Quote from: Lucius on Today at 02:10:44 PM

Quote from: Natalim on Today at 12:50:49 PM

not a good trend IMO.
Most Bitcoin Still Belongs to Individuals, but Institutions Are Catching Up: Research

Quote

What to know:
River’s research estimates that as of Aug. 25, 2025, individuals hold about 65.9% of BTC (13.83 million coins).
Funds and ETFs control about 7.8% of supply; businesses hold 6.2% and governments control 1.5%.
River says the distribution is inferred from filings, address tagging and prior research. In other words, it is an estimate, not an on-chain census.

What do you guys think would happen if the majority of the supply is held by institutions? Wouldn’t that slow down the adoption process since most of them are just into holding long-term?

And does that also mean the market ends up being more manipulated by them, since they control such a big chunk of the supply?

To begin with, I will say that you should be careful what you wish for, because it could come true. I want to say that since I've been on this forum (10+ years) many members have wanted exactly what has been happening for the last, say, 5 years - or just a little less than 2 years since BTC spot ETFs were approved in the US.

Everything that is happening is a logical sequence of events, although it took a long time for the big ones to recognize the opportunity offered by Bitcoin, so we small ordinary people got the opportunity to invest at a price that Saylor and the other big players can't even dream of. Now the only question is at what price any of us decide to sell BTC, because they have the money to buy at $100k, but $200k or more won't be a problem for them either.

Realistically, they don't literally control the market, but in some ways they can greatly affect the price of BTC if they decide to dump a large amount of BTC - which is an option at any time. Whether anyone likes it or not, they are responsible for the fact that the price of Bitcoin is over $100k today.

"We" historical bitcoiners are not any kind of monolithic force, and there are all kinds of things that we might want including growth of bitcoin, number go up and various financial freedoms, and each of us will prioritize these matters differently including not necessarily considering there may be trade-offs and challenges from one versus another, not that "we" can choose who comes to bitcoin even if "we" likely have been soliciting everyone to come to bitcoin which entails costs (and benefits)..

Whether bitcoin would have had still gotten to $100k without Saylor/MSTR and/or shitcoins and/or various financialization products and/or without Larry Fink et al are stories that we cannot really know beyond speculating about it and hopefully not trying to act like we know it all merely because we have a mirror that we can look into and see what was back there.. we still have to speculate about the importance of causal relationships... and hey, of course, we can tell ourselves whatever story we like about where we are at, how we got here and where we might be going based on our assessments (which we might not even be correct about any of those assessments, but still think that we know it all merely because we have been observing 10 years or more , which may well be 9.5 years longer than an overwhelming majority of others).

Quote from: El duderino_ on Today at 02:13:04 PM

Quote from: BTCETFInvestor on Today at 01:46:11 PM

[edited out

That’s the thing
We have no desires for newcomers in the WO
Should be obvious
Enough space on the forum to be around imho

Personally, I have no problem with newcomers, yet it is not like we have to go out of the way to kiss their asses merely because they might have a fresh and/or different perspective... especially if they lie and seem to argue for the mere sake of it with their sensitivities and likely fantasy perceptions of self-importance.

Guys here don't even always agree on things and we have different points of view and different ways of presenting matters, and sometimes even bad manners, so there is even a certain level of tolerance for newbies to challenge our frameworks and/or presentation..

Ongoingly BTCETFInvestor seems to want to want to battle, and he may well be doing it on purpose to distract us from more important topics...

There have been a few interesting contributions that he has made so far, but yeah, he also seems to be unable to let go of some of the personal angle and mostly focus on substance.. not that we are going to completely forget the personal angle, but the personal angle is likely way less important than what BTCETFInvestor continues to make it out to be.

Quote from: BTCETFInvestor on Today at 02:14:55 PM

Quote from: BTCETFInvestor on Today at 02:20:41 AM

[edited out]

Phil - Did you get your junk cable selling idea from Sanford & Sons Salvage?

People may well not agree with Phil on a variety of topics, yet I doubt that any of us have any real suspicions that Phil is purposefully deploying fakety information.. and/or just making shit up and/or getting fotos from the web and presenting them as if they were his own, which seems to be your area of expertise, BTCETFInvestor.

Quote from: BTCETFInvestor on Today at 02:24:38 PM

Quote from: El duderino_ on Today at 02:13:04 PM

That’s the thing
We have no desires for newcomers in the WO
Should be obvious
Enough space on the forum to be around imho

Can't hide ignorance! This place is so teeming with it, it's blinding you...

I am sure many of us are not even close to as smart as you.

You have shown yourself to be quite intelligent, especially relative to several of us in this thread. We even have some (at least one) self-proclaimed retard. A bitcoin retard, at that.

Go figure?

Quote from: BTCETFInvestor on Today at 02:53:21 PM

Quote from: psycodad on Today at 02:36:11 PM

[edited out]

I'll take Richy_T's recommendation and tell you, FUCK YOU!

What else could any of us want?

A witnessing of the assertion of fuck you status in the wild - even though surely some guys don't really seem to understand the different levels of fuck you status and so sometimes they don't apply their own perception of contextual fuck you status in a very fitting way.

I recall some guys coming to this thread (and other parts of the forum) proclaiming that they had to go back to work because they pulled the fuck you lever too soon.. and surely many of us likely realize that there can be some real world costs (sometimes irreversible) when guys burn bridges and there is really no real justification for such course of action.

Young folks do that frequently and set their future path, when they may have all kinds of opportunities, but then they end up working dead end jobs until their death and become burdens on people who surround them and on the society in general. It can be sad to come across these kinds of folks in the real world.

I know a person in my real life in which I am frequently saddened to meet up with him, and sometimes he even scares me since I sometimes consider that maybe I have told him too much, even though sometimes I will make some offers to help him to help himself... but he has a lot of pride too, which is also part of his problem, so it becomes more and more difficult for him to get higher paid positions and/or even to keep the manual labor positions that he continues to get into his late 50s and his health is not even doing that good, either... but yeah part of my point is that the earlier he was in his life he could have had potentially changed his trajectory.... but now it is getting to the point that he might not be able to work, even though he proclaims he will keep working until he keels over, not that he has a choice anyhow...or that he is likely to get lucky (like win the lottery - not that that would help) to potentially get himself out of his own problematic mindset that also has action-based follow throughs on a fairly regular basis.

Quote from: Richy_T on Today at 03:07:48 PM

Quote from: BTCETFInvestor on Today at 02:53:21 PM

I'll take Richy_T's recommendation and tell you, FUCK YOU!

Good start but one other piece of advice, if I could give it, would be to develop a thick skin. The internet's a rough place but none of it is real.

The internet is real.

But, yeah, thick skin is important, including sometimes choosing ways to let certain topics lie, especially if they might not be going in your favor.. and you don't even necessarily need to admit that you were wrong.. even though sometimes it could be helpful to deal with reality rather than digging oneself in deeper and deeper and deeper, without there being any kind of reason to engage in such, absent just pride.. which surely nearly everyone has pride and/or an ego... and sometimes we have difficulties to control our own ego and/or pride. I am not going to proclaim to be anything close to a saint in that regard.

By the way, Richy.. .. one of the angles of your advice seems to be that BTCETFInvestor had not figured out to put it into a reasonably functional context, with a certain amount of follow through.. Let's take your own fuck you example from 2017-ish, when you took your marbles away and said that you weren't going to play anymore...

It can be difficult to apply fuck you without consequences, and there can be a certain level of fall-out.. including that some folks just keep on bringing it up... so sure, it might kind of work to say fuck you once in a while, but there can be relatively long term consequences, that surely may not even be that important in the whole scheme of things. Some folks can apply fuck you better than others in certain contexts, especially if they have shown some historical proof of work.

Remember Adamstgbit's fuck you? He was quite respected around here, and he could still come back and receive a lot of praise, but at some point, he just went down the road of continuously saying fuck you, which may well could have had been a sign that he was getting too emotional, and I am sure that his choices had real world negative effects on him, even though you are proclaiming that the internet is not real.. but adams' way of dealing with his forum membership was real and quite greatly squandered.. at least from my perspective.

Of course, there are many other examples in which fuck you has gone wrong, and other instances where it ends up working itself out, especially in cases that members are able to and potentially have contributed over the years...so they might not be liked and/or correct in all areas, but if they have also made decently good forum contributions, other members may overlook their flaws and perhaps even some of their confrontational approach. I have both going on in my own personality and my forum history.. and sometimes any of us might say things and/or do things that have negative consequences.. and sometimes we might not want to say what is our bottom line or how far we might be willing to argue certain points. .which may or may not end up hurting our reputation and/or how other members perceive us.