The Express reported that a study by Chainalysis , a well-known cryptocurrency analysis firm , has concluded that 1,600 Bitcoin Wallets own more than a third of all Bitcoin.

1,600 wallets hold more than 33% of all Bitcoin

Whales are the name of the investors who hold tons of cryptocurrencies. This term describes the 1,600 very aptly. Unfortunately, whales can cause problems, since they can manipulate the price with their quantities and can influence this positively but also negatively.

Chainalysis’s Phillip Gladwell said Bitcoin’s volatility was under threat as the bitcoin price could be influenced by just a few people.

The best negative example of this is the trustee of the Mt.Gox exchange, which takes no account of the Bitcoin price and has hundreds of thousands of Bitcoin available.

Nevertheless, the study also concluded that some of these Bitcoin have not been moved for years. From this one might conclude that perhaps some unfortunates have lost their Bitcoin forever. Also Satoshi Nakamotos Bitcoin has not been moved for years and are the most likely not. It is speculated that Bitcoin had up to one million Bitcoin.

Not just Bitcoin affected

Most of the cryptocurrencies suffer from the same circumstances. A variety of different projects have a similar “wealth distribution”. The ten largest EOS wallets are said to own almost half of all EOS.

However, one should keep in mind that many of the addresses, whether Bitcoin or EOS , belong to a stock exchange. These have many coins, but these do not belong to them, but to the users, which slightly reduces the risk of price manipulation.

Improvement in sight?

Also Litecoin is affected by this problem. More than 50 percent of all Litecoin are owned by the 400 largest Litecoin wallets.

Analysts, however, believe that this problem will improve in the future. With increasing acceptance and more users and wallets, the problem should improve in the long term. But until that happens, concerns about possible whale price manipulation will continue.