Here’s a few charts from my shared google sheet that hopefully add some clarity to this discussion.
This is the current state of known ADA supply of 31b today:
Once 14b staking rewards are concluded thru the minting process over the period of many years, there will be a total circulation of 45b ADA, and the state of ADA may look like this:
Thank you @lovelacepool As much as I appreciate useful charts, I think the charts you posted might give many people an incorrect perception of reality, especially if they haven’t spent a lot of time immersing their minds in the tabular data. Those charts make it seem like the “available supply” is avaiable to the entire open market, but we both know the reality is very different.
So, using the data from your wonderful AdaTracker, I think the chart should look more like this one if we want to portray a more accurate perception reality:
You’ve been immersed in the data longer than me, so you can probably create an even more granular and precise chart, but even if the precise numbers fluctuate a little over time, the fundamental reality should now be unmistakably clear when people see this chart.
And for more perspective: The richest man on Earth (Jeff Bezos) owns $121 billion as of today, but he controls much more than that through interlocking corporate board memberships, supply chain relationships, political campaign donations, and a long list of other pressure points throughout the U.S. economy that he can manipulate and control behind the scenes. That’s what being a “whale” means in every economy, i.e., their economic and political power grows exponentially as their financial wealth grows linearly. So, it’s easy for many people to underestimate the true adverse impact and influence that whales have on every economy, including our ADA economy.
Of course, we have many of these USD whales on the Forbes 400 list thrashing around our global economy. In fact, they’re the ones that are responsible for virtually all the dysfunction in our global economy today because they purchase their political influence with their whale wealth, which then enables them to shape and control the global economic and trade policies that are destroying our global economy. That’s what happens in every economy that is dominated by whales that cannot see beyond their own self-interest to do what is right for the broader ecosystem.
Now, consider that the concentration of wealth in our ADA economy is much more concentrated than the wealth in the USD economy. And the PoS algo statistically guarantees that 70-80% of all the stake rewards will fly straight to the ADA whales. That means all the future “available supply” in your chart will be sucked into the whale mouths unless there is a forced liquidation provision in their contracts that can be audited by independent auditors.
I have to wonder if the trickle sell has been in place, would explain why the price of ADA does not rise against the dollar with btc.
Its the same for all coins - cos you calculate the exchanges address as well 
Agreed. I’ve been using IOHK/Cardano Foundation interchangeably because “IOHK” is shorter to type and they’re both substantially controlled by the same brain trust.
There’s no question that the auditor did a fine job collecting data from the voucher sales, but of course that doesn’t really help resolve the core issue. In fact, it reinforces the fact that there is a problem because the audit report reveals that nearly 95% our global ADA economy is currently dominated by Japanese whales. Who are they? Is Toyota, Mitsubishi, Honda, Sumitomo or some other major multinational Japanese corporation the “group of Japanese investors” that Charles was talking about? Is the global ADA economy substantially controlled by corporations already ? I don’t know–who knows?
Nobody knows, which is what will lead to a widespread crisis of confidence over time. That’s why decentralization of wealth/power is the only solution.
BTW: I’ve been to Japan several times and I admire the Japanese for many reasons, but human nature is the same no matter the ethnicity. And anybody who has studied Japanese history knows how ruthless they can be if you don’t vote your ADA stake according to the emperor’s wishes. (jk)
Most large x-coin holders are smart enough to not keep their coins on an exchange; so, I’m not so sure that the exchanges represent even a majority of the wealth for any crypto. However, in this case, we’re able to easily see the exchange addresses and Binance only has a small amount of ADA and the other exchanges have tiny portions.
Regardless, we should not care what other coins are doing. I’m invested in this community because it’s supposed to be different from all the other joker coins. However, without a truly decentralized wealth/power structure, Cardano/ADA will never be more than a nice corporate blockchain with a loyal community of speculators.
That would be a shame because Cardano’s potential is far greater than that.
I think at least 10 % or more of ada is on exchanges! And its the same for all coins
@Adafans_io I wish that were true. For most coins, the exchange addresses do represent a substantial share of total wealth, but we already know 100% that is not the case for ADA. If you’re still not sure, please see the previous charts and discussion above to verify this yourself.
Thanks; this is a great post!
Can you pinpoint the address of upbit? i see you only mention binance, byt 80% of the volume is in korea atm…
@Adafans_io It’s easy to see all the exchange addresses with the AdaTracker rich list because they’re the addresses that have 100s of transactions associated with them. It’s not clear exactly which of those addresses is Upbit, but it’s absolutely clear which addresses are exchange addresses. So, based on that clarity, we can see that Upbit’s total share is tiny compared to even Binance, which only has 3.7% of the total ADA wealth.
Additionally, we know from the audit report that the voucher sale was offered only to a very small group, with 95% of the buyers based in Japan. What more proof do you need to confirm that the ADA concentration is very high? 
I only see 4 address with over 100tx https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/cardano/#markets - should be a little more then thhat 
That’s because none of the other exchanges have enough volume to even be displayed in the top-100 rich list. That’s why I’ve been saying that all the other exchanges represent only a tiny portion of the total ADA wealth right now compared to the off-exchange whale portion. So they’re irrelevant to this issue because they’re not the cause of the ADA concentration.
Smth is still wrong… ok lets look here at tx nr - https://adatracker.com/charts and let’s agree the only reason to tx is to move from the exchange to daedalus or the other way around. So we have epoch 17 with 40 000 tx - but your rich list of what you say is “all exchanges” - dont have anything near this
Those transactions are the thousands of late comers to the party buying and moving their petty ADA holdings between exchanges and wallet. Remember, back in Dec/Jan when it went to $1.20 or whatever and everyone including your hairdresser bought in - that’s that.
Be real, this project was initiated for a small number of people back in 2015, they paid for it, they own it, and they always will. You are window dressing.
@Adafans_io Up to this point, I assumed that @Lovelacepool’s identification of Binance as the third highest balance in the rich list (now it’s the second highest balance at this moment) was correct. However, after thinking about your comments and looking at the CoinMarketCap list, it seems pretty obvious that Upbit should have a higher balance than Binance because Upbit’s tx volume is about 8.5x larger than Binance’s volume.
So, I think I understand your point now and I don’t think the 2nd/3rd highest balance in the Rich List is owned by Binance anymore (It must be Upbit). However, that swap of the exchange-address pairs doesn’t change the fundamental reality: All exchange addresses collectively represent a tiny portion of the total ADA wealth–less than 5%.
Also, just to make sure we’re all on the same page: The data that is measured in the AdaTracker epoch chart is totally different from what is measured in the Rich List. For example, each epoch lasts for 20 hours; and within each epoch you can have many thousands of transactions (e.g., 40k in epoch 17), which includes all the exchanges and individual wallet transactions. Within each epoch you have many addresses executing transactions. But those transactions appear in the Rich List only if they are associated with an address that has a very high top-100 ADA balance. Thus, the Rich List helps us see the volume of transactions and total ADA balance attached to each of the top-100 balance addresses.
Since we know that only an exchange would have 100s of transactions, and there are only a few addresses in the top-100 Rich List that have 100s of transactions, we can reasonably infer that there are only a few exchanges that actually have high ADA balances. Thus, all the collective exchange balances represent only less than 5% of the total ADA wealth right now.
Another useful point is this: Volume is not the same as ADA balance. CoinMarketCap only displays daily volume, which has nothing to do with the actual ADA balance at any of those exchanges. In fact, the volume at most of those exchanges is very small. And since most ADA holders are smart enough to keep their ADA off the exchanges (especially in Japan where Mt. Gox collapsed), we can reasonably expect that exchange-based ADA balances are very small, which is confirmed in the Rich List.
I wonder if this is why the price slides sideways, while the other cryptos rise, even though the tech and team is so much better. Everyone who owns BTC mined it, or bought it at market. But these guys bought it for $0.002 in 2015, they will want to realize some of that gain, so you have a long queue of people with practically infinite tokens constantly trickle selling. Just a thought.
On the bright side, let’s not forget that “the Japanese are born hodlers, two decades of low-interest rates could not move them” as Chainomatic states, so I tend to think that they will not massively and collectively sell in the coming years, unless maybe if the price starts to reach highs such as 100$-500$ + (which I honestly don’t think possible), and even at those prices, I don’t think the Japanese will sell. They are in to create wealth for generations, it’s in their mentality. And they are the majority, so I’m not worried at all.
I can bet you didnt look close enough here - https://www.cardanohub.org/en/genesis-block-distribution/ its old info - and maybe you should have known this before investing? Look at the btc numbers invested… ppl whould have been whales even with keeping it in btc
