Bitcoin Millionaires Vanish as Scandals Spread and Value Keeps Dropping

They are a dying breed. They used to wander the planet in large numbers, seemingly unstoppable, as their numbers seemed to grow by the day.

But suddenly, very unexpectedly, they began to vanish. No, we’re not talking about dinosaurs; we’re talking about Bitcoin millionaires.

According to CoinJournal analysis, the number of crypto tycoons has dropped by 73% by the end of 2022.

Dan Ashmore, a crypto analyst at CoinJournal, describes the scenario as follows: Bitcoin millionaires have flown away like birds, according to on-chain data. By 2022, there were 90,000 addresses containing more than a million dollars in Bitcoin. It is now 24,000, representing a 73% decrease.

Unlike the T-Rex and the rest of the Jurassic Park gang, Bitcoin millionaires were not destroyed by falling meteorites and freezing temps. An avalanche of major corporate bankruptcies has decimated the financial services sector.

Scandals Have Hit Sector Hard

In May, sibling cryptocurrencies Luna and UST, or TerraUSD, plummeted, triggering a financial collapse that proved catastrophic for numerous enterprises, including hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, or 3AC.

Unable to meet its payments to cryptocurrency lenders Celsius Network and Voyager Digital, 3AC was forced into liquidation, and Celsius and Voyager filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

The fall of Luna and UST led to social media gushing with stories of financial collapse and suicide fears.

Then there was the collapse of FTX when the cryptocurrency exchange could not meet withdrawal requests from panicked customers. Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and CEO of the attention-grabbing company, was arrested last month in the Bahamas and taken to the United States.

On Jan. 3, he pleaded not guilty to a number of criminal charges, including fraud charges brought against him by the Justice Department in a hearing in the U.S. District Court in New York.

Ashmore also stated that the cryptocurrency sector was worth $3 trillion in November 2021, when Bitcoin was $69,000. Since then, the top ten cryptocurrencies have collapsed, one of the leading exchanges started to fall as a house of cards, and there have been several bankruptcies and scandals that led the crypto sector to collapse.

Bitcoin’s Value Has Dropped by Three-Quarters

According to Ashmore, the loss has exceeded $2 trillion, with Bitcoin losing around three-quarters of its value. On January 9, Bitcoin was worth $17,340.

He also added that nearly three-quarters of Bitcoin millionaires losing that status might be the clearest proof to explain how bad 2022 was for investors.

According to the on-chain statistics, the party is gone, and investors are no longer fantasizing about a good ending.

In addition to an unstable economy, cryptocurrencies have had their reputation damaged significantly. According to CoinJournal, just 8% of Americans had a favorable opinion of cryptocurrencies as of November.

Of course, now that Bitcoin is so cheap in comparison to last year, the number of addresses containing one Bitcoin or more is at an all-time high, even though the monetary value contained in those addresses is far lower.

By 2022, there were about 814,000 addresses that held more than 1 BTC. By the end of the year, this figure had risen by 20% to over 978,000.