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Twenty-three people in the world hold more than a billion dollars in digital assets, and nine of them got there through Bitcoin alone.
The count comes from the Crypto Wealth Report 2026, published on Tuesday by Henley & Partners, the London firm that advises wealthy individuals on acquiring residence and citizenship in other countries. Its figures are based on market prices as at Aug. 31.
Below the billionaires sit 290 people holding $100 million or more, of whom 151 are in Bitcoin, and 135,694 holding at least $1 million, of whom 92,272 are Bitcoin millionaires.
The base is far broader. Some 742 million people now hold digital assets in some amount, 371 million of them Bitcoin, and that ownership kept widening even as prices fell.
The global crypto market is worth $2.6 trillion, of which $1.6 trillion is Bitcoin. Bitcoin trades roughly 38 percent below the peak it reached in October 2025, having recovered from a mid-year slump when it was down more than half.
By historical standards that is mild. The declines that followed the 2011, 2013, 2017 and 2021 peaks each cut the price by more than 75 percent.
Where the money is going
Henley publishes the report alongside an index ranking 36 countries on how they treat digital assets, drawn from more than 900 data points across regulation, tax, infrastructure, innovation and adoption. Every country assessed offers a residence or citizenship pathway for investors.
Singapore leads for the fourth consecutive year and holds the highest score for innovation and technology. The United Arab Emirates comes second, up from fifth, scoring ten out of ten on tax friendliness with no tax on crypto trading, staking or mining. Hong Kong is third, the United States fourth as the only country scoring a perfect ten for public adoption, and Switzerland fifth.
Malta ranks sixth with the strongest regulatory environment score, followed by Thailand, the United Kingdom, Cyprus and the Bahamas.
New entrants include the Bahamas at tenth, the Cayman Islands at twelfth, Bahrain at thirteenth, Argentina at 26th, the Maldives at 31st, Naoero at 32nd and Paraguay at 35th. No African country appears among those the firm named.
Dubai established the world's first standalone regulator for virtual assets in 2022. Singapore licenses digital asset services through its central bank and charges individual investors no capital gains tax. Switzerland exempts private capital gains and hosts the blockchain cluster at Zug. Bahrain became the first Gulf state to write a dedicated framework for stablecoins in 2025.
Why a citizenship firm is publishing this
The report's argument is that digital assets have broken the link between wealth and geography, and that this makes where the owner lives more important rather than less.
"Crypto may be borderless, but the families who own it are not," said Dominic Volek, group head of private clients at Henley & Partners. "They still live, pay tax, educate their children, and operate within national legal and regulatory systems. Crypto changes the traditional equation: the asset may no longer need the jurisdiction, but the owner still does."
Guenther Dobrauz-Saldapenna, the firm's managing partner in Switzerland, said a self-custodied digital asset can move with its owner almost instantly, where traditional wealth crosses borders slowly or not at all.
Henley sells residence and citizenship planning, so it has a commercial interest in that conclusion. The firm says it has raised more than $15 billion in foreign direct investment through government advisory work on citizenship programmes.
Some of those programmes now accept crypto directly. Antigua and Barbuda recognises documented digital assets when applicants evidence their source of funds, and St Kitts and Nevis admits them as a partial source of wealth.
Due diligence remains the obstacle. "A wallet can show that value exists," said Daniel Hartnett, who runs enhanced due diligence at LSEG Risk Intelligence. "It cannot tell the whole story of the person behind it."
The transparency deadline
Seventy-six jurisdictions have signed up to the OECD's reporting framework for crypto assets, and the first exchanges of information between 46 of them are due in September 2027.
The European Union's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation took full effect in December 2024, creating a single rulebook across 30 countries and removing much of the scope for member states to compete on national crypto rules. Portugal exempts gains on digital assets held more than a year. Italy pairs a residence-by-investment route with a flat tax on foreign income that has risen twice in two years, to €300,000.
Henley's separate wealth mobility framework, which weighs investor access, quality of life and rule of law alongside tax, put the UAE first at 85.3 out of 100, ahead of Singapore at 79.5, New Zealand at 75.8, the Cayman Islands at 74.3 and Cyprus at 73.5.
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