The Top 21 Bitcoin Holders: 2024 Edition

It’s been quite the year for the world’s wealthiest Bitcoiners, whose fortunes have swelled from a 120% BTC price appreciation in 2024. River’s inaugural Top 21 List showcases the world’s richest bitcoin holders. 

The Top 21 Bitcoin Holders own 2.3 million bitcoin, over 11% of all bitcoin that will ever exist. These entities accumulated 339,000 bitcoin over the course of the year and saw their bitcoin wealth grow by 153% to $217 billion. 14 of these top holders are based in the United States.

Below you can find a list of individuals, companies, and governments that own bitcoin directly. It showcases those who have chosen to accumulate the world's most sound form of money. The list excludes exchanges, ETFs, and other products that purchase and hold bitcoin on behalf of others.

Block, formerly known as Square, is a publicly traded financial services and technology company with a market capitalization of $37 billion. Block first acquired bitcoin as a treasury asset in October 2020 with a $50 million investment that is now worth almost half a billion dollars. More recently, the firm announced a plan to regularly invest 10% of its gross profit from Bitcoin products into bitcoin.

Cleanspark is a publicly traded bitcoin miner and provider of energy technology solutions in the US. The company has historically held a portion of its bitcoin mining revenues in its treasury, which tripled in bitcoin holdings in 2024.

Coinbase is the largest crypto exchange in the United States. While Coinbase holds over 700,000 bitcoin on behalf of its customers, the company has purchased bitcoin for its own treasury strategy. In August 2021, the company committed to investing 10% of net income into a portfolio of digital assets, including bitcoin. 

Tesla is the largest electric vehicle manufacturer in the United States. In February 2021, the company announced a $1.5 billion purchase of bitcoin to maintain “more flexibility to further diversify and maximize returns” on idle cash. Tesla has since sold more than half of this initial purchase but remains one of the largest corporate bitcoin holders.

Hut 8 is a US-based bitcoin miner and high-performance computing company. The company has historically held a portion of its bitcoin mining revenues in its treasury.

Stone Ridge is a New York-based asset management firm and owner of bitcoin asset manager NYDIG. In October 2020, the firm announced a purchase of over 10,000 BTC as part of its treasury reserve strategy.

Bhutan has the best bitcoin-to-GDP holdings of any country. The country has quietly been accumulating a bitcoin stockpile through bitcoin mining, a venture that began in 2019 to harness its abundant hydroelectric resources.

In 2019, Chinese authorities seized over 190,000 bitcoin from criminals operating a fraud known as PlusToken. Analysis by Wu Blockchain suggests that all but 15,000 of these coins were sold between late 2019 and mid-2020. 

Riot is one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners, with over 30 exahash comprising roughly 4% of bitcoin’s total hashrate. Riot has historically held on to its mining profits in the form of bitcoin. In December, Riot purchased 5,303 bitcoin for $510 million after raising capital through convertible notes.

Michael Saylor is the founder and chairman of MicroStrategy. In 2020, Saylor reported personally owning over 17,000 BTC, in addition to his 12% stake in MicroStrategy.

Tim Draper is an American venture capital investor and founder of Draper Associates. In 2014, Draper acquired nearly 30,000 BTC from a US Marshals Service auction of seized bitcoin from the Silk Road marketplace.

Marathon is one of the largest publicly traded bitcoin miners, with over 20 exahash of operational hashrate (2.5% of the network). The company has stockpiled bitcoin both from mining revenues and direct purchases for its balance sheet, including a $100 million purchase of 1,464 BTC in July 2024.

Founded in 2017, Binance is the largest crypto exchange in the world. As a private company, Binance does not publicize its bitcoin purchases. However, according to the exchange’s Proof of Reserves, Binance owns 47,635 bitcoin after subtracting all customer deposits.

In the spring of 2024, the UK’s Metropolitan Police announced the seizure of over 61,000 BTC derived from a Chinese investment fraud. The seizure occurred in 2021 as part of a five-year investigation. The UK government has not revealed its intentions on what to do with its bitcoin stockpile.

Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss are the founders of crypto exchange Gemini. Forbes estimates the twins own roughly 70,000 BTC, bought with the proceeds of a legal settlement with Mark Zuckerberg.

Mt. Gox was once the world’s largest bitcoin exchange, processing 70% of all worldwide transactions. Between 2011 and 2014, hackers stole over 800,000 BTC from the exchange and its customers. While much of the bitcoin has been recovered and distributed through bankruptcy, the hackers have not been identified. One wallet still contains nearly 80,000 BTC, worth $7.5 billion today.

Tether is the largest stablecoin provider in the world. Its token, USDT, has a market cap of $137 billion. In May 2023, Tether announced plans to regularly allocate up to 15% of its net realized operating profits to bitcoin. In the first half of 2024, Tether reported profits of $5.2 billion, generated from its holdings of US Treasury securities and other assets.

Block.one is the company behind the EOS blockchain. Its 2017-18 initial coin offering (ICO) was the largest in history, raising over $4.2 billion. The company used the proceeds from its ICO to purchase 140,000 BTC, according to a 2019 investor letter. In 2021, Block.one capitalized its subsidiary, Bullish Global, with $100 million and 164,000 BTC. This is the most recent source alluding to the size of their bitcoin holdings.

The US government has obtained bitcoin through multiple government agency seizures where the defendant in question was alleged to have either facilitated a criminal activity with the bitcoin, or accepted bitcoin as proceeds for rendering a criminal service.

The largest US bitcoin seizures include 177,991 BTC obtained from the Silk Road marketplace in 2013, and 94,636 BTC taken from the Bitfinex hackers in 2022. 

The US has auctioned off large chunks of its holdings. Reports estimate that the US Marshals Service has sold at least 185,230 bitcoin for approximately $150 million, now worth over $18 billion.

MicroStrategy is a business intelligence and mobile software company headquartered in Virginia. In August 2020, the company announced bitcoin as its primary treasury reserve asset, purchasing 21,454 BTC for $250 million. 

Over the past four years, the company has strategically tapped into US capital markets to expand its bitcoin holdings, using methods such as share issuance, convertible note sales, and corporate bond offerings. During this period, MSTR’s market capitalization has grown from $1.3 billion to $88 billion, while its share price has risen roughly 900%. This past month, MicroStrategy was added to the NASDAQ 100 index.

Satoshi Nakamoto is the anonymous creator(s) of Bitcoin who published the whitepaper on October 31, 2008 and mined the first Bitcoin block on January 3, 2009. According to BitMEX Research, Satoshi mined nearly 1 million BTC in Bitcoin’s early years to test the software and keep the blockchain operational, and has not moved any funds since disappearing from the project in 2011.

If Satoshi is an individual and still alive today, he or she is now the 19th richest person in the world, worth an estimated $91 billion.