Approximately 90% of the bitcoins cap is already in circulation. Bitcoins worth $81 billion or about 1.6 million bitcoins are held by five cryptocurrency exchanges. The 5 cryptocurrency exchanges are Coinbase, Binance, Huobi, Kraken, and Okex. These 5 exchanges hold approximately 7.96% of the 21 million caps on the bitcoin supply. Of this, Coinbase alone holds 51% of 1.6 million bitcoins, amounting to $41.6 billion at current exchange rates.
Of the 21 million bitcoin cap, 18,999,800 BTC have been mined and are in existence. This amounts to 90% of the cap on bitcoins, and another 19 million BTC will be mined in the future.
It is also common knowledge that a large chunk of bitcoins has been lost. It is also speculated that before exiting the bitcoin community, Satoshi Nakamoto himself mined approximately 1.1 million bitcoins. Coin Metrics undertook a study that established that the number of lost bitcoins amounts to 1.5 million approximately.
Value in the Top 5 Exchanges
The 5 exchanges holding 1,673,460 bitcoins also hold a large amount of ethereum. Although it is known that Coinbase holds 51% of the total BTC holdings of these 5 exchanges, Coinbase’s ETH holding is not known. The holding by Binance is 290,080 BTC worth $14.1 billion and 3.59 million ETH with $14.2 billion. In addition, Binance also holds1.24 billion USDT as reserves.
These top 5 crypto exchanges hold $132.36 billion on the platforms as reserves. If the top 10 exchanges were to be considered, their reserves would amount to $165.89 billion. It is estimated that the crypto value in these top 10 exchanges exceeds the entire $162.6 billion in stablecoins. Also, it is instructive to learn that the value of these top 10 exchanges is 7.07% of the entire crypto-economy that is totally worth $2.343 trillion.
