Bitcoin Statistics (2026)

Bitcoin is the largest cryptocurrency and, in mid-July 2026, traded near $64,000. That put its market capitalization around $1.28 trillion and gave it 56% of the entire crypto market (see the table below), still comfortably the dominant digital asset by value.

The mid-2026 price sat roughly 49% below the record high of about $126,000 set in October 2025. Bitcoin's defining features are its fixed 21-million coin cap and its transparent, rules-based issuance, which is why supply, halvings, and holder behavior matter as much as price.

Bitcoin's record price is roughly $126,000, reached in October 2025 during the post-halving bull run. By mid-July 2026 it had corrected to around $64,000, a drawdown of nearly half, which is a very ordinary swing by Bitcoin's own standards.

Large peak-to-trough falls are a recurring feature: Bitcoin has repeatedly lost 50% to 80% of its value and then gone on to new highs. That volatility is the price of its historically outsized returns, and it is the single most important thing a new buyer should understand.

Bitcoin's returns are famously lumpy. It gained about 303% in 2020 and 1,331% in 2017, then lost 73% in 2018 and 64% in 2022 (see the chart and table below). Big up years have tended to cluster around halvings, and brutal down years have followed.

Year-end prices trace the arc: roughly $14,156 at the end of 2017, about $29,000 for 2020, and near $93,400 for 2024 before a modest pullback in 2025. These figures are aggregator estimates and vary slightly by data source, but the pattern of violent boom-and-bust cycles is unmistakable.

At roughly $1.28 trillion, Bitcoin's market cap dwarfs every other crypto asset and rivals the largest individual companies on the stock market. Its dominance, its share of total crypto value, was about 56.3% in July 2026, up from lows near stablecoin-inflated readings in prior cycles.

Dominance rises when investors treat Bitcoin as the safer crypto bet and falls during speculative altcoin manias. One caveat: dominance figures include stablecoins like USDT and USDC in the denominator, which shaves several points off Bitcoin's apparent share versus a stablecoin-adjusted reading.

Bitcoin's supply is capped at 21 million coins by its protocol, and that scarcity is the core of the investment thesis. As of mid-2026, about 20.06 million coins, roughly 96% of the maximum, had already been mined, leaving under a million left to be issued over the next century.

New coins enter circulation only as block rewards to miners, and that rate halves on a fixed schedule. Because the cap is enforced by code that every node checks, no central party can inflate the supply, which is the property that gives Bitcoin its digital-gold framing.

Roughly every four years (every 210,000 blocks), the reward miners receive for each block is cut in half. The most recent halving, on April 20, 2024, reduced the reward from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC per block (see the table below), and the next is expected around April 2028 at 1.5625 BTC.

Halvings steadily throttle new supply: annual issuance is now under 1.8% of circulating coins and keeps falling. The last bitcoin is projected to be mined around the year 2140, after which miners will be paid entirely through transaction fees rather than new coins.

Not every mined coin is spendable. Analysts estimate that between 2.3 million and 3.7 million BTC are permanently lost, thanks to forgotten passwords, discarded hard drives, and coins in wallets untouched since Bitcoin's earliest years. Chainalysis puts the figure near 3.7 million using its analysis of dormant, zombie coins.

Lost coins are 11% to 18% of the 21-million cap, so the effective, tradeable float is meaningfully smaller than the headline supply, closer to 16-17 million. These are estimates, not certainties: prolonged inactivity can reflect deliberate long-term holding rather than true loss.

On-chain data shows a record of roughly 58.45 million Bitcoin addresses holding a non-zero balance as of early 2026, a proxy for the widening base of holders. Note that one person can control many addresses and one address can represent many people (an exchange), so this is not a headcount.

Ownership remains concentrated at the top: whale addresses (1,000+ BTC) hold about 42% of circulating supply per Glassnode, and long-term holders control roughly 74% of coins. That heavy long-term-holder base is often read as a sign of conviction and thin available float.

US spot Bitcoin ETFs launched in January 2024 and quickly became the dominant on-ramp for institutional and retail money. By mid-July 2026 they held roughly $78 billion in net assets, with cumulative net inflows of about $51 billion (see the chart and table below).

BlackRock's iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) leads by a wide margin, with around 810,000 BTC and near $62 billion in assets, followed by Fidelity's FBTC. The funds collectively hold over a million coins, giving Wall Street a direct claim on a large and growing slice of Bitcoin's tight supply.

A growing set of companies hold Bitcoin as a treasury reserve asset, and one dominates: Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy). As of early July 2026 it held 843,775 BTC worth roughly $63.5 billion, about 4% of all bitcoin that will ever exist (see the table below), built at an average cost near $75,000 a coin.

Strategy alone accounts for roughly three-quarters of all bitcoin held by publicly traded companies, funding purchases through stock and convertible-note issuance under chairman Michael Saylor. The concentration means Bitcoin's corporate-adoption story is, for now, heavily a story about one firm.

The Bitcoin network is secured by miners racing to solve blocks, and their combined computing power (hashrate) hit record levels in 2026, briefly topping 1 zettahash per second in January before settling near 929 exahash to 1 ZH/s by mid-year. More hashrate means a more secure, harder-to-attack chain.

Difficulty, which auto-adjusts every 2,016 blocks to keep block times near 10 minutes, sat around 125 trillion in mid-2026 after a nearly 10% downward adjustment on June 13, 2026. That drop reflected some miners powering down or pivoting hardware toward AI compute as margins tightened.

Bitcoin mining is energy-intensive by design. With hashrate near 1 ZH/s and average fleet efficiency around 16 joules per terahash, 2026 estimates put the network's annualized electricity use in the range of roughly 130 to 175 TWh, comparable to the total consumption of a mid-sized country. These are modeled estimates, not metered totals.

The Cambridge CBECI, the most-cited academic tracker, revised its methodology lower in recent years and pegged 2023 usage near 120 TWh as a point estimate. Critics highlight the carbon footprint; miners counter that a rising share of hashpower runs on stranded, flared, or renewable energy.

Crypto ownership has moved from fringe to mainstream. Surveys put US adult ownership anywhere from about 10% (Federal Reserve) to 14% (Gallup) to 30% (Security.org), with the spread driven by how each survey defines owning versus using (see the chart and table below). The National Cryptocurrency Association counts roughly 67 million US owners in 2026.

Bitcoin remains the anchor: it is held by about 74% of all crypto owners, more than any other coin. Ownership skews young and male, with the highest rates among men under 50, though the gender and age gaps have narrowed as ETFs made access easier.

Worldwide, an estimated 560 to 740 million people own some cryptocurrency, roughly 7% to 9% of the global population, up from around 420 million in 2023. Triple-A's widely cited figure is about 562 million, while Crypto.com estimates 741 million; methodologies differ, so treat these as ranges.

Adoption is not evenly spread. Emerging markets often lead on a percentage basis, with Turkey near 25.6% of its population and India dominating in absolute users at roughly 156 million. Bitcoin's borderless, dollar-alternative appeal tends to be strongest where local currencies are weak.

Bitcoin has delivered extraordinary long-run returns alongside gut-wrenching drawdowns of 50% to 80%. Its fixed supply, halving-driven scarcity, and deepening ETF and corporate adoption are the bull case; its volatility, energy debate, and regulatory uncertainty are the risks. It behaves more like a high-volatility growth asset than a stable store of value on any short horizon.

For most investors the practical approach is position-sizing: treat Bitcoin as a small, high-risk sleeve of a diversified portfolio rather than a core holding, and size it so a 50% drop would not derail your plan. Regulated spot ETFs now make exposure simple, but the underlying volatility is unchanged. This is data, not investment advice.