The number of Bitcoin addresses with non-zero balances has reached an all-time high

The number of Bitcoin addresses with non-zero balance has reached an all-time high.

The chart below shows a rapid rise in the metric, briefly interrupted in early 2018.

Data: Glassnode.

Equally convincingly, the number of wallets with a balance above 1 BTC is rising. Recently the metric hit a new high at 827,105, rebounding after a small dip at the end of September.

Data: Glassnode.

The realized capitalization metric also reached a record around $150 billion. It accounts for the price at the last on-chain activity of coins.

#Bitcoin Realized Cap (entity-adjusted) has reached $150 billion!

It has increased a whooping 50% since the beginning of the year, and 25% in the past two months alone.

Entity-adjustment accounts for BTC that actually changes hands.

Chart 👉 https://t.co/dIJVn0ICla pic.twitter.com/xvnqvklPDZ

— glassnode (@glassnode) December 14, 2020

Since December 2017, when the price of Bitcoin rose to an all-time high of $20,000, realized capitalization has retraced several times. The last sizable drop—from $106 billion to $101 billion—occurred in March–April 2020.

A steady rise in the number of non-zero-balance wallets and in the realized capitalization may indicate growing retail use of cryptocurrency, significant on-chain activity, and the irreversibility of mass adoption of digital gold.

As of late December, the number of whale wallets hit a new high.

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