Bitcoin (BTC) White Paper Marks 18 Years as U.S. ETFs Hold 1.28M BTC

U.S. spot Bitcoin (BTC) funds held about 1.28 million coins on Oct. 31, equal to 6.36% of circulating supply, as the Bitcoin white paper reached its 18th anniversary.

The anniversary marks publication of the document, rather than the start of Bitcoin’s network. Satoshi Nakamoto posted the nine-page paper to a cryptography mailing list on Oct. 31, 2008. It described electronic payments moving between users without a bank and a public transaction ledger secured by proof-of-work. Bitcoin’s first block was mined Jan. 3, 2009.

An early exchange rate published in 2009 valued BTC at about $0.000764. Bitcoin crossed $1,000 in 2013, moved above $100,000 for the first time in December 2024 and set a record intraday price of $126,223 on Oct. 6, 2025. At the Sunday snapshot, BTC traded about 39% below that record.

At 7:18 a.m. ET (12:18 UTC) Sunday, Nov. 1, BTC traded near $77,300, with a market value near $1.55 trillion. The quote came the morning after the white paper’s anniversary date.

U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs began trading in January 2024. As of Oct. 31, they held about 1.28 million BTC, equivalent to about 6.36% of circulating supply. Their combined net assets totaled about $102.97 billion at the 7:18 a.m. ET snapshot on Nov. 1. BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT) had about $66 billion in assets at the same snapshot. The holdings figure counts BTC, while net assets are expressed in dollars.

Strategy held 848,517 BTC as of Oct. 25. Its corporate treasury and the U.S. fund holdings are separate BTC positions measured on different dates.

Bitcoin’s maximum supply is 21 million coins. The 20 millionth BTC was mined March 9, 2026, leaving fewer than 1 million to be issued. The network’s block reward began at 50 BTC and is cut in half every 210,000 blocks, a process that has occurred about every four years. The April 2024 halving set the reward at 3.125 BTC per block, and the next halving is due in 2028. Bitcoin’s software sets the 21 million cap; the white paper did not. Full issuance is expected around 2140.