There are numerous reasons to be optimistic about the future of bitcoin. First among those reasons is the remarkably consistent increase in the number of entities owning bitcoin.
While the price of bitcoin has been very volatile, the number of people holding bitcoin has shown a classic hockey-stick increase over time with low volatility. Glassnode Studios recently compiled data showing both the number of bitcoin addresses from which they were able to extrapolate the number of unique entities associated with those addresses. 23.1 million entities held some bitcoin at the end of January 2020. The 8-year graph is a thing of beauty for fans of bitcoin.
While the number of addresses showed some volatility during the Bitcoin run up and crash in 2018, the number of unique entities show a smooth regular increase. The vast majority of these new entities hold less than one bitcoin. I believe this reflects the number of people that are interested in bitcoin and have purchased some sats and now hold a small amount. The reason this is relevant is those entities now have their cryptocurrency infrastructure in place – an account, a wallet, and a basic understanding of bitcoin – to acquire and use more bitcoin in the future.
https://medium.com/glassnode-insights/how-many-entities-hold-bitcoin-e945ecc5d0a1
