Key takeaways: 

• Around 70% of all ETH is held by just 10 addresses, but most belong to staking contracts, exchanges or funds, not individual whales.

• Nearly half of all ETH sits in a single smart contract: the Beacon Deposit Contract that powers Ethereum’s proof-of-stake system.

• Big institutions like BlackRock, Fidelity and listed companies now hold millions of ETH, turning Ether into a serious treasury asset.

• ETH ownership has moved on from early adopters. Today, it’s all about the platforms and services building on top of it.

As of August 2025, onchain data shows that the top 10 Ether (ETH) holders control around 83.9 million ETH (about 70% of the total circulating supply).

So, the community has started asking: Who actually holds the majority of ETH? The answer points to protocol-level smart contracts, major exchanges, exchange-traded fund (ETF) trusts and even public companies.

This article explores the Ether rich list of 2025, from the Beacon staking contract and Coinbase’s hot wallets to BlackRock’s ETHA trust and Vitalik Buterin’s legendary holdings.

Top Ether addresses by balance

Ether’s circulating supply as of mid‑2025 stands at approximately 120.71 million ETH. Following the Pectra upgrade in May, issuance has stabilized near net zero. This provides the backdrop for understanding Ether ownership distribution.

As briefly explored, the top 10 Ether addresses hold 83.9 million ETH as of Aug. 4, 2025 (roughly 70% of the total supply). 

Looking wider, the top 200 wallets account for over 52%, holding more than 62.76 million ETH (most of these holdings are tied to staking contracts, exchange liquidity, token bridges or custodial funds). Unlike inactive Bitcoin whale addresses, these Ether whale addresses are actively used infrastructure, which reflects ETH’s ability to adequately power staking, decentralized finance (DeFi) and institutional operations.

Who owns the most Ether in 2025?

As of Aug. 4, 2025, the Beacon Deposit Contract holds approximately 65.88 million ETH, representing about 54.58% of the total circulating supply of 120.71 million ETH. 

These figures are broadly consistent with March 2025 reports, which estimated the share at around 55.6% (see figure below).

This smart contract is the entry point for Ethereum validators, each of whom must deposit at least 32 ETH to participate in securing the network.

Even after withdrawal functionality was enabled in 2023, funds aren’t instantly liquid. Validators must exit the active set, wait around 27 hours for the unbonding period and then rely on a protocol-controlled sweep to release ETH. 

This makes the Beacon contract the largest ETH holder — not a person, but the network itself. 

With slashing penalties and structured exits, it ensures validator accountability. Still, some critics argue that concentrating half the supply in a single contract introduces systemic risks in the event of coordinated exits or protocol-level bugs.

Did you know? The Wrapped Ether (WETH) smart contract also ranks as one of the largest ETH holders, currently holding over 2.26 million ETH (around 1.87% of the circulating supply).

The second-largest ETH wallets

As of Aug. 22, 2025, these exchanges and custodians rank among the largest ETH holders:

• Coinbase: 4.93 million ETH (around 4.09% of supply)

• Binance: 4.23 million ETH (around 3.51%)

• Bitfinex: 3.28 million ETH (around 2.72%)

• Base Network bridge: 1.71 million ETH (around 1.4%)

• Robinhood: 1.66 million ETH (around 1.37%)

• Upbit: 1.36 million ETH (around 1.13%).

These addresses represent a layer of active infrastructure where Ether is used for the purpose of backing exchange liquidity, staking derivatives like cbETH and bridging assets across chains. 

Biggest ETH wallets in 2025

As of late July 2025, BlackRock’s iShares Ethereum Trust (ETHA) drove a major shift in institutional ETH ownership. With $9.74 billion in net inflows, ETHA now (August 2025) holds over 3 million ETH (about 2.5% of the total supply), making it one of the biggest ETH wallets of 2025.

Grayscale’s ETHE remains a key player, with 1.13 million ETH under management. Fidelity’s Ethereum Fund (FETH), launched in 2024, has reached $1.4 billion in inflows, while Bitwise is pivoting from Bitcoin-only exposure to ETH-based mandates with staking features.

Together, these institutions now control over 5 million ETH (4.4% of supply), thus changing the picture for ETH holding patterns. They represent a new class of DeFi millionaires who are regulated, ETF-based and staking-aware. 

Corporate Ether whale addresses

A growing number of public companies is now following a playbook similar to Strategy’s Bitcoin (BTC) plan (but with staking) to treat ETH as a treasury asset. Examples include, but are not limited to:

• Bitmine Immersion Technologies (NYSE: BMNR) holds more than 776,000 ETH (around $2 billion), funded by a $250-million PIPE round.

• SharpLink Gaming (Nasdaq: SBET) has acquired around 480,000 ($1.65 billion) since June.

• Bit Digital (Nasdaq: BTBT) holds around 120,000 ETH, having moved from Bitcoin post-equity raise.

• BTCS (Nasdaq: BTCS) reports around 70,028 ETH (around $275 million), funded by convertible notes.

Most of this ETH is actively staked and earns around 3%-5% APY. These firms cite Ethereum’s programmability, stablecoin ecosystem and regulatory clarity (like the GENIUS Act) as the foundation for their ETH strategies. 

This new ETH billionaire list includes not just individuals but corporate treasuries betting on Ether’s long-term value.

The ETH billionaire list

While smart contracts and institutions dominate the Ethereum rich list 2025, a few individuals still stand out as major ETH holders.

Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum’s co-founder, is widely believed to hold between 250,000 and 280,000 ETH (around $950 million), mostly across a small number of non-custodial wallets, including the well-known VB3 address.

Rain Lõhmus, co-founder of LHV Bank, bought 250,000 ETH during the 2014 initial coin offering (ICO) but lost access to the private key. His coins remain untouched, now worth close to $900 million.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, early investors and founders of Gemini, are thought to personally control 150,000-200,000 ETH, separate from Gemini’s exchange treasury of over 360,000 ETH.

Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and head of ConsenSys, is estimated to retain approximately 500,000 ETH (around $1.2 billion), though it has never been officially confirmed.

Anthony Di Iorio, another Ethereum co-founder, reportedly holds 50,000-100,000 ETH.

Did you know? As of early 2025, Etherscan data showed over 130 million unique addresses, yet fewer than 1.3 million hold at least 1 ETH, less than 1% of the total. That single ETH puts you in rare company on the Ether rich list of 2025.

How to track Ethereum ownership distribution

Identifying the top Ether holders in 2025 relies on tools like Nansen’s Token God Mode, Dune Analytics and Etherscan. These platforms categorize wallets by behavior, linking them to exchanges, funds, smart contracts or individuals.

• Token God Mode maps wallet clusters to known entities, tracks inflows/outflows and ranks the biggest ETH wallets in 2025. 

• Dune dashboards use schema tables like “labels.addresses” to separate externally owned accounts (EOAs) from smart contracts and exchanges, generating insights into public Ethereum addresses and ETH holding patterns.

• Etherscan tags wallets based on transaction history, attribution or user-submitted evidence, supporting crypto wallet transparency. Together, these sources help outline Ether ownership distribution.

However, limits remain. Reused deposit addresses can inflate figures, cold wallets may evade clustering, and privacy techniques obscure real control. Even the top 200 Ethereum addresses by balance likely include fragmented or mislabeled entities. ETH address rankings reflect a mix of certainty and statistical inference, not full visibility.

Did you know? One of the oldest untouched ETH wallets (likely from the 2014 ICO) still holds around 250,000 ETH (around 0.2% of supply) and hasn’t moved a gwei in nearly a decade.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

The CEO of Tether Holdings, Paolo Ardoino, is highlighting that the USDT stablecoin is largely backed by an asset widely regarded as safe and highly liquid.

In a new CNBC interview, Ardoino says if Tether were a country, the USDT issuer would rank among the top 20 largest foreign holders of US Treasuries.

“We have $152 billion now in issued tokens. And we have $172 billion in total reserves. We have more than $125 billion in US Treasuries, and the rest is very, very high liquid assets.

We own more Treasuries than Germany. Well, Tether is not a nation, but if we were a nation, we would be the 18th-largest nation holding US Treasuries.

We have more Treasuries than Germany, UAE [United Arab Emirates], Spain, Australia and we are growing. Our approach is to keep growing our US Treasuries base.”

As of March, Germany and the UAE held $111.4 billion and $104.4 billion in US Treasuries, respectively, according to US Treasury data. The countries that hold more US Treasuries than Tether as of March are Japan, China, the United Kingdom, Cayman Islands, Canada, Luxembourg, Belgium, France, Ireland, Switzerland, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Brazil, Norway, Saudi Arabia and South Korea.

Last week, the U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said stablecoins could serve as a major source of demand for the government debt.

“I’ve seen estimates that just over the short term, stablecoins could create $2 trillion of demand for US Treasuries and Treasury bills. Put that in context, the number is probably about $300 billion right now…”

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The US medical tech firm Semler Scientific has added another $50 million worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to its corporate treasury.

A new filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) indicates the firm acquired 455 Bitcoin between May 13th and May 22nd at an average purchase price of $109,801 per BTC, including fees and expenses.

Semler now holds 4,264 Bitcoin, which it acquired for an aggregate price of $390 million at an average purchase price of $91,471 per BTC.

With BTC trading at $107,322 at time of writing, the medical tech’s holdings are currently worth more than $457.6 million.  The top-ranked crypto asset by market cap is down nearly 4% in the past 24 hours after hitting a new all-time high of $111,814 on Thursday.

Eric Semler, the founder and chairman of the firm’s board of directors, notes his company has generated a BTC yield of 25.8% year-to-date.

Data from BitcoinTreasuries.net indicates that Semler Scientific is now the 13th-ranked company in the world in terms of BTC holdings.

In May 2024, the firm became the second publicly traded company in the US to adopt a Bitcoin treasury policy, following Strategy (formerly known as MicroStrategy). Strategy, which first started investing in the asset back in 2020, has the largest corporate Bitcoin treasury in the world and currently holds 576,230 BTC worth $62.14 billion.

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Brown University is now a Bitcoin (BTC) investor.

The Ivy League institution holds 105,000 shares of BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (IBIT), per a recent filing submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The filing valued the shares at $4.915 million, though with IBIT priced at $55.19 per share at time of writing, that total is now worth $5.79 million.

Brown’s investment follows two other notable examples of higher educational institutions buying BTC.

Emory University, a private research institution in Atlanta, holds 2,678,906 shares of the Grayscale Bitcoin Mini Trust ETF, per a filing submitted to the SEC last year.

The school also bought 4,312 shares of the crypto exchange Coinbase’s stock.

And the University of Austin (UATX), which enrolled its first cohort last fall, announced plans last year to invest in a $5 million long-term endowment fund held in Bitcoin.

Chad Thevenot, UATX’s senior vice president for advancement, says the university views investing in crypto assets the same way it sees investing in other asset classes.

“We think there is long-term value there, just the same way that we might think there is long-term value in stocks or real estate.”

Bitcoin is trading at $96,723 at time of writing and is up more than 2% in the past seven days.

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