Big Doge: One whale owns 28% of all Dogecoin — $28b worth

Elon Musk calls Dogecoin “the people’s crypto”. But is it for the masses — or the elites?

Dogecoin is the people’s crypto

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) February 4, 2021

An analysis of Dogecoin addresses shows nearly half the supply is owned by just 13 wallets, with two-thirds of all DOGE being held by just 104 wallets.

The biggest wallet holds an astonishing 28.4 per cent of the supply — 36 billion Dogecoins.

With Dogecoin trading this afternoon at US61.3c (79.2c in AUD), that wallet is nominally worth US$22 billion ($28.5 billion).

At its current value, Big #Doge is worth $24Bn and is one of the richest “humans” in the world on his Doge portfolio alone…https://t.co/lB2fbwsgEN https://t.co/dRmxA5qc8q

— Instack Networks (@InstackNetworks) May 5, 2021

Of course, any attempt to sell that much Doge would quickly crash the market … something that people putting their hard-earned wages into Dogecoins might want to consider.

30% of all #dogecoin is inside this unique address below. His owner can literally dump this coin to almost zero at any time. Don’t joke with your money. https://t.co/qQFS4SkvlT

— Satoshi Nakamoney (@nakamoney) May 5, 2021

In contrast, the biggest Ethereum wallet holds just 5.8 per cent of the supply — and that’s an account for “wrapped Ether,” rather than one held by an individual.

It’s not clear who owns the big Dogecoin wallet. Dogecoin co-founder Billy Markus has indicated it’s not him.

guys, i sold all my doge in 2015 after getting laid off and freaking out about money. in total i made about enough to buy a used honda civic.

i left the project over 7 years ago due to harassment from the community, and now i’m being harassed again. please consider this.

— Shibetoshi Nakamoto (@BillyM2k) January 31, 2021

The wallet was set up in 2019, when Dogecoin was trading for a fraction of what it is today – around US0.5c. It’s still been accumulating small amounts of DOGE, with 77.77 DOGE twice added today.

A Reddit thread in February speculating on who owned the wallet didn’t get far, although some suggested it could be Musk himself.

Other speculation has focused on the wallet belonging to Robinhood, the US share-trading and crypto-trading app.

But Robinhood isn’t saying.

We are not alone. Just like other crypto platforms, for operational security reasons and to protect customer privacy, we will not confirm which addresses do or do not belong to us.

— Robinhood (@RobinhoodApp) February 17, 2021