A study released on July 2, 2018, says that Bitcoin is run by a small circle of whales who trade amongst each other and settle payments. Three researchers (Leonardo Ermann, Klaus Frahm, and Dima Shepelyansky) released a paper called "The Google Matrix of Bitcoin Transactions." They took information from the Blockchain and came up with the findings.
They studied ownership patterns from January 11, 2009, through April 10, 2013. Their findings relayed the majority of the Bitcoin Network was controlled by a hidden group of users who hold the majority of the total bitcoins in circulation.
The concept of Bitcoin being "ran" by a small group of whales is nothing new. For years people have speculated that Satoshi Nakamoto was actually a small group of large investors who controlled the wealth of Bitcoin. This study only provides validity to a widely held theory.
"We found the spectrum has an unusual circle-type structure which we attribute to existing hidden communities of nodes linked between their members. The Gini coefficient of the transactions for the whole period is close to unity showing that the main part of the wealth of the network is captured by a small fraction of users," says the research paper.
The research found this opaque circle settle transactions like banks and financial institutions do with fiat currency. Researchers didn't find a lot of detail about the customers of the users, nor did they find much about their wealth. This goes against the dogma of the Blockchain being transparent, an edict that is essential to the success of Bitcoin.
The "matrix" they created for the paper helped them rank which characteristics were important to finding relevant data for the study. The study found the main characteristics of the network's users were PageRank and CheiRank. This gave a spectrum of eigenvalues and related eigenvectors relevant to the study.
They found a tightly formed circular structure highlights a closed community involved in a long chain of transactions. Some speculate this is like what the SEC is investigating into the price manipulation of bitcoin trading on cryptocurrency exchanges.
Though this is a problem with the future of Bitcoin if the study is correct, others see it as Bitcoin deviating away from decentralization. Having a central circle controlling the value of the currency is totally distant from the notion of decentralization. But that's how it had to be from the beginning. Nothing has a value out of nowhere. Bitcoin gets its value from somewhere, and that somewhere has to be this mysterious inner circle posing as Satoshi Nakamoto.
There was never any doubt in my mind that an inner circle of super-users controlled the value of Bitcoin. This circle is secretive, opaque, and necessarily centralized. Their existence, proven by this study, is going to strengthen Bitcoin with traditional investors. If not wholely, there will at least be comfort in knowing there's a central unit working the business.
The study also found that Bitcoin has up to a few million users. Such large numbers are comforting when you think how only a few years ago this currency created in the wake of the 2008 banking crisis to find a safer currency than fiat.