I guess it depends on the definition: I'd say owning Bitcoin means owning owning your keys. Considering there are only 53,218,057 funded Bitcoin addresses (based on yesterday's data), and considering many Bitcoin owners have more than one funded address, there are far less than 50 million Bitcoin owners worldwide.
On the other hand, if I use a broker to buy shares of a certain company, I can say I own shares of that company. So I guess (by now) it's okay to say you own Bitcoin when you "have" some on an exchange or ETF. By that definition, 1 in 6 or 7 sounds plausible.
There is some nuanced perspectives about ownership. The conclusion I've come to is that if you own it if you can keep it. This is possible for Bitcoin like nothing else.
See also the "If buying isn't owning, piracy isn't stealing" discussion.
well
if my PayPal account has 10,000 usd worth of BTC I am sure that would be counted on the list of 50 million Americans
the easiest way to have BTC in the USA is PayPal
I would love to see their books as to how much btc they really hold vs how much they say they hold.
if you can open a PayPal account in the USA and you attached a bank account and a CC along with opening a savings account with them it is really easy to stack btc there.
Now would I have 30% of my BTC there nope.
But if you own a coin in a tezor or your core wallet
Buying btc at PayPal makes sense. Why? because if you simply use your bank to buy $100 a week and in a few year you have purchased 10,000 usd worth of btc all of it is perfectly kyc'd
having 10,000 usd worth of perfectly kyc'd btc is a good thing.
just be sure you have a lot of other BTC.