

One click below supports our mission to provide free, deep, and relevant content.  

Join our community on YouTube

Join the community that includes more than 15,000 #CubeAlumni experts, including Amazon.com CEO Andy Jassy, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger, and many more luminaries and experts.

“TheCUBE is an important partner to the industry. You guys really are a part of our events and we really appreciate you coming and I know people appreciate the content you create as well” – Andy Jassy

THANK YOU

Advertisement
Continue Reading

Trending