SO... WHO’S
HODLING ALL THE
BITCOIN... No protection…
your assets and cash stolen within an hour!
I recently wrote an article for e-FOREX magazine (
http://www.e-forex.net/articles/jan-2018-bitcoin- doomsday-preppers-grandpa-joes-thanksgiving-
and-all-in-between.html) on an aspect of Bitcoin in which I was becoming very interested. Who was actually buying Bitcoin and why?
I’d found in my research that diverse groups, such as those preparing for the end of the world to elderly retired middle America, had recently started to hodl Bitcoin as an asset, despite recent FUDing. I’ve no intention to reprise my previous article here; I encourage you to read it as an interesting piece on its own. However, I do wish to expand on one aspect... original hodlers and Bitcoin FUDing.
which I’ve used above, is a misspelling of hold or holder written on an ‘ancient’ Bitcoin message board back in 2013. It has been left there and become Bitcoin lore and slang for the original early miners and long term keepers of cryptocurrencies. FUD is an older term and is an acronym for Fear Uncertainty and Doubt. In the crypto-community its use has been in response to ALL criticism of cryptocurrencies and has most recently been used within the community to promote rotation of one coin to the detriment of another coin.
So...who are these original hodlers and where is their Bitcoin? Well, it seems most of them are lost forever. Bitcoin in this respect shares some of the attributes of old Dollar bills, grains, oilseeds and soft commodities. In a recent study by digital forensics company, Chainalysis, they estimated (...and I’m afraid a lot is estimated...) that by last November some 16.4 million Bitcoins had been mined (604,000 in just 2017).
Of these, 3.6 million were with investors, 6.1 million were in circulation and 5.1 million were with early miners and out of circulation, being in the hands of these Hodlers. Estimated losses were around 2% (usually carelessness) in all categories except Hodlers where of the 5.1 million it was estimated that about 2.6 million were lost as passwords were forgotten, laptops discarded, stolen, lost, etc... That’s about 50% of all Hodlers hodlings...a huge sum. Then there is the original ‘Satoshi Coins’ that the inventor of Bitcoin – Satoshi Nakamoto (whomsoever he, she or they are… or were) had, or has, in wallets associated with the name. Estimates of how many of these 1 million odd Bitcoins are still available range from 0 – 100%. No- one knows!
12 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | January/February 2018
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