Galaxy Research Finds 55% of Bitcoin Supply Remains Unattributed
Around 11.1 million BTC cannot be tied to known entities, underscoring the persistence of self-custody and lost coins despite institutional inflows.
At a glance
- What happened
- Galaxy Research reported that approximately 11.1 million BTC, or 55% of total mined supply, cannot be tied to any known institutional or exchange entity.
- Why it matters
- The data demonstrates that retail investors and self-custodians still control a larger share of Bitcoin's supply than institutional custodians and funds.
- Who is affected
- Bitcoin investors, onchain analysts, and institutional custodians.
- What's next
- No next step announced.
- Primary source
- coindesk.com: Over 11 million BTC can't be linked to any known owner
Key points
- Galaxy Research found that 11.1 million BTC (55% of mined supply) sits in unlabelled addresses.
- The unattributed pool includes retail self-custody, lost early coins, and unmapped private funds or OTC desks.
- Known entities accounting for the remaining 45% include BlackRock ETFs, the US government, and 1,123,658 BTC in Patoshi pattern wallets.
More than half of all circulating $BTC cannot be linked to known institutions, centralized exchanges, or governments, according to an October analysis released by Galaxy Research 1. The research arm identified approximately 11.1 million BTC—representing roughly 55% of the estimated 20.1 million mined coins—in unlabelled addresses 1. At the time of writing, $BTC was trading at $79,982.
Galaxy's head of research, Alex Thorn, highlighted the data as confirmation that individual self-custody continues to dominate the asset's ownership structure despite extensive institutionalization 1. Self-custody involves users retaining their own private keys rather than trusting third-party custodians or investment vehicles 1. In response, Xapo Bank noted that the concentration of unattributed coins illustrates retail market dominance that predates institutional interest 1. Understanding the distribution of unspent transaction outputs is central to tracking these movements, as seen in the mechanics of Bitcoin UTXOs.
Unidentified Balances and Known Entities
The unattributed category encompasses several types of holders 1. Galaxy pointed out that this segment likely contains permanently inaccessible or lost tokens from owners who misplaced keys or passed away 1. It also accounts for early tokens mined outside the Patoshi pattern, non-attributed institutional holdings such as over-the-counter desks and private funds, as well as complex multi-address custodial architectures 1.
Conversely, Galaxy identified specific entities for the remaining 45% of the network's supply 1. These labelled holdings include centralized exchanges, exchange-traded funds including BlackRock, and sovereign seizures by the US government 1. Galaxy tracks early blocks associated with Satoshi Nakamoto separately, estimating the "Patoshi pattern" holdings at 1,123,658 BTC 1. Despite substantial allocations into spot funds, anonymous and retail-managed balances remain the largest component of Bitcoin supply 1.
Sources
- [1] Over 11 million BTC can't be linked to any known owner — coindesk.com, October 26, 2026
Written by Basis Desk's newsroom system from the primary sources above and machine-verified against them before publication. Market figures marked "at the time of writing" come from live exchange data. Report an error: corrections@basisdesk.news · corrections policy.
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