Shocking 2025 Data: Centralized Entities Now Hoard 33% of All Bitcoin (BTC) in Treasuries
Wall Street''s worst-kept secret just got louder—institutional players now control a third of Bitcoin''s total supply. Meet the new landlords of crypto.
The Great Bitcoin Consolidation
Centralized treasuries—from corporate balance sheets to sovereign wealth funds—are vacuuming up BTC faster than Satoshi''s code mines new coins. Nearly one in every three bitcoins now sits in these vaults.
Why This Should Terrify (or Thrill) You
This isn''t your 2017 ''retail moon mission'' anymore. When BlackRock''s ETF holds more BTC than MicroStrategy, the game''s changed. Decentralization purists are screaming; TradFi converts are popping champagne.
The Irony Is Delicious
A currency designed to bypass banks now gets treated like digital gold bars in their basements. Somewhere in Zurich, a hedge fund manager just charged 2% fees to ''custodize decentralization.''
Market Maturation
According to a joint report by Gemini and Glassnode, just three entities dominate bitcoin adoption across most institutional categories, holding between 65% and 90% of total BTC holdings. This concentration reflected how early entrants shaped the strategic direction and legitimacy of Bitcoin within institutional finance.
On the other hand, private company holdings are more evenly distributed, which indicates a broader base of adoption at that level. While such dominance may decrease as institutional participation expands, the early leaders continue to play a central role in driving capital inflows and positioning Bitcoin as a credible macro asset in traditional finance.
Custody has slowly shifted away from centralized exchanges toward ETFs, funds, and DeFi protocols, which now serve as primary gateways for spot market access. While balances on centralized exchanges have declined over the past two years, this does not signal a tightening supply.
Instead, most of that Bitcoin has moved into custodial vehicles like US spot ETFs. The combined holdings of these spot custodians have remained relatively stable and range between 3.9 million and 4.2 million BTC since June 2021. This is indicative of a reallocation rather than a reduction in circulating supply.
Despite the stability in total holdings, these custodians exert significant influence on price action, driven by their sensitivity to market shifts. Monthly inflows and outflows can swing dramatically, by as much as $10 billion, which makes these entities key players in BTC’s short-term trajectory, even as the overall structure of the spot market becomes more institutionalized and regulated.
Sovereign BTC Treasuries
Government-held Bitcoin reserves have grown significantly, particularly in the US, China, the U.K., and Germany, where most acquisitions come through legal enforcement rather than market purchases.
The US stands out with more than 200,000 BTC, largely sourced from major law enforcement seizures. These include 69,369 BTC taken from the Silk Road case in November 2027 and 94,643 BTC recovered from the Bitfinex hack in February 2022.
After a brief decline, a portion of the US government’s remaining balance was formally converted into a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve (SBR) following an executive order by President Donald TRUMP on March 6th.
In the UK, Bitcoin has been seized by the National Crime Agency through operations targeting cybercriminals. China, after banning crypto activities, confiscated over 194,000 BTC in November 2020 in its crackdown on the PlusToken Ponzi scheme.
Germany also accumulated Bitcoin through criminal investigations, but officially liquidated all its holdings by April 29th. These sovereign holdings FORM a unique category in the crypto ecosystem: largely dormant, yet capable of influencing markets if moved.
