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If Bitcoin were to hit $1 million, anyone with at least 30 BTC would instantly become an ultra-high net worth individual (UHNWI). That would make BTC the single largest driver of UHNWIs.

Ultra-High Net Worth Individuals

A UHNWI is someone with at least $30 million in disposal assets, net of liabilities.

As of late last year, according to a Wealth-X report, there were 265,490 UHNWIs with a combined wealth of $32 trillion. That figure is expected to climb to just under 300,000 people by 2021.

If Bitcoin were to hit the magical million-dollar mark, anyone holding 30 BTC would become a UHNWI.According to a recent analysis by Decentralised.co, as of Dec. 5, over 28 million addresses held more than 0 Bitcoin.

130 held more than 10,000 BTC. Crucially, there are over 152,000 Bitcoin wallets with more than 10 Bitcoin.Of those, around 90,000 hold less than 100. Put otherwise, more than 10 but less than 100.




Courtesy Decentralised.co, Number of Bitcoin wallets by amount over time

A Hypothesis about a $1 Million Bitcoin Price

As a thought experiment, assume that the average holdings of those who own between 10 and 100 Bitcoin are 30 BTC.It then follows that if Bitcoin were to hit $1 million, the average holder among the 152,000 would become UHNWIs.This is roughly in line with Tuur Demeester’s recent thought-starter, although he defines UHNWIs as those with at least $50 million in net assets.

Tuur Demeester@TuurDemeester

If the Bitcoin price rises to over $1M, that would give ~100k bitcoiners "Ultra High Net Worth Individual" status (+$50M). With worldwide UHNWIs projected at only ~200k by 2022, this means the Bitcoin 1% could by then make up 30-50% of the world's financial elites. #Disruption




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Under the assumptions above, if Bitcoin hit the improbable $1 million next year, 152,000 newly minted UHNWIs would join the anticipated 300,000 mentioned above.Critically, Bitcoin ultra-high net worth individuals would represent a third of the world’s uber-rich.

Traditional Paths to Becoming a UHNWI

Ultra-high net worth individuals have tended to coalesce around ten cities that, combined, are home to almost 20% of the world’s richest.Hong Kong, New York, and Singapore, along with the countries of Luxembourg and Switzerland, have the greatest density of UHNWIs per person. Hong Kong easily tops that list with one UHNWI per 1,364 people.

Boston Consulting Group found in 2013 that the primary driver of wealth was “returns on existing assets.” Existing assets contributed about $15 trillion to private wealth, with newly created assets contributing around one-quarter of that. 




Courtesy Boston Consulting Group, Wealth generation in 2013While a million-dollar Bitcoin price tag would result in a dramatic shift in the makeup of the ultra-high net worth club, Forbes’ 2019 rich list reported that five of the ten richest people in the world all made their fortunes in the technology industry.

They include the two wealthiest individuals in Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates. Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, and Larry Page fill out the top five in tech billionaires.In fact, 18 of the richest hundred people in the world have technology backgrounds.

Fashion and retail have an equal number of moguls in the top 100. In finance, that number is ten.

The energy sector contributes only six people to the world’s richest 100.

In other words, while new cryptocurrency wealth would have an outsized impact on the number of UHNWIs, technology has already revolutionized the way wealth is created.  
 

Will Bitcoin Increase UHNWI Individuals by One-Third?

Bitcoin has created newly minted millionaires and billionaires, with many of them remaining anonymous.

According to BitInfoCharts, there are over 14,000 addresses with balances between 100 and 1,000 Bitcoin. A further 2,003 BTC addresses have between 1,000 and 10,000 Bitcoin, and 102 addresses hold between 10,000 to 100,000 BTC.

Three wallets hold amounts exceeding 100,000 BTC and under one million. It must be remembered that the largest Bitcoin wallets are commingled assets sitting at exchanges.

According to Glassnode Insights, entities that held 100,000 or more BTC were all exchanges: Coinbase (983,800 BTC), Huobi (369,100 BTC), Binance (240,700 BTC), Bitfinex (214,600 BTC), Bitstamp (165,400 BTC), Kraken (132,100 BTC), and Bittrex (118,100 BTC).

Those entities accounted for around 13% of Bitcoin’s circulating supply.Whale addresses aside, the 152,000 addresses with balances anywhere between 10 and 100 BTC will create a subset of Bitcoin millionaires were Bitcoin to reach the $1 million mark.

The impact would be felt as widely as cryptocurrencies are currently being used and held.For that to happen, of course, Bitcoin would have to go on a parabolic price surge from now to the end of 2021. But parabolic price movements aren’t exactly unprecedented.

As an asset class, Bitcoin returned over nine million percent in returns from July 2010 to the end of the decade. The S&P 500 tripled and gold rose by 25% in the same period.

With cryptocurrency, history has proven that anything, from brutal bear market slides to upward surges, is possible.

And as the new decade dawns, from the gradual movement of institutional money into the space, Jack Dorsey’s endeavors to make Bitcoin spendable, and the looming supply shock of the third halving, the future is filled with endless possibilities.

• Global token volume has stagnated since mid-2019.
• The Bitfinex, Kinesis and GCBIB cryptocurrency exchanges have advanced to the Top 15.
• In the country rankings for the most important innovation centres for tokenisation, Switzerland leads Europe together with the UK.
• Switzerland is particularly suitable as a tokenisation centre. Thanks to the established blockchain ecosystem.
• The new dynamism of Initial Exchange Offerings (IEO) indicates increased maturity.

Download the PDF

Zurich, 28 January 2020 – In the first ten months of 2019 more than 380 token offerings were settled as initial coin offerings (ICOs), security token offerings (STOs) or initial exchange offerings (IEO).

This is shown in the sixth ICO/STO Report (Winter 2020 edition) by Strategy&, PwC’s strategy consulting team, in cooperation with the Crypto Valley Association Switzerland.After the record year 2018, the global volume of tokens declined from January to October 2019 to USD 4.1 billion.

“For crypto fundraising instruments to regain momentum, greater regulatory clarity is needed. In addition, offerors must upgrade their infrastructure, for example for exchanging tokens or for reliable market data,” explains Andreas Pratz, Partner Financial Services of Strategy&.

Global volume stagnant from mid-year

The market for digital assets grew solidly through the first half of 2019. As a result, market capitalisation reached a high of USD 370 billion at end-June. In the middle of the year the total fundraising volume of ICOs/STOs fell from around USD 1,322 million in May to USD 151 million in June.

Up to end-October, the average monthly fundraising volume fluctuated around USD 171 million. For comparison, the monthly average from January to May 2019 was USD 653 million.

Fintech newcomers

Specialising in fintech companies, the young cryptocurrency exchanges Bitfinex, Kinesis and GCBIB have advanced to the list of the Top 15 cryptocurrency platforms. In 2019 they earned together 32% of total token volume created since the start of the year.

The IEO of Bitfinex (Hong Kong) was the biggest IEO of 2019, raising capital of USD 1 billion, while Kinesis (Cayman Islands) raised USD 194 million and GCBIB (United Arab Emirates) raised USD 143 million.

Switzerland is a European leader

As in the previous year, the USA, Singapore, Hong Kong and UK are the leading token hubs worldwide, in terms of both fundraising volume and the number of offerings. With 69 completed token offerings and USD 894 million, Switzerland ranked sixth in 2018.

This makes it the joint European token hub leader alongside the UK. Countries with relatively small domestic financial centres, such as the British Virgin Islands, Cayman Islands, Estonia and Latvia, are still attractive locations for digital currency offerings.

Industry with great potential

There was no significant growth in STOs in 2019 in terms of either fundraising or the number of token offerings. In the second half of the year, there were virtually no STOs. Even so, they gained in relevance within the group of crypto fundraising instruments, particularly in comparison with tokens directly issued by companies and private placements.

Security tokens have enormous potential, as they are an attractive alternative to conventional capital procurement. The STO industry is still young, but fit for the future.In the last few years, numerous tokenisation companies with strong ecosystems have emerged, several of them in Switzerland.

Jonas Heydasch, FinTech & Crypto Finance Expert at Strategy& and co-author of the study: “Switzerland is an outstanding location for tokenisation.

It offers an innovative environment with strong links with technology, the best basis for a strong cryptofinance ecosystem.

”Initial exchange offerings growing dynamically

Despite the overall stagnation in token offerings from June to October 2019, IEOs have significantly increased their relative share in the number of all completed offerings.

This growth indicates their advancing institutionalisation and definitive establishment as a fundraising instrument based on blockchains. IEOs are seen as a further development of ICOs and a format with maximum security.

The three-party investment has firmly established itself in the crypto market over the past 12-18 months.

Download Full Report here: 
https://www.pwc.ch/en/publications/2020/Strategy&_ICO_STO_Study_Version_Spring_2020.pdf

Two executives at Coinbase and Ripple are leading a push for smart regulations and transparency in the crypto-sphere that would arguably drive adoption and take blockchain technology mainstream. 

Market integrity must improve

The Market Integrity Working Group’s co-chairs want regulators to grasp how they can advance the cryptocurrency industry. In an official company statement, Coinbase senior director and associate general counsel Rachel Nelson, in conjunction with Ripple’s head of global institutional markets Breanne Madigan, wrote: 

“To improve market integrity and provide consumers the confidence they deserve, Congress may need to enact legislation to support the orderly and secure functioning of crypto markets.”

Projecting wider regulations, they added: 

“Such legislation could expand the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s (CFTC) authority to include the regulation and oversight of digital commodity exchange markets.”

The need for a regulatory framework

The Working Group, which officially launched on Jan. 23 2020, outlined the problems that saddle exchanges. According to this organization, state-specific regulations are to blame: 

“Consumers and cryptocurrency exchanges deserve a clear regulatory framework, the establishment of which would ultimately enhance market integrity and drive consumer adoption of cryptocurrencies.”

The co-chairs argue that new exchanges face byzantine burdens while existing exchanges struggle against compliance requirements. But a regulatory framework would bolster market integrity and encourage consumer adoption of cryptocurrencies.

Vodafone has bailed on Facebook‘s cryptocurrency project, Libra, to focus on expanding its own solution for faster cross-border payments beyond Africa.The telecommunications giant is the latest in a string of companies to have left the Libra Association, alongside Mastercard, Visa, Stripe, and Ebay, CoinDesk reports.

[Read: Facebook’s Libra ‘cryptocurrency’ is turning into a soap opera — and it’s gonna be a long season] 

Libra, a stablecoin-esque digital currency first revealed in mid-2019, has faced an onslaught of criticism from regulators worldwide, who’ve shared concerns its success could destabilize world economies by undermining the Euro.

Vodafone would rather spend resources on M-Pesa (not a crypto)

In response to the news, Vodafone said it was still “fully committed” to making a “genuine contribution to extending financial inclusion,” but it seems it just won’t be through a cryptocurrency.

A Vodafone spokesperson told reporters it believes it can assist the world’s poor by focusing on M-Pesa, a money platform for smartphones with a pronounced presence in developing economies across Africa, particularly Kenya.

M-Pesa, launched in 2007, currently boasts more than 30 million users across 10 countries. The service also reportedly processed 6 billion transactions in 2016 alone.The app has no exposure to cryptocurrency, and operates more within the traditional finance system.

Can Facebook launch Libra on time?

Facebook originally planned to release Libra in the first half of 2020, but execs have since maintained the social media mainstay would only do so once all regulatory considerations have been addressed.

It was that same red tape that pushed Mastercard and Visa to part ways with the Libra Foundation, months before the Swiss finance minister would say the country isn’t likely to approve Libra as it is right now.

This has obviously left Zuckerberg and co. in a tight spot. As all this plays out, a raft of European central banks joined forces to better explore the use cases of central bank digital currencies, spurred on by corporate ‘cryptocurrencies‘ like Libra.

"I'm not thinking of dying at this age, but I think just making that as easy as possible for everyone is crucial."Jack Davies, 23, from Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, wants to make sure the cryptocurrency he and his family own is accessible in the event any of them pass away.

And with good reason.Research estimates up to 3.8 million Bitcoin, worth up to $30bn (£22.8bn) today, has been lost, with much having gone to the grave with holders who failed to tell anyone how to retrieve it.While some experts argue cryptocurrency is a risky and volatile investment, it continues to grow in popularity.

One Cardiff firm believes it has an answer to safeguarding it beyond the grave.

'Indestructible'

Coin Cover has created what it describes as one of the world's first cryptocurrency wills, with CEO David Janczewski saying it is unsurprising some people have taken these assets to the grave up to now."Cryptocurrency is one of those odd things which is very private for a lot of people.

If you acquired yours early, you might actually have a substantial amount of money. You might be worried about your personal security," he said."And nobody thinks they are going to die.

Nobody plans for that eventuality. And therefore, when that happens, maybe you haven't told your family members exactly how they should recover it.

"The scheme sees people carrying an "indestructible" card which has information about their cryptocurrency, as well as others they give to their beneficiaries.

If the holder dies, their loved ones or an executor contacts the firm with a unique number on the card, along with a death certificate. Coin Cover then investigates and retrieves the funds.

What is cryptocurrency?

Image copyrightDALEBOR/GETTY IMAGES

Cryptocurrency is a type of money which is completely virtual, like an online version of cash which exists digitally.

While you can use some, such as Bitcoin, to buy products and services, not many shops accept it and some countries have banned it altogether.

Cryptocurrencies, such as Bitcoin, are basically computer files which are stored in a digital wallet on a smartphone or computer.They can be sent between digital wallets, with every single transaction recorded on a list called the Blockchain.

Some people like the fact cryptocurrencies are generally not controlled by the government or banks. But is it secure?While every transaction is recorded, cryptocurrency can potentially be stolen if a thief were to get access to a wallet.

BBC journalist Monty Munford had £25,000 worth of Ethereum stolen after mistakenly storing his password in an email.It is possible to lose your Bitcoin wallet or delete your Bitcoins and lose them forever. There have also been thefts from websites that let you store your Bitcoins remotely.

Source: Newsround



David King, a wills, trusts and estates lawyer at Harrison Clark Rickerbys solicitors, said an increasing number of clients - currently about two in 10 - count cryptocurrency among their assets.His firm saw a case where the family of a client, after his death, believed he had owned Bitcoin but were forced to drop it because they did not have the information to access it.

"I think we, as private client lawyers, need to step into the 21st Century now and start recording that data when we are meeting with clients," he said."One of the things that clients don't like to do is to give away the access codes for this information.

"Whilst it's secure and we as a firm of solicitors have a duty to the client to keep that confidential, naturally there is hesitancy from the client to give us that information. [But] I think we need to be smarter.

"There have been high-profile examples of cryptocurrency fortunes having been lost when the holder died.




Image copyrightFACEBOOK/QUADRIGA Image caption

Gerald Cotten was the only person who had passwords to QuadrigaCX digital walletsIn December 2018, Gerald Cotten, CEO of QuadrigaCX, Canada's largest cryptocurrency exchange, died unexpectedly.

Unfortunately for QuadrigaCX's customers, Mr Cotten was the only person who had passwords to customers' digital wallets. As a result, more than $135m in customer funds held in safe keeping was deemed inaccessible, locked on the blockchain forever more.

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A University of Cambridge study in 2017 estimated there were between 2.9 million and 5.8 million active unique users of cryptocurrencies, although many argue the number has grown since then.

Also, 9% of 18 to 24-year-olds owned cryptocurrency and 7% of over-55s knew somebody who had bought cryptocurrency, according to a YouGov poll of about 2,100 people in November 2018.




Image captionJack Davies is considering a will although he is still 23

Jack Davies, who works in the cryptocurrency industry, is one of the growing number of 18 to 24-year-olds who own some form of the digital currency used online.

He's now considering drawing up a will to ensure his digital assets are passed on to the right people, if he should die."If I had enough to warrant it, I definitely would set one up. I think this is a really good first step in making these normal functions of money apply," he said.