- Businesses — a global category covering corporate treasuries and conventional firms that report bitcoin holdings — account for about 6.2% of supply, or 1.30 million BTC.
- ETFs and funds — spot ETFs and investment vehicles that custody coins for clients — control about 7.8%, or 1.63 million BTC.
- Lost bitcoin makes up about 7.6%, or 1.58 million BTC. River says this is inferred from age heuristics, which show coins that have not moved for many years and are likely unrecoverable.
- Satoshi/Patoshi holdings are pegged at about 4.6%, or 968,000 BTC, based on earlier research into early-era mining patterns.
In plain terms, River’s research is an attempt to map who holds bitcoin today, not to forecast future prices. The estimates are not definitive, since custodians aggregate many clients, some wallets are misclassified, and ownership can be opaque.River’s conclusion is that individuals still dominate holdings, but the institutional share is expanding, helped by the growth of ETFs and companies that now treat bitcoin as a balance-sheet asset.Source: https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2025/0 ... p-research