When Binance launched in July 2017, fewer than 6 million people owned any form of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was trading somewhere around $2,500. Most of the world had either never heard of it o
When Binance launched in July 2017, fewer than 6 million people owned any form of cryptocurrency. Bitcoin was trading somewhere around $2,500. Most of the world had either never heard of it or had dismissed it as a passing experiment.
Nine years later, global crypto ownership has crossed 741 million people. Bitcoin has gained nearly 2,500 percent over that same period.
And Binance, the platform that launched into that niche market in 2017, now serves over 300 million registered users across more than 100 countries. That is roughly 43 percent of every crypto holder on the planet, using a single platform.
The numbers, shared by crypto analyst Ali Martinez on X, put a specific frame around what the crypto industry's growth actually looks like at scale.
Related: Top Tesla investor warns Saylor is destroying Bitcoin
What makes the broader adoption story more interesting right now is the timing. Bitcoin is not in a bull market.
It is sitting near $63,000, roughly 50 percent below its all-time high of $126,000, and the Fear and Greed Index is deep in extreme fear territory. And yet the network is growing.
Martinez flagged this week that the number of wallets holding one Bitcoin or more has increased by nearly 0.4 percent since June alone.
Trending on TheStreet RoundtableThat represents more than 4,000 new Bitcoin holders joining the network at a price most retail investors would describe as a painful drawdown.
The pattern is not new. Bitcoin's sharpest accumulation periods have historically come during its worst price stretches.
The people adding whole Bitcoin to their wallets right now are not momentum traders chasing a rally. They are making a deliberate decision to hold a scarce asset at a discount to its recent peak.
From 6 million crypto holders to 741 million in nine years, through crashes, regulatory crackdowns, exchange collapses, and bear markets. The number that keeps moving is not the price. It is the headcount.
