How many people use Bitcoin?

It is estimated that roughly 300 million people, or 4% of the global population, own bitcoin as of May 2026.

This article will walk through the hard data on bitcoin usage and ownership.

How many people own bitcoin?

It is estimated that 4% of the world’s population, or 300 million people, own bitcoin. Ownership rates are highest in the United States, European Union, and countries that have embraced bitcoin at the regulatory level such as El Salvador and the U.A.E.

This estimation is based on surveys and reports from several sources:

1. A nationwide survey by the Nakamoto Project found that 18.6% of American adults claim to own any amount of bitcoin. This equates to more than 50 million Americans owning bitcoin.
2. Ownership reports by Crypto.com and Triple A estimate global bitcoin ownership through exchange and on-chain data, surveys, and chain analysis.

It is important to note that these estimates may include people who own very small amounts of bitcoin, even as little as $0.01.

How many people are using the blockchain?

Despite the transparency of Bitcoin’s public blockchain, it is not possible to retrieve a precise number of how many people are using Bitcoin in any timeframe. The number of addresses active each day hovers around 600,000 as of 2026.

However, an address is not representative of an individual, and the number of active addresses also does not represent an upper or lower bound. One individual can use many addresses in the same or even several wallets. On the other hand, many individuals can use one address, such as one belonging to an exchange or other custodial service. There is no way to accurately distinguish how many people interact with Bitcoin at any given time using public data; at best, people can estimate.

Active entities on the blockchain

Various analytical approaches try to approximate the number of active entities, such as the approach Glassnode first used in 2020. Based on their analysis, the number of entities holding bitcoin was approximately 23.1 million as of January 2020, which was 18.7% less than the number of Bitcoin addresses with a balance above zero (~28.4 million). Note that there is a large disparity within the UTXO set, as the majority of addresses have a balance under the “dust” limit, which is lower than the cost to spend it. In total these add up to less than a thousand BTC in value.

In March 2023, Glassnode repeated the methodology and arrived at 32.9 million entities, which was 25.9% less than the number of bitcoin addresses with a balance above zero (~44.4 million)

If Glassnode’s results are accurate, it would mean that the average Bitcoin entity holds its bitcoin on 1.18-1.34 addresses at any given time. Or in other words, only one in five or six entities would have bitcoin on two addresses. At face value, this number seems unlikely, given that power users will typically have dozens of addresses with balances on them.

As stated in Glassnode’s methodology, they did not dive deeper into how many users are storing their bitcoin on exchanges. They only track the total amount of bitcoin this adds up to. Exchanges only disclose their aggregate user numbers, which does not clarify how many of them have bitcoin on their account balance. It is not in their best interest to talk about the number of Bitcoin users, as their business model relies on total trading volumes across various coins, and thus a narrative of “crypto” being top of mind.