No one entity can own too many Bitcoins to really cause problems to the network or other holders. However, if one entity would try to acquire all BTC, some interesting things would happen. And if they would be able to own a substantial amount they might be able to influence some things in the world of Bitcoin a bit. But not fully change the fate of Bitcoin or any other crypto.
Bitcoin is simply not made that way. Because coin owners do not have any direct control of the underlying blockchain. The only thing BTC holders can influence is the same things that any other rich person would be able to do. Which is to hire or contract working power against the network. Any rich entity that fights against the Bitcoin space might do something like that. But to do so they could better not acquire too many Bitcoins. This is because a malicious holder of coins would have to sell them to manipulate the price. But also acquire them. To do so they would have to first help lift the price up. But will not be able to sell a significant amount of coins for the same dollar value if they would dump the market.
This would restrict any large holder from really influencing the market directly. But even if they would price is not what makes the Bitcoin blockchain work. Of course, a higher price is good for all holders of BTC. But it does not influence the network's potential and power in any way.
Is it possible for one person/entity to buy all the Bitcoin in circulation?
In theory, one person or entity could buy and own all Bitcoins. But in reality, this is basically impossible. Not only because of the price that all Bitcoins together would cost. But also because the price would go up into infinity if someone would have the funds to actually buy all BTC in the world. And that is if all Bitcoin holders would be willing to sell their Bitcoins.
And one thing is for sure. Many of the Bitcoin holders are religiously believing in Bitcoin, and will thus never sell any of their coins. This would also make it thus highly likely that no one will ever buy all Bitcoins. It is however possible for one person to buy a lot of Bitcoins. Some people or companies do own a lot of coins. With entities like MicroStrategy, Tesla, and exchanges like Binance owning a lot of BTC.
Although these groups own a lot of coins, they do not exercise a lot of power over the network. The only thing they could have an influence on is the price. But probably only at their own cost. As dumping their bags would mean that their own bags go down as well. One entity/person can thus in theory own all Bitcoins in circulation. But they would not be realistic to achieve.
How many Bitcoins can one have?
One can have as many Bitcoins as are in current circulation. This is not however all Bitcoins that will ever exist. You see, besides not all Bitcoins having been mined yet. A lot of Bitcoins have also been lost to time. Because some of the early adopters of the first blockchain lost their private keys holding their coins. Thus losing all the coins that were saved on their account/private key.
So the final number of Bitcoins anyone could maximum own is not yet known. But it could be calculated by Bitcoins in circulation minus the Bitcoins lost. Which is probably around 16 million. But no one will ever know for sure.
As explained in one paragraph above, owning all Bitcoins is not a realistic goal. But it is good to know that you can accumulate as many as you would like, within the amount of Bitcoins that are available. If you would like to build a fortune of 100,000 Bitcoin, you can. And the Bitcoin blockchain does not restrict you to holding a certain number of coins in your Bitcoin wallet.
You can thus feel free to accumulate as many coins as you like to protect yourself from inflation and work towards your own personal financial goals.
What entity owns the most Bitcoin?
So far the person that owns the most Bitcoin is still Satoshi Nakamoto. He/she/they have held the largest amount of Bitcoin since the beginning of Bitcoin. Although since then a lot of large entities have sprung up that came into possession of a large number of coins as well, few actually come close to Nakamoto. And it is highly likely that few will ever own more.
Because Nakamoto owns about 1 million coins, anyone that would want to pass them would have to own more than that. The holders of large amounts of Bitcoin besides Nakamoto never even came close to that. With some entities owning a few hundred thousand coins. And most of the large entities hold Bitcoin for other individuals or companies. Which is why large exchanges are among the top BTC holders. Followed by some large companies like MicroStrategy, Tesla, and many others.
We previously took a look at whether or not MicroStrategy owns too many Bitcoins and whether or not that is a problem. We think that Bitcoin is a free and open network that is not impacted by any of the coin holders and what they do with their BTC.
What is the average Bitcoin per person?
There will be only a limited amount of Bitcoin in the existence of 21 million coins. When we look at the current world population of 8 billion people, that would come down to 262,500 Satoshis per person. If we would divide all Bitcoin equally among everyone in the world.
1 Bitcoin consists of 100 million Satoshis. This means that there would only be enough Bitcoin to give everyone in the world a fraction or about 2.6% of a Bitcoin. But the world is not and will never balance all wealth out equally. Meaning that most people will have far fewer Satoshis than 262,500. This shouldn't come as a surprise especially because there are already 1 million Bitcoin addresses that own 1 or more Bitcoins.
As we can expect with any distribution of wealth, we can expect to see all $BTC be spread out from rich to poor over time. But how that distribution will happen is decided in the present. As people who get into Bitcoin and safe Sats early will most likely end up with more in the future than those that have to work for it after everyone has already adopted BTC.
Keeping in mind at a BTC price of only 27,000$, 262,500 Satoshis only represents 70$ word of Bitcoin. Although this might not be a lot. Looking at the future adoption of Bitcoin 262,500 Satoshis might become an amount bigger than most people will own in a lifetime. Which people can still pick up at basically no cost these days.
How the future will turn out will be an interesting thing to see, and to see who was early on the Bitcoin train and who will be last.
Conclusion
Any entity or person can buy and own almost as many Bitcoins as they want. However, to more you acquire the more expensive they will become. Owning this many Bitcoin will never put the Bitcoin blockchain at risk. But owning a lot of them could make one entity very rich if the world would move to a Bitcoin standard. Till then owning any amount of Satoshis could be beneficial as most people will never own more than 262,500 Satoshis in their lifetime.
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