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Henley & Partners estimated in its Crypto Wealth Report 2026, released Sept. 8, 2026, that 135,694 people worldwide hold at least $1 million in cryptocurrency, including 92,272 whose fortunes clear that bar on Bitcoin alone.
The findings come after a sharp downturn in digital assets during 2026, when Bitcoin fell below half of its previous peak before recovering. Henley & Partners said the latest decline has nevertheless been milder than the major crypto downturns that followed the 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks, each of which saw Bitcoin fall by more than 75%.
The report also estimates that 290 individuals hold at least $100 million in crypto assets, while 23 qualify as crypto billionaires. Nine of those billionaires are estimated to have reached the threshold through Bitcoin holdings. Across the wider market, Henley estimates that 742 million people now hold some form of cryptocurrency, including 371 million Bitcoin holders.
The Crypto wealth report shows how sharply digital-asset ownership narrows as wealth levels rise.
At the millionaire level, Bitcoin represents the majority of individual crypto wealth measured by the report. Henley estimates 92,272 Bitcoin millionaires, compared with 135,694 crypto millionaires across all digital assets. At the $100 million threshold, the report estimates 290 crypto centi-millionaires, of whom 151 hold at least $100 million in Bitcoin.
At the very top of the wealth distribution, the report estimates 23 crypto billionaires, with nine attributed to Bitcoin. Henley stresses that these figures are estimates rather than a simple count of publicly identified billionaires. Its methodology places the overall billionaire population within a range of 17 to 34 because many large holdings cannot be definitively attributed to individual owners.
The methodology starts with blockchain and market data before attempting to distinguish individuals from exchange, fund and other custodial wallets. Henley also accounts for lost Bitcoin, multiple wallets belonging to the same person and investors who hold Bitcoin through exchange-traded funds rather than directly on-chain.
That distinction is significant because blockchain addresses do not automatically represent individual people. Henley says 123,222 Bitcoin addresses held at least $1 million worth of Bitcoin on August 31, but its analysis reduced that figure to an estimated 92,272 individual Bitcoin millionaires after accounting for institutional and custodial holdings and other factors.
The Crypto wealth report arrives at a time when Bitcoin’s price has fallen substantially from its 2025 record.
Bitcoin reached about $126,080 in October 2025, according to the report. By the end of August 2026, it was approximately 38% below that level after recovering from a deeper mid-year decline. The entire cryptocurrency market was valued at approximately $2.62 trillion, with Bitcoin accounting for roughly $1.56 trillion.
Henley characterizes the 2026 downturn as comparatively moderate when measured against previous major Bitcoin cycles. That does not mean the decline has been insignificant: the report’s contributors point to volatility, leverage and portfolio concentration as continuing risks for digital-asset investors.
Jean-Marie Mognetti, co-founder, president and CEO of CoinShares, argued in the report that the arrival of regulated investment products has solved part of crypto’s traditional access problem but has not removed the underlying market risk.
“A regulated wrapper around a directional bet remains a directional bet.” — Jean-Marie Mognetti, Co-Founder, President and CEO, CoinShares.
The report therefore places considerable emphasis on what wealthy crypto holders do beyond simply holding digital assets. Custody, taxation, succession planning, regulatory compliance and geographical mobility are becoming increasingly important as large crypto fortunes intersect with conventional wealth-management systems.
A major theme of the Crypto wealth report is that cryptocurrency’s portability has changed the relationship between wealth and geography.
Unlike property, conventional businesses or many financial assets, cryptocurrency can be transferred across borders without physically moving the underlying asset. Henley argues that this makes the location of the owner increasingly important even when the wealth itself is highly portable.
“Crypto may be borderless, but the families who own it are not,” Dominic Volek, Henley & Partners’ Group Head of Private Clients, wrote in the report. “They still live, pay tax, educate their children, and operate within national legal and regulatory systems.”
That issue is reflected in the report’s Henley Crypto Adoption Index, which evaluates 36 countries that offer residence or citizenship pathways. The index considers more than 900 data points covering areas including regulation, taxation, infrastructure, innovation and adoption.
Singapore retained the top position for the fourth consecutive year. The UAE moved into second place, followed by Hong Kong, the United States and Switzerland. The UAE received a 10-out-of-10 score for tax-friendliness, with Henley citing the absence of taxes on crypto trading, staking and mining.
The Crypto wealth report also highlights the changing role of stablecoins and digital financial infrastructure in cross-border wealth management.
Dr. Guneet Kaur, an independent researcher in financial technologies and AI, said the movement of dollar liquidity is becoming faster across international financial centers.
“Dollar liquidity can now move between a Dubai custodian, a Singapore family office, and a European bank account inside minutes rather than days, without routing through a US correspondent bank at all.” — Dr. Guneet Kaur, independent researcher in financial technologies and AI.
The Crypto wealth report makes clear that its headline figures should be treated as estimates rather than a literal census of wealthy crypto owners.
Henley says its 2026 wealth calculations use market prices from August 31 and a new methodology based on public blockchain and market data. Because the methodology changed, the firm explicitly says the 2026 figures should not be compared directly with figures from previous editions, and the report does not present year-on-year changes for its wealth totals.
The methodology is particularly important at the upper end of the wealth scale. Henley estimates 290 people with more than $100 million in crypto by analysing the distribution of large blockchain addresses and adjusting for the proportion likely to belong to individuals rather than exchanges or funds. For billionaires, the firm combines publicly known holdings with estimates for unidentified large holders.
Even with those qualifications, the Crypto wealth report points to a sizeable pool of individuals whose fortunes are tied to digital assets. Its central finding is less about whether crypto has escaped market cycles than about how a new class of wealthy holders is interacting with taxation, regulation, financial institutions and international mobility.
For Henley & Partners, that makes the next stage of crypto wealth less about simply accumulating digital assets and more about determining how those assets are held, protected, transferred and managed across borders.
Bahrain also entered the Henley Crypto Adoption Index for the first time in 2026, ranking 13th among 36 countries.
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