Michael Saylor Says There Isn’t Enough Bitcoin For Everyone — His Math Actually Checks Out

• With roughly eight billion people worldwide, an equal distribution of 21 million BTC would come to around 0.00026 Bitcoin per person.
• Corporate treasuries, governments, and long-term investors are increasingly holding Bitcoin in cold storage, reducing the amount available for trading.
• Crypto analyst Lark Davis estimated that lost wallets, Satoshi Nakamoto’s holdings, corporate reserves, and government holdings may have already removed close to 6 million Bitcoin from active circulation.

Strategy (MSTR) executive chairman Michael Saylor pointed to Bitcoin’s (BTC) scarcity in a post on X, stating that “there isn’t enough” for everyone. And he may actually be right.

There are around eight billion people in the world, and only 21 million BTC tokens will ever exist. This means each person gets only around 0.00026 Bitcoin. There isn’t even enough Bitcoin for every millionaire – there are around 60 million of them according to the UBS Global Wealth Report – to own a full token.

Bitcoin’s price fell 1.1% in the last 24 hours to around $71,100 on Friday morning. Retail sentiment around the apex cryptocurrency on Stocktwits dipped to ‘bullish’ from ‘extremely bullish’ territory over the past day. 

MSTR’s stock gained as much as 1.11% in the overnight trade, with retail sentiment steady in ‘bullish’ territory over the past day.
 

Bitcoin’s Supply Sink

Bitcoin’s 21million supply may not be entirely available for purchase either. Strategy currently holds more than 720,000 Bitcoin on its balance sheet with an unrealized loss of around $3.5 billion, according to CoinGecko data. Governments are also looking to hold Bitcoin in their coffers, even though not everyone is looking to make the full pivot like El Salvador.

Such long-term holdings by institutional players create a "supply sink" where Bitcoin enters cold storage and is likely not return to the markets for a while, making the "available supply much smaller than the 21 million total — around 6 million smaller, according to crypto analyst Lark Davis.

In a post on X, he calculated that around 3.7 million has been lost to wallets with forgotten passwords, and another 1.1 million is in Satoshi’s wallet, unlikely to ever move. Add to that Saylor’s 720,000 stash, which he has vowed to never sell, and the 328,000 BTC with the U.S. government that can’t be sold under executive orders – you have nearly 6 million BTC that’s not accessible for trading or buying.

99% Of Bitcoin Will Be Mined By 2035

The new supply of Bitcoin coming into the markets is also reducing at an increasing rate. According to Saylor, 99% of all Bitcoin will be mined over the next decade due to the halving mechanism, which cuts mining rewards by 50% every 4 years. Industry estimates peg the final Bitcoin mining event to happen by 2140. 

It’s also making Bitcoin mining more expensive, with miners pivoting toward artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) data centers.

Despite Bitcoin’s price crossing $70,000 for the first time in nearly a month this week, it remains more than 40% below its record high of over $126,000 seen in October. Analysts are divided on whether it’s just a short-term bounce or signs of a trend reversal.

Read also: Bitcoin, XRP Or Ethereum? Retail Traders Bet On Which Crypto Will Deliver Biggest Returns In 5 Years

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