We had recently explored some statistics asserting world-wide population of bitcoin adoption is about 140 million
Every time I read such numbers, I check how many funded Bitcoin addresses actually exist:
43 million.
Yeah.. but that is not the ONLY source.
I would not count various 3rd party custodians as if they were ONLY one.. because some 3rd party custodians proclaim to be holding the keys to the bitcoins of hundreds of thousands of members or even millions in one address or in a small number of addresses.
And, sure sometimes single users will have hundreds of bitcoin addresses that have more than dust amounts.. like some BTC addresses might have 10s of dollars of value, other addresses 1,000s of dollars of value and even other addresses could have 100s of thousands of dollars of value or more.. and all of those many addresses owned/controlled by one person (or one business in some cases).
We had recently explored some statistics asserting world-wide population of bitcoin adoption is about 140 million
Every time I read such numbers, I check how many funded Bitcoin addresses actually exist:
43 million.
Interesting. Then how have 140M people adopted Bitcoin? The only Possibility is the multi-sig wallet. Do you know how many of them have multi-sig addresses? If people claim that they deposited USDT and bought WBTC or something else (On different chains, Binance chain, for example), Do you think it should be counted? I won't count them. The Internet is full of fake news.
Of course, ONLY the bitcoin blockchain counts as real bitcoin, yet if a third party whether Binance or the WBTC folks are holding BTC in some location (a BTC address, of course) in order to collateralize those other claims, then the BTC (to the extent that they actually exist) would be real and potentially constitute the claims of potentially thousands or millions of people who might believe that they actually have BTC... Whether they are holding 10 BTC or even 100s of thousands of BTC in support of those claims.. same with Grayscale GBTC holding something like 600k bitcoin on behalf of customers who believe that they have claims on those bitcoins that are being held - and whether there is enough BTC to support all of the claims is another story.. but still does not seem to represent 1 owner in a case like like the Grayscale GBTC holding something like 600k BTC.
Then how have 140M people adopted Bitcoin?
My assumption is they include people who "own" Bitcoin on an exchange, just like people who "own stock" are counted, even though their broker holds them.
If people claim that they deposited USDT and bought WBTC or something else (On different chains, Binance chain, for example), Do you think it should be counted?
There's Bitcoin, and there's scammers trying to sell their own made-up token as Bitcoin. So no, I don't count them. They're meaningless.
Of course, the WBTC and the various other coins do not count as bitcoin, but if some of those services whether claiming to be held in a centralized or decentralized way in some kind of a contract would still be bitcoin that is held by someone on behalf of others.. so yeah, if everyone (maybe 30,000 clients) believe that such service has 2,842 Bitcoins backing up their issuance of their various scam coins, but in fact they ONLY have 28.42 BTC, then that could become an issue if they were to all attempt to claim them at the same time... otherwise they might be able to "get away" with their scam for years, years and years.. but it still would not mean that those 28.42 bitcoin are ONLY owned by one person (entity), and perhaps we have 30k persons who believe that they own more bitcoin than they actually own.
But if paypal says you have .5 btc it is legally real.
and likely they have 1000 btc in a wallet spread across a million people.
So one funded address would legally cover a million adopters.
so yeah 43 million address can easily cover 200 million people.
and they legally have rights to btc.
which a custodian holds.
Btw after today keep more of your coins in your own wallets.