Charlie’s Bitcoin assets are likely to be between 0 and 5000 BTC. The facts indicate that he likely owns more towards 0 BTC than 5000 BTC.
Let’s explore some more detail to shed some light on it.
Charly Shrem is an American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of BitInstant, and founding member of the Bitcoin Foundation.
Charlie started to invest in Bitcoin in 2011 when the price just hit the $1 mark. It is assumed that he acquired large amounts of Bitcoin at this point in time. However, the services to buy and store his Bitcoin wealth crashed and it is reported that Charlie lost much of his Bitcoin fortune—a fact that may have led him to found a better and more reliable service to buy and sell Bitcoin: BitInstant. (source)
As early investors in BitInstant, the Winkelvoss twins started to acquire large amounts of Bitcoin with Charlie’s help. In September 2018, the Winklevoss twins sued him claiming that he stole 5,000 of their bitcoins. (source)
However, Charlie argued that he “never personally owned the 5,000 bitcoins discussed above, nor have I ever personally owned 5,000 bitcoins all at one time.” (source)
It seems plausible that Charlie didn’t have access to the bitcoins based on this evaluation. (source)
There are different opinions on Charlie’s overall net worth:
This wealth was acquired as a business owner as Charlie is involved in different businesses and investments such as Podcasts, the cryptocurrency Dash, CryptoIQ, and Friend OS. (source)
Based on this information, we can conclude that Charlie owns between 0 and 5000 bitcoins. Although more than 30% of all Bitcoin purchases went through his startup BitInstant at one point in time, he didn’t acquire Bitcoin for himself. It is relatively unlikely that Charlie stole 5000 bitcoins from the Winkelvoss twins because the US justice system didn’t convict him a second time. So, Charlie’s bitcoin assets are likely to be more towards 0 BTC than 5000 BTC.