Bitcoin holders: from shrimp to humpback

The usual scale is Glassnode's: eight tiers, from shrimp (under 1 BTC) to humpback (over 5,000 BTC). Other providers draw the lines differently. BGeometrics and Newhedge, for example, start the humpback at 10,000 BTC and call 1,000 to 10,000 BTC whales. A “whale” in one chart is therefore not the same group as a “whale” in another.

• 🦐Shrimp
  under 1 BTC
• 🦀Crab
  1 to 10 BTC
• 🐙Octopus
  10 to 50 BTC
• 🐟Fish
  50 to 100 BTC
• 🐬Dolphin
  100 to 500 BTC
• 🦈Shark
  500 to 1,000 BTC
• 🐋Whale
  1,000 to 5,000 BTC
• 🐳Humpback
  over 5,000 BTC

Sources: Glassnode, BGeometrics, Newhedge · tier names and ranges checked 16 Oct 2026

Very few addresses hold a large part of the coins. Shrimp are 98.4% of all non-empty addresses but hold 6.94% of the coins. The 207 humpback addresses (5,000+ BTC) hold 18.8%, and many of those belong to exchanges, custodians, funds and governments.

Share of all coins by holder class

Addresses holding at least this many BTC

Source: BitInfoCharts · as of 16 Oct 2026 · addresses, exchanges and custodians included

Share of addresses is taken from 59,705,963 non-empty addresses (BitInfoCharts); other sources count about 57.2 million, so this column depends on the source, while counts from 0.1 BTC up barely do. Share of coins is taken from the 20,096,440 BTC summed in the source table.

Source: BitInfoCharts · as of 16 Oct 2026

Octopus and Fish (10–50 and 50–100 BTC) and Dolphin and Shark (100–500 and 500–1,000 BTC) are shown together because no open source splits them; we did not estimate the split. Whale and Humpback come from counting the BitInfoCharts top-500 rich list (the 207th address holds exactly 5,000 BTC), so a small drift is possible.

Sources: BitInfoCharts, BGeometrics, Newhedge · as of 16 Oct 2026

Posts like “whales hit a record” appear every few weeks. Before sharing one, check what is counted (addresses, owners or coins), which balance range it uses, and whether exchanges are removed. Here is a recent example, set against the data on this page.

1. Santiment: 20,338 wallets with 10–10,000 BTC

Santiment's post of 15 Oct 2026, as quoted by BeInCrypto, Crypto Economy and PANews, says 20,338 wallets hold between 10 and 10,000 BTC, a record. Reports add that this group gained about 85,000 BTC in three weeks. Counting addresses in public sources gives these numbers:

• The quoted number is close to the count of addresses with 100 to 10,000 BTC (20,332 to 20,337), not to the count with 10 to 10,000 BTC (about 150,000).
• We could not open Santiment's chart (the insight page returned an error and the holder-distribution metrics need a paid plan), so the cause is unconfirmed. The gap could come from a different lower bound in the caption, or from a different sample such as only active addresses, only non-exchange addresses or addresses merged by owner. We cannot tell which.
• Santiment's documentation describes its holder-distribution metrics as counts of addresses in balance ranges; exchange addresses are not excluded by default, and separate metrics exist for labelled and for active addresses.
• The direction is visible in other data. On Maketo, addresses with 100 to 10,000 BTC rose from 19,787 (15 Jul) to 20,337 (15 Oct; peak 20,341 on 14 Oct), and held 82,148 more BTC on 15 Oct than on 15 Sep. That is the same order of size as the reported gain, but the periods and ranges are not identical. Coins moving between custodian addresses, consolidations or splits can produce the same change, so it does not show that new buyers arrived.

2. CryptoQuant: 3.03 million BTC held by whales outside exchanges

On 13 Oct 2026 CryptoQuant reported the balance of whales, excluding exchange and mining-pool addresses, at 3.03 million BTC, about 84,000 BTC more than 30 days earlier (CryptoSlate, CRYPT.ru). That is a quantity of coins, not a count of wallets, and exchanges are removed on purpose. CRYPT.ru describes the cohort as 1,000 to 10,000 BTC; other outlets say only “whales”. For scale: all addresses with 1,000 to 10,000 BTC hold 4,202,232 BTC on BitInfoCharts, exchanges included. A gap of about 1.2 million BTC fits exchange and pool addresses being removed, but we did not check this address by address.

Three questions for any whale number

1. What is counted: addresses, owners or coins?
2. Which balance range exactly, and is the lower bound 10, 100 or 1,000 BTC?
3. Are exchanges, custodians and pools included or removed?

Sources: Santiment Academy, BeInCrypto, Crypto Economy, PANews, CryptoSlate, CRYPT.ru, Maketo · checked 16 Oct 2026

The main table is BitInfoCharts. Four more public counters were compared with it. Counts of 1 BTC and up agree within 0.5%; differences in the totals come mostly from tiny “dust” addresses.

Newhedge's counts match Maketo's. ChainQuery is a weekly snapshot of its own Bitcoin Core node (5 days older), so its counts differ slightly.

Caveats

• Addresses are not people: one owner often uses many addresses (fewer people than addresses), while an exchange, custodian or ETF address holds coins for many clients (more people than addresses).
• Exchanges and custodians stay in the counts. In the BitInfoCharts top 100, 28 addresses carry a name label (about 1,610,970 of 3,096,298 BTC); among the 207 addresses with 5,000+ BTC, 35 are labelled (about 1,652,180 of 3,777,192 BTC). An address without a label is not necessarily private: many belong to unnamed custodians, funds and treasury companies.
• Coins that are lost for good are counted as well.
• Timing differs: BitInfoCharts at the moment the page was read on 16 Oct 2026, Maketo as a daily value for 15 Oct, ChainQuery as a snapshot of 11 Oct. Total coins are the sum of the BitInfoCharts table (20,096,440 BTC); ChainQuery gives 20,093,578 BTC from the UTXO set.
• No open source splits 10–50 / 50–100 or 100–500 / 500–1,000 BTC (finer cut-offs sit behind an API key or a paid plan), so Octopus + Fish and Dolphin + Shark are shown together.
• The 50 BTC threshold has no open data. The number of addresses with 50+ BTC lies between 20,419 (100+) and 150,082 (10+); we do not estimate inside that range.
• Whale (1,000–5,000) and Humpback (5,000+) come from the BitInfoCharts rich list of the top 500 addresses; the pages load over a few minutes, so a small drift is possible.
• Exchange and custodian addresses are included everywhere: no source in this comparison merges addresses by owner.
• Not investment advice. The page describes how coins are spread across addresses on a date; it makes no forecast of holders' behaviour or of the price.

Sources

• BitInfoCharts · main table: 12 balance ranges, top-500 rich list · 2026-10-16
• Maketo · cross-check of thresholds and history · 2026-10-15
• ChainQuery · cross-check from the provider's own Bitcoin Core node · 2026-10-11
• BGeometrics · six classes with Humpback from 10,000 BTC · 2026-10-16
• Newhedge · six classes with Humpback from 10,000 BTC · 2026-10-16
• Glassnode Studio · supply by wallet size (coin totals check) · 2026-10-15
• Santiment Academy: amount of holders · how the holder-distribution metric is described · 2026-10-16
• BeInCrypto · report quoting Santiment's post · 2026-10-16
• Crypto Economy · report quoting Santiment's post · 2026-10-16
• PANews · report quoting Santiment's post · 2026-10-16
• CryptoSlate · report on CryptoQuant's whale balance · 2026-10-13
• CRYPT.ru · report on CryptoQuant: cohort of 1,000–10,000 BTC · 2026-10-14

Source: see the list above · checked 16 Oct 2026