Staking Dominance
I was looking at the latest data on Ethereum holders and honestly the numbers are pretty striking. The ETH2 Beacon deposit contract now holds over 80.8 million ETH. This represents approximately 67% of the total supply. Think about this for a second: two-thirds of all Ethereum is locked to secure the proof-of-stake network.
When you do the math, that’s about $160.4 billion worth of ETH at current prices. The percentage also increased, from 63.2% just a few weeks ago. Each ETH staked represents one less token circulating on exchanges, which has real implications on liquidity and price pressure.
Stock market participations and traditional finance
Centralized exchanges come next in terms of holdings. Among the top twenty platforms, they control over 15.6 million ETH. This represents approximately 12.9% of the total supply. But here’s what’s interesting: it’s not just the usual crypto exchanges.
Robinhood holds 1.57 million ETH, which surprised me a bit. DBS Bank from Singapore and Revolut from the United Kingdom also made the list. These are not crypto-native companies, which tells you something about how traditional finance is getting involved.
Institutional actors and layer 2
BlackRock is in third place overall with 3.17 million ETH, supporting its Ethereum ETF. That’s about $6.3 billion. Recent weeks, however, have seen capital outflows from ETH ETFs, amid broader market volatility.
There’s an interesting data point about Bitmine: Arkham’s tracker shows around 1 million ETH, but the company’s disclosed information indicates that they actually hold around 4.3 million. The difference? Around 3 million ETH are staked, and Arkham reclassifies the staked ETH under the validator labels rather than the legal entity.
The Ethereum Foundation itself holds 172,374 ETH, which seems relatively modest for the organization behind the network.
Layer 2 bridges and smart contracts represent another 4.4 million ETH. This reflects the amount of value currently flowing through Ethereum’s scaling infrastructure.
Other considerations
Individual early holders control less ETH than a single mid-tier exchange, which speaks volumes about how ownership has changed over time.
There is also the issue of seized and stolen funds – more than 720,000 ETH stored in wallets linked to criminal activity or defunct platforms. None of this is permanently locked, so whoever controls these keys can move the funds at any time.
When you step back and look at the bigger picture, the concentration in staking, trading, and institutional treasuries suggests a maturing network. But it also raises questions about centralization. When a handful of exchanges and one asset manager control billions of ETH, their stake, withdrawal, and liquidation decisions can have an outsized impact on the market.
As stake participation continues to rise, Layer 2 bridges absorb more ETH, and hundreds of thousands of tokens are stuck in problematic wallets, circulating supply continues to tighten in multiple directions. For traders and holders, keeping an eye on these feeds via on-chain tools seems like an interesting exercise.
