Arkham Intelligence’s latest entity holding data shows that BlackRock ranks ahead of Strategy in terms of Bitcoin address ownership. This has drawn attention because, based on disclosed total holdings, Strategy remains the publicly traded company with the largest Bitcoin holding globally.
Change in custody methodology alters entity rankings
The key reason for the ranking discrepancy lies in different on-chain ownership methodologies. Arkham states that Strategy holds approximately 847,000 bitcoins, valued at around $56 billion based on the price cited in the article; however, only about 83% of these have been identified and verified as belonging to Strategy’s on-chain entities, while the remaining approximately 184,000 BTC are held in custody by Fidelity.
In Arkham’s entity view, only wallets directly attributed to the entity are counted in the ranking. Therefore, BlackRock’s address holdings of approximately 764,000 BTC exceed Strategy’s current directly identifiable on-chain positions.
This does not mean that BlackRock has surpassed Strategy in total volume. The majority of BlackRock’s Bitcoin is associated with U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs and primarily serves fund investors, whereas Strategy is part of corporate treasury holding strategies. In other words, the same Bitcoin balance can yield significantly different results when categorized by wallet, custodian, asset manager, or ultimate beneficiary.
Satoshi Nakamoto and Coinbase are at the top.
According to Arkham’s entity data, Satoshi Nakamoto remains the entity with the largest known holding of BTC, with approximately 1.096 million BTC. Arkham links these addresses to the Patoshi pattern formed by early mining, stating that these bitcoins originated from mining rewards across about 22,000 blocks.
Coinbase ranks second with approximately 970,000 BTC, accounting for about 5% of the total Bitcoin supply. This asset pool includes customer custodial funds, institutional balances, operational liquidity, and any crypto assets 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 indicate 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 due to law enforcement seizures. U.S. government addresses listed by Arkham hold approximately 328,000 BTC, stemming from the Bitfinex hack, Silk Road-related seizures, and other law enforcement actions.
- The UK government holds approximately 61,000 BTC.
- El Salvador holds approximately 7,100 BTC.
- Entities related to the UAE's Royal Group hold approximately 6,800 BTC.
On the corporate side, Tether’s verified on-chain reserves amount to approximately 97,000 BTC. Bitcoin Treasuries reports that Block.One holds around 164,000 BTC, but Arkham notes that these assets have not yet been fully verified on-chain.
This 2026 holding data also reflects that Bitcoin is increasingly concentrated within ETFs, exchanges, corporate treasuries, and government custody systems. On-chain analysts further note that wallets holding more than 1 BTC collectively control over 16.8 million BTC, while retail holders own approximately 1.7 million BTC.