CZ Warns US Millionaires May Soon Be Priced Out of Owning a Whole Bitcoin

Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, has reignited the debate over Bitcoin's scarcity by arguing that even millionaires may soon struggle to afford a single whole coin. Zhao, widely known as CZ, pointed out that the number of millionaires in the United States alone now exceeds the total number of Bitcoin that will ever exist.

The comment came in response to analyst Quinten Francois, who cited the UBS Global Wealth Report 2026 showing that the U.S. is home to approximately 23.6 million millionaires. Bitcoin's protocol hard-caps supply at 21 million coins. As of August 2026, miners have produced roughly 20.07 million coins, leaving only about 4.4 percent of the total supply left to be mined.

"There are more US millionaires than there will ever be Bitcoin," Francois noted. Zhao's response was blunt: the math simply does not support every American millionaire owning even one full coin. Globally, the millionaire count reaches 57.5 million, nearly three times the maximum Bitcoin supply. If the mined supply were split evenly among them, each would receive about 0.35 BTC.

Zhao further tightened the scarcity argument by estimating that 10 to 20 percent of all mined Bitcoin is permanently lost or unrecoverable, locked in wallets whose private keys have been forgotten or destroyed. That would put the tradable float closer to 16 to 17 million coins.