Cryptocurrency investors hold 9.57 million Bitcoins in personal wallets, representing 45.6 percent of the total supply, according to estimates by analytics platform River.
The volume stored in self-custody exceeds the combined coin reserves held on centralized exchanges and third-party custodial services.
River analysts categorized 7.95 million Bitcoins, or 37.9 percent of the total supply, as holdings on active wallets. An additional 1.62 million BTC, equal to 7.7 percent of supply, are considered irretrievably lost, with over 90 percent of those losses occurring in or before 2011.
Centralized crypto exchanges currently hold 2.91 million BTC, or 13.9 percent of total supply, while third-party custodial services control 4.66 million coins, or 22.2 percent. Exchange-traded funds hold 1.51 million BTC, representing 7.2 percent, while public companies hold 1.05 million Bitcoins, or 5 percent.
Historical Mining and Movement Trends
Representatives at River attributed the high level of self-custody to the historical ownership structure of the asset. More than half of all Bitcoins were mined before crypto exchanges achieved widespread adoption.
Platform data indicates that over 12 million BTC have not been moved during the past year. In addition, more than 6 million Bitcoins have remained stationary for at least five years.
Self-custody refers to holding private keys directly rather than trusting funds to third-party institutions. River is a Bitcoin-focused financial service and research company that tracks on-chain data and market statistics.
Shifts in Custodial Market Share
The custodial market has undergone significant changes in recent years. In 2021, centralized exchanges controlled more than half of the Bitcoins held by intermediaries, but their share has now dropped to 38 percent as coins shifted to specialized custody services. Specialists at River noted that almost half of the coins remaining on trading platforms are backed by publicly verifiable reserves.
The findings follow a separate report from on-chain platform Santiment, which stated that the proportion of Bitcoin held on centralized crypto exchanges fell to 5.6 percent of the total asset supply, marking a six-year low.
