The number of unique addresses holding a positive (non-zero) amount of bitcoins has risen to record high, according to on-chain market intelligence firm Glassnode. 

Currently, there are 28,857,843 addresses holding positive balance, up 27 percent from 22,734,626 a year ago. Bitcoin’s price is also reporting a 150 percent gain on a 24-hour basis. 

The cryptocurrency, however, is still down over 50 percent from the record high of $20,000 reached in December 2017. Meanwhile, the number of addresses with positive balances is hovering well above the previous record high of 28,118,737 registered on Jan. 14, 2018. 

The number of addresses with balances of one or more bitcoins has also seen solid growth in the last 12 months. As of January, there were 784,000 addresses holding one or more bitcoins, up nearly 11 percent from 707,000 seen a year ago. The metric has more than doubled since 2015.

Some observers think the rise in the number of non-zero addresses is a sign of increased adoption and distribution. 

"The steady rise is the result of accumulation by retail buyers," Connor Abendschein, crypto research analyst at Digital Assets Data, told CoinDesk. 

That argument, however, could be criticized on grounds that there is no one-to-one connection between the number of addresses and the number of users. After all, one user can hold more than one bitcoin address. Further, exchanges tend to hold above bitcoins in a number of addresses.