Newly compiled entity holdings data from Arkham Intelligence shows that BlackRock ranks ahead of Strategy in terms of Bitcoin address ownership. This result has attracted attention because, based on total disclosed holdings, Strategy remains the publicly traded company with the largest Bitcoin holdings globally.
Changing entity rankings based on custody criteria
The key reason for the ranking difference lies in the different on-chain ownership criteria. Arkham stated that Strategy holds a total of approximately 847,000 Bitcoins, estimated to be worth about $56 billion based on the price mentioned in the article. However, only about 83% of these have been identified and verified to Strategy's on-chain entities, while the remaining approximately 184,000 BTC are custodied by Fidelity Custody.
In Arkham's entity view, only wallets directly belonging to the entity are included in the ranking. Therefore, BlackRock's address size of approximately 764,000 BTC is larger than Strategy's currently directly identifiable on-chain holdings.
This does not mean that BlackRock has surpassed Strategy in terms of total Bitcoin holdings. The former's majority of Bitcoin is linked to US spot Bitcoin ETFs, primarily serving fund investors; the latter's Bitcoin holdings are part of corporate treasury holding strategies. In other words, even with the same Bitcoin balance, the results will differ significantly depending on whether it's allocated to a wallet, custodian, asset manager, or ultimate beneficiary.
Satoshi Nakamoto and Coinbase are among the top.
According to Arkham's entity data, Satoshi Nakamoto remains the largest known holder of Bitcoin, holding approximately 1.096 million BTC. Arkham links these addresses to the Patoshi pattern formed during early mining, stating that the related Bitcoins came from mining rewards for approximately 22,000 blocks.
Coinbase ranks second with approximately 970,000 BTC, representing about 5% of the total Bitcoin supply. This portion of assets includes client escrow funds, institutional balances, operational liquidity, and crypto assets that the company may hold for its own purposes.
Robinhood and Bitfinex also manage large-scale cold wallets. Tether's Bitcoin reserve wallet holds approximately 97,000 BTC. However, such large wallets do not necessarily mean that the platform or company directly owns all the assets; a significant portion may belong to customers or fund investors.
Governments, ETFs, and corporations continue to expand their holdings.
Governments remain significant holders of Bitcoin, primarily through law enforcement seizures. Arkham lists approximately 328,000 BTC held by U.S. government addresses linked to the Bitfinex hack, Silk Road seizures, and other law enforcement actions.
- The UK government holds approximately 61,000 BTC.
- El Salvador holds approximately 7,100 BTC.
- The Royal Group, a related entity in the UAE, holds approximately 6,800 BTC.
On the enterprise side, Tether has approximately 97,000 BTC in verified on-chain reserves. Bitcoin Treasuries statistics show that Block.One holds approximately 164,000 BTC, but Arkham stated that this portion of assets has not yet been fully verified on-chain.
This 2026 holdings data also reflects that Bitcoin is increasingly concentrated in ETFs, exchanges, corporate treasuries, and government custody systems. Another on-chain analyst stated that wallets holding more than 1 BTC currently control a total of over 16.8 million BTC, while retail holders hold approximately 1.7 million BTC.
