Millionaire Bitcoin addresses go parabolic as BTC price crosses $20K

Bitcoin’s (BTC) parabolic run has turned early miners into millionaires at a pace rarely seen before. Data from Glassnode shows that the number of Bitcoin addresses holding at least $1 million has skyrocketed to 66,540 this week — an increase of 150%.

The rise of millionaire wallets is attributable to early miners retaining their Bitcoin over the years, culminating with the asset's latest surge above $20,000.

As Glassnode tweeted on Thursday:

“$BTC crossing $20k has turned all early miner addresses (50 BTC block rewards, unspent or lost) into millionaire addresses.”

The tweet was accompanied by a chart showing the number of millionaire addresses at or near record highs, with the last major peak coinciding with Bitcoin's late-2017 top:

Bitcoin’s rally intensified on Thursday, zipping through $23,000 with very little resistance. On-chain data suggest another parabolic move could be imminent as BTC enters a new phase of price discovery. At current values, Bitcoin has a total market capitalization of nearly $430 billion.

While early Bitcoin miners benefited from larger block rewards, they were operating in a market that was highly speculative and much more volatile than today. Today’s miners receive only 6.25 BTC per block, but have greater assurances that their efforts will be rewarded as Bitcoin evolves from an obscure and esoteric concept to a mainstream digital asset.

As Cointelegraph recently reported, cryptocurrency mining has evolved from a small endeavor to an industrial business as more entities look to capitalize on Bitcoin’s network infrastructure. Institutional inflows have made mining the digital asset more appealing than ever before. 

Currently, miners produce roughly 900 BTC per day — a quantity that is being quickly consumed by institutions and businesses, many of which are recent adopters.