Three Out Of Four Bitcoin Investors Have Lost Money: Study (2024)

FAQs

Three Out Of Four Bitcoin Investors Have Lost Money: Study? ›

The study found new retail investors drove the spectacular rise in bitcoin prices between 2015 and 2021. Roughly three-quarters of people who have bought bitcoin have lost money according to a study published Monday as the cryptocurrency sector reels from the collapse of a major exchange that has sapped confidence.

According to a survey from lendingtree.com, conducted in November 2022, a higher percentage of 38% of cryptocurrency investors have reported to lost money rather than profited, 28% say they made a profit, and only 13% broke even.

These 1.8 million “lost” coins account for around 8.5% of the total supply of 21 million—93% of which have already been mined—that will ever exist. In most cases, it's impossible to know for sure what became of a given wallet, but it's a safe bet many are indeed gone forever.

Billionaires with largest net worth drop due to global crypto crash in 2022. Binance founder and CEO Changpeng Zhao (commonly known as CZ) was the crypto billionaire who lost the most money following the crypto crisis of 2022, with a net worth drop amounting to 82 billion U.S. dollars.

And yet, every single one of us ended up losing a significant amount of money over the years. Some lost millions. A few lost everything and had to start over from scratch. This is the risk you take when you sign up to these exchanges.

According to recent data from IntoTheBlock, Bitcoin BTCUSD continues to dominate the market, with an impressive 86% of its holders currently in profit. This positions BTC as a leading asset, maintaining a significant lead over other coins in terms of profitability.

Most people don't own any. There are (right as this moment) just under 19,000,000 BTC in existence. There are around 330,000,000 USA citizens and around 7,500,000,000 people in the world. That works out to less than 0.06 bitcoin per person in the USA and about 0.0025 bitcoin per human.

Who Owns the Most Bitcoins? Satoshi Nakamoto, the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin, is believed to own the most bitcoins, with estimates suggesting over 1 million BTC mined in the early days of the network.

Since Bitcoin is a decentralized public network, there's no centralized entity to refund transactions and right wrongs. If you send BTC to the wrong address or lose control of the private keys to your accounts, your Bitcoin may be lost forever.

In the first quarter of 2019, the amount of such losses rose to US$1.2 billion. 2022 was a record year for cryptocurrency theft, according to Chainalysis, with US$3.8 billion stolen worldwide during 125 system hacks, including US$1.7 billion stolen by "North Korea-linked hackers".

Did anyone get rich off of Bitcoin? ›

Over the course of its 15-year history, Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) has made plenty of millionaires. In fact, data from the blockchain analytics platform Glassnode shows roughly 115,000 wallet addresses with a balance of more than $1 million today.

So, who are the top holders of BTC? According to the Bitcoin research and analysis firm River Intelligence, Satoshi Nakamoto, the anonymous creator behind Bitcoin, is listed as the top BTC holder as of 2024. The company notes that Satoshi Nakamoto holds about 1.1m BTC tokens in about 22,000 different addresses.

Bitcoin is a risky investment with high volatility, and generally should be considered only if you have a high risk tolerance, are in a strong financial position already and can afford to lose some or all of your investment.

We definitely don't recommend investing all your life savings on cryptocurrency markets. It's best to see it a bit like gambling so only invest small amount of your disposable income and be prepared to lose the lot. Never invest more than you can afford to lose.

2017 boom and 2018 crash. The 2018 cryptocurrency crash (also known as the Bitcoin crash and the Great crypto crash) was the sell-off of most cryptocurrencies starting in January 2018. After an unprecedented boom in 2017, the price of Bitcoin fell by about 65% from 6 January to 6 February 2018.

Bitcoin Ownership is Widely Distributed

In reality, only 2.3% of all Bitcoin owners own 1 BTC or more (worth around $35K per Bitcoin as of November 6th, 2023).

First Mover Americas: BTC's Drop Below $62K Is the Biggest Single-Day Loss Since FTX's Collapse.

The truth is that cryptocurrency is an extremely volatile asset. Investors need to understand that owning crypto involves taking on a great deal of risk in their portfolios. But for investors who understand how to manage risk, crypto could present great opportunities.