The last twelve months have been nothing short of a wild ride for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other altcoins, from BTC price revival — the cryptocurrency jumped by more than 160% in 2023 — to innovations in the Web3 industry and non-fungible tokens (NFTs), to the government crackdowns on the industry.
Even amid all this hullabaloo, crypto continues to be an enticing money-making gig. Take the record 19 billionaires — 7 more than last year — who made a fortune after investing in cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.
What links Elon Musk, the Winklevoss Twins — owner of crypto exchange Gemini — and Michael Saylor? They’re all connected to some cryptocurrency. While Musk and Tesla are, more often than not, tied to Dogecoin and Bitcoin, respectively, the other two names have significant Bitcoin holdings.
When it comes to Ethereum, it’s a different story altogether. Even the largest holders of ETH are often out of the limelight. However, data from Etherscan revealed that crypto exchanges were the largest holders of ETH in 2023, which shouldn’t come as a surprise, given ETH’s availability on every exchange.
Let’s look at the numbers. Remember, these are only ballpark estimates.
The Beacon Chain Contract holds more than 35 million ETH, controlling over 29% of all ETH tokens in circulation, making it the largest ETH holder as of Dec 28, 2023. Coming in second place is Wrapped ETH (WETH) with more than 3.2 million ETH, worth around $7.7 billion.
It’s only fitting that the world’s largest crypto exchange, Binance, is the third-largest single address for ETH, holding more than nearly 2 million ETH. Kraken, which was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) last month for deceptive practices, grabbed the fourth spot, with ETH holdings of roughly 1.6 million.
Popular trading platform, Robinhood is fifth on the list. At the time of writing, it had more than 1.4 million ETH under its belly, which loosely translates to about 1.24% of all ETH tokens in circulation.
Notably, two other wallet addresses in the top 10 — each holding more than 550,000 ETH — are linked to crypto exchange giant Binance. Rounding off the top 10 are Arbitrum: Bridge, with holdings of over 1.3 million, and Bitfinex, with more than 450,000 ETH.
It’s also worth mentioning that an ETH address linked to Vitalik Buterin, one of the founders of Ethereum, named VB 3, holds more than 240,000 ETH.
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