17 ms·

Bitcoin Is Now Bigger Than Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley

47 points by chanfest22 9y ago

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
Kevin_S 9y ago
Comparing the market capitalization of Bitcoin to GS or MS is pretty useless. Only interesting info here is the basic fact that today's price hike is bringing BTC close to a $100 million market cap. Pretty crazy to think about for a thing I passed on buying for $20 a pop.
- sowbug 9y ago
  billion, not million.
- olegkikin 9y ago
  $100 billion, not $100 million.
- rashkov 9y ago
  that "market cap" formula is simply the number of outstanding bitcoins multiplied by the current price. Completely made up and fairly meaningless
  - billmalarky 9y ago
    >Completely made up and fairly meaningless That's the total value of bitcoin at the moment. How is that made up and meaningless?
    - hawkice 9y ago
      Market cap is frequently a less-than-useful metric, but for a "currency" like Bitcoin, it means almost nothing. We have no idea, really, how much is circulating, how much is permanently lost, and there's no transaction where the market cap really plays a part.
      - rothbardrand 9y ago
        Well, you can calculate exactly how much is circulating on the blockchain, though off chain places like exchanges and the like represent even more volume. Curious why this statement of fact is being downvoted.
      - billmalarky 9y ago
        The value of bitcoin seems to trend more and more towards being a digital wealth store over a currency. In that case BTC "market cap" is a somewhat useful indicator of how much wealth is stored. It's rough but market caps in general are, especially early stage companies.
    - rashkov 9y ago
      ah, you're right that is a standard measure for market capitalization
  - BenoitP 9y ago
    It does not have absolute meaning, but it is a good relative measure -coupled with order book depth-.
pdog 9y ago
Would you rather own all of Bitcoin (current market cap: $100B) or all of a company with $10B in annual operating income? If it's the former, why?
- RasputinsBro 9y ago
  I would rather own all of Bitcoin. I'd sell it tomorrow and make about $1bn in profit and move on with my life. EDIT: I'm editing this because people are missing the point. My point wasn't about how when 1 owner has absolute control BTC is worthless like this guy[1] seems to think or about the liquidity of BTC, like this guy[2] seems to think. My point was about the fact that the difference between BTC is that the only use it has is holding and hoping it moves up, whereas owning a company actually brings in earnings. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=code-is-code https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=code-is-code [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jawilson2 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jawilson2
  - code-is-code 9y ago
    If you, a single person, owns all bitcoin, noone would buy a single satoshi from you.
    - RasputinsBro 9y ago
      Ok, I would own 1/4 of all bitcoin and make only $250m profit tomorrow. Happy? Do you miss the forest for the trees a lot, or only when you're on HN?
      - sp527 9y ago
        You seem to be someone who’s not aware of how thin the liquidity is in crypto markets.
        michaelbuckbee 9y ago
        Thank you. Is there an economics term or ratio or something that encapsulates this? In my mind, it's conceptually similar to elastic/inelastic demand curves.
osrec 9y ago
An interesting way to put it... Almost like saying the market cap of the British Pound is bigger than Goldman and MS!
- RasputinsBro 9y ago
  Except people are actually using GBP for something. BTC is just people holding on to it hoping it goes up. Put differently, are there any circumstances where people would buy GBP expecting it to go down? What about BTC? That right there tells you the difference between the two.
  - rothbardrand 9y ago
    Not really. I get paid in BTC and I pay my bills with it, buy things on amazon via Purse with it, etc. There are a great many people building businesses on the unique features of BTC. This "nobody uses BTC" meme needs to die-- yes, it is still the early days, it's a new technology. We're still in the "hey I got a personal home page on the information super highway!" stage of adoption-- but that didn't mean the internet was useless.... and we haven't even gotten to the bull market and pets.com era. It would be silly to say the web was useless since nobody needs their own homepage.
    - RasputinsBro 9y ago
      You pay your bills with BTC? Don't you mean that you pay your bills with USD, which you buy by selling BTC?
      - rothbardrand 9y ago
        Depends on the bill. But yes, you can use a bitcoin backed credit card for a lot of bills, and the biller gets paid in dollars which are converted from the bitcoin balance on the card. It is a bit of a challenge.
    - foepys 9y ago
      > I get paid in BTC Out of curiosity: Do you get paid x BTC per month/week or do you get x $/€/£/etc. in BTC?
forkLding 9y ago
I think this could pose a problem in the future for Bitcoin. Bitcoin was meant to be a decentralized vehicle of value that you could use to trade or buy things. However recently its being treated more as a stock and being stockpiled so I no longer see people as willing to pay for different services etc with Bitcoin as they used to because they can gain more value by waiting which goes against Bitcoin's intent as an independent vehicle of value. Even though one could argue that Bitcoin has the status of gold but gold is not something one commonly trades or uses to buy food etc in a normal non-disaster scenario. EDIT: Because this comment is bringing a lot of attention, I would like to reiterate my stance on Bitcoin. I'm supportive of Bitcoin, I would like a decentralized currency that is not tied to the importance of any country or government and as well can be used to foster trade between countries simply because it is much easier to just buy foreign goods than in the current state due to import duties, etc. Moreover, I see the world moving towards more coming together as a whole than fighting over lands and other issues that don't directly benefit humanity from using Bitcoin. However my problem is the fast-increasing price of bitcoin is increasingly headed towards the playground of high net-worth individuals or organizations/investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and no longer being able to be traded between normal people who don't have their deep pockets or are scared away by the pricing which prevents Bitcoin from becoming a worldwide vehicle of value to be used for common transactions and sort of deviates from the original intent. I also know one can trade decimal value Bitcoin for food and it could the volatile nature at play but it defeats the purpose if one needs to first check the Bitcoin markets before deciding on an eventual decimal value amount for the food paid.
- olegkikin 9y ago
  You can buy a better computer by waiting. Does that stop you from buying computers? Considering how easily people invest cryptocurrencies into quite risky ICOs, you can see that people don't have any problem spending, as long as it's something they consider valuable.
  - lmm 9y ago
    > You can buy a better computer by waiting. Does that stop you from buying computers? On the margin, yes. It doesn't stop me from ever doing it, but it does mean I put off upgrading as long as possible.
nullsmack 9y ago
So what happens if/when the market crashes? Worse than subprime mortgages? Will it be 2007/8 all over again?
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  Early on, I expect that Bitcoin will have lower prices when the Fiat market crashes, because people will sell assets to raise money to cover margin calls. However, Bitcoin generally has rallies whenever government tries to control markets in a crisis-- for example Cypress forcing everyone to take a haircut -- a lot of people moved to bitcoin to protect their assets. As governments continue to mismanage their economies and their currencies, this is bullish for bitcoin because it was designed to solve these problems once and for all, or at least try to.
  - sova 9y ago
    What do you mean when you say the crash of the Fiat market? Could you give me an example to help understand?
    - rothbardrand 9y ago
      Probably easiest to read that as "the stock market" but I mean stocks, bonds, treasuries and other assets. We had market crashes in 2001 and 2008, and there is another one likely in the next couple of years, I expect. Quantitative Easing has given us a fiat bubble across many asset classes, and I expect it will crash, and Bitcoin will be hurt in the short term and then rally in the medium term as the crash continues... Hope that makes it clearer.
      - sova 9y ago
        That makes it very clear, thank you. So, let's say the Fiat markets go down holistically and people have assets in the Fiat markets like stocks. The market trends downward for a while and people sell their assets to avoid the "crash" or potential "forever loss" of assets. So, people will also likely sell their bitcoins off at this time, and in general the price will be lower for a good sprint. Thanks for clarifying, I believe I caught your gist.
creatrixcordis 9y ago
When "the bitcoin" starting gaining momentum, i thought that "bitcoin" and the public distributed ledger was an exercise to see if the psychology of people has evolved to reduce the dependence on institutions and find out if inequality is because of these institutions or the 1%. However as we are finding out, the same problems are arising but with new technology. The ones with money to risk are playing the game and the public distributed ledger and bitcoin is yet to show us anything different other than the status quo. Who gives a shit if it's decentralized and "transparent" if the problems that a lot of people touted bitcoin/blockchain would "solve" are just replicated. Kinda like who cares if there are many choices, if you don't have the capital to exercise those choices. I am beginning to think that bitcoin is just another channel to speculate on that promises anonymity but fails badly at it. Maybe it's pre-packaging as an antidote to pre-bitcoin financial structure was empty. I don't see how the average world citizen is able to invest with these prices, therefore aiding mobility. I thought wrong... but sure wish i bought it when it was $20 :)
- jstanley 9y ago
  OK then, enlighten me. In what ways does Bitcoin recreate the status quo problems of (1) the central bank being able to print arbitrary amounts of money, and (2) all individual-to-individual payments subject to censorship by a very small number of third-parties?
  - twayamznacct 9y ago
    (1) Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, etc. Effectively "printing money". Perhaps not entirely arbitrary, as it's limited to the number of bitcoins in existence in the "main" chain at the time of the fork, but good enough. (2) There are a very small number of third parties that control the vast majority of hashing power
  - creatrixcordis 9y ago
    There is nothing in the protocol that will prevent anyone from hoarding or buying large amounts of bitcoin because they already have the capital to begin with. Therefore you can think of those people as similar to institutions or the 1%. So bitcoin is just another investment mechanism. That's all. No panacea here, just an over-hyped new technology that helps create profit for the ones who already have money. One that currently is only available to people who have enough resources to risk. The panacea that "bitcoin" was touted as across the web and forums galore, is just utter bs. I see a world of many private blockchain implementations but nothing that solves these censorship and printing money issues you speak of. Since according to popular theory when you print money your currency get devalued, but bitcoin also goes down when a gov say we don't like it or someone decides to start cashing in at a large scale or overhype of an issue or underhype of another. The end result is the same, less value. But here are your answers: 1) You live and take advantage of many things you might take for granted in a society that has a certain framework that must be maintained by service providers and it is maintained implicitly by the hordes of people on earth, when greed occurs or kinks in the system happen, printing money or not printing money are just tools to deal with issues. 2) Last time i bought something on craigslist, ebay, alibaba, amazon or from Sandy down the street i don't remember any censorship. I could be mistaken though. Maybe i did not think about something. I would like to see an example of this payment censorship you say largely affected your personal life. Now definitely if you are trying to buy armored tanks, automatic weapons, drugs, women, censored dildos, yeah i could definitely see censorship. I just don't try to buy those things. :) Don't get mad now, my sense of humor is an acquired taste :)
jaltekruse 9y ago
Wouldn't it make more sense to compare the value of all of the bitcoins to the total assets under management of the large banks? Many of them manage over a trillion in assets. Bitcoin is designed to be a replacement for bank accounts and credit cards in a sense, just without all of the centralized authority and meat powered overhead to keep everyone trusting it. Its kind of crazy that it has worked out so well. While there have been significant investments on hardware to power the network, I'd have to assume the cost of maintaining the network is pennies compared to what a bank spends to manage assets. That is the real disruptive power of bitcoin.
- sova 9y ago
  You know just recently I did my own research in this vein. I looked at the total number of USD in circulation, worldwide. In 1990 it is reported that the number of USD in circulation surpassed 1Trillion. If we make BTC the new "gold standard" to back every single dollar bill in existence, that makes every bitcoin worth about $100. Now, since 1990 was over 17 years ago, if we assume that the figure has perhaps doubled to 2Trillion dollars in circulation (somewhere between 1 and 2 Trillion certainly) then one bitcoin is worth about $50.00 One bitcoin today runs for about $5,700.00 Anyway, just a very interesting thing, because if you divide the total number of dollars by the total number of bitcoins, you get the figures above ($50 - $100 per coin) Which means, using my super simple maths, that bitcoin, as an international bank, is currently performing at 1/10th the cost :)
  - rothbardrand 9y ago
    Gold's money supply is about $8T, and I think Dollars (not just physical bills) is much bigger-- at least $20T. I think your math is off. Bitcoin is approaching a $100B market cap, and there are only 21 million bitcoins that will ever be in existence. To match the dollars $20T total supply (a low end number depending on which money supply number you use it could be a multiple of that) then each bitcoin would be worth about $1M. To match gold in market cap, would be $380,000 per bitcoin. Truth is, though, when bitcoin comes into its own, the value of the dollar will drop (well, its true value will be realized) so prices would likely be much higher... assuming bitcoin succeeds and becomes a common world currency.
rothbardrand 9y ago
You can buy a fraction of a bitcoin! People don't seem to get this. Unlike Berkeshire Hathaway or any other stock, you don't have to buy a whole unit. BRKA shares at 6 figures are out of range for most people because you have to buy at least one whole share. Bitcoin is divisible down to the satoshi-- 100,000,000th of a bitcoin. That's too small to transact in currently, but there's nothing stopping you from buying 0.1 or 0.01 bitcoin.
petraeus 9y ago
Bitcoin is just another virtual assets, like .. paper gold. Its never going to be a currency. The whole model is flawed.
kapauldo 9y ago
Anyone know what the ratio of payment transactions over speculation transactions is with Bitcoin? Is it knowable?

47 points by chanfest22 9y ago

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

Comparing the market capitalization of Bitcoin to GS or MS is pretty useless. Only interesting info here is the basic fact that today's price hike is bringing BTC close to a $100 million market cap. Pretty crazy to think about for a thing I passed on buying for $20 a pop.

sowbug 9y ago
billion, not million.
olegkikin 9y ago
$100 billion, not $100 million.
rashkov 9y ago
that "market cap" formula is simply the number of outstanding bitcoins multiplied by the current price. Completely made up and fairly meaningless
- billmalarky 9y ago
  >Completely made up and fairly meaningless That's the total value of bitcoin at the moment. How is that made up and meaningless?
  - hawkice 9y ago
    Market cap is frequently a less-than-useful metric, but for a "currency" like Bitcoin, it means almost nothing. We have no idea, really, how much is circulating, how much is permanently lost, and there's no transaction where the market cap really plays a part.
    - rothbardrand 9y ago
      Well, you can calculate exactly how much is circulating on the blockchain, though off chain places like exchanges and the like represent even more volume. Curious why this statement of fact is being downvoted.
    - billmalarky 9y ago
      The value of bitcoin seems to trend more and more towards being a digital wealth store over a currency. In that case BTC "market cap" is a somewhat useful indicator of how much wealth is stored. It's rough but market caps in general are, especially early stage companies.
  - rashkov 9y ago
    ah, you're right that is a standard measure for market capitalization
- BenoitP 9y ago
  It does not have absolute meaning, but it is a good relative measure -coupled with order book depth-.

pdog 9y ago

Would you rather own all of Bitcoin (current market cap: $100B) or all of a company with $10B in annual operating income? If it's the former, why?

RasputinsBro 9y ago
I would rather own all of Bitcoin. I'd sell it tomorrow and make about $1bn in profit and move on with my life. EDIT: I'm editing this because people are missing the point. My point wasn't about how when 1 owner has absolute control BTC is worthless like this guy[1] seems to think or about the liquidity of BTC, like this guy[2] seems to think. My point was about the fact that the difference between BTC is that the only use it has is holding and hoping it moves up, whereas owning a company actually brings in earnings. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=code-is-code https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=code-is-code [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jawilson2 https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jawilson2
- code-is-code 9y ago
  If you, a single person, owns all bitcoin, noone would buy a single satoshi from you.
  - RasputinsBro 9y ago
    Ok, I would own 1/4 of all bitcoin and make only $250m profit tomorrow. Happy? Do you miss the forest for the trees a lot, or only when you're on HN?
    - sp527 9y ago
      You seem to be someone who’s not aware of how thin the liquidity is in crypto markets.
      - michaelbuckbee 9y ago
        Thank you. Is there an economics term or ratio or something that encapsulates this? In my mind, it's conceptually similar to elastic/inelastic demand curves.

osrec 9y ago

An interesting way to put it... Almost like saying the market cap of the British Pound is bigger than Goldman and MS!

RasputinsBro 9y ago
Except people are actually using GBP for something. BTC is just people holding on to it hoping it goes up. Put differently, are there any circumstances where people would buy GBP expecting it to go down? What about BTC? That right there tells you the difference between the two.
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  Not really. I get paid in BTC and I pay my bills with it, buy things on amazon via Purse with it, etc. There are a great many people building businesses on the unique features of BTC. This "nobody uses BTC" meme needs to die-- yes, it is still the early days, it's a new technology. We're still in the "hey I got a personal home page on the information super highway!" stage of adoption-- but that didn't mean the internet was useless.... and we haven't even gotten to the bull market and pets.com era. It would be silly to say the web was useless since nobody needs their own homepage.
  - RasputinsBro 9y ago
    You pay your bills with BTC? Don't you mean that you pay your bills with USD, which you buy by selling BTC?
    - rothbardrand 9y ago
      Depends on the bill. But yes, you can use a bitcoin backed credit card for a lot of bills, and the biller gets paid in dollars which are converted from the bitcoin balance on the card. It is a bit of a challenge.
  - foepys 9y ago
    > I get paid in BTC Out of curiosity: Do you get paid x BTC per month/week or do you get x $/€/£/etc. in BTC?

forkLding 9y ago

I think this could pose a problem in the future for Bitcoin. Bitcoin was meant to be a decentralized vehicle of value that you could use to trade or buy things. However recently its being treated more as a stock and being stockpiled so I no longer see people as willing to pay for different services etc with Bitcoin as they used to because they can gain more value by waiting which goes against Bitcoin's intent as an independent vehicle of value. Even though one could argue that Bitcoin has the status of gold but gold is not something one commonly trades or uses to buy food etc in a normal non-disaster scenario. EDIT: Because this comment is bringing a lot of attention, I would like to reiterate my stance on Bitcoin. I'm supportive of Bitcoin, I would like a decentralized currency that is not tied to the importance of any country or government and as well can be used to foster trade between countries simply because it is much easier to just buy foreign goods than in the current state due to import duties, etc. Moreover, I see the world moving towards more coming together as a whole than fighting over lands and other issues that don't directly benefit humanity from using Bitcoin. However my problem is the fast-increasing price of bitcoin is increasingly headed towards the playground of high net-worth individuals or organizations/investment banks such as Goldman Sachs and no longer being able to be traded between normal people who don't have their deep pockets or are scared away by the pricing which prevents Bitcoin from becoming a worldwide vehicle of value to be used for common transactions and sort of deviates from the original intent. I also know one can trade decimal value Bitcoin for food and it could the volatile nature at play but it defeats the purpose if one needs to first check the Bitcoin markets before deciding on an eventual decimal value amount for the food paid.

olegkikin 9y ago
You can buy a better computer by waiting. Does that stop you from buying computers? Considering how easily people invest cryptocurrencies into quite risky ICOs, you can see that people don't have any problem spending, as long as it's something they consider valuable.
- lmm 9y ago
  > You can buy a better computer by waiting. Does that stop you from buying computers? On the margin, yes. It doesn't stop me from ever doing it, but it does mean I put off upgrading as long as possible.

nullsmack 9y ago

So what happens if/when the market crashes? Worse than subprime mortgages? Will it be 2007/8 all over again?

rothbardrand 9y ago
Early on, I expect that Bitcoin will have lower prices when the Fiat market crashes, because people will sell assets to raise money to cover margin calls. However, Bitcoin generally has rallies whenever government tries to control markets in a crisis-- for example Cypress forcing everyone to take a haircut -- a lot of people moved to bitcoin to protect their assets. As governments continue to mismanage their economies and their currencies, this is bullish for bitcoin because it was designed to solve these problems once and for all, or at least try to.
- sova 9y ago
  What do you mean when you say the crash of the Fiat market? Could you give me an example to help understand?
  - rothbardrand 9y ago
    Probably easiest to read that as "the stock market" but I mean stocks, bonds, treasuries and other assets. We had market crashes in 2001 and 2008, and there is another one likely in the next couple of years, I expect. Quantitative Easing has given us a fiat bubble across many asset classes, and I expect it will crash, and Bitcoin will be hurt in the short term and then rally in the medium term as the crash continues... Hope that makes it clearer.
    - sova 9y ago
      That makes it very clear, thank you. So, let's say the Fiat markets go down holistically and people have assets in the Fiat markets like stocks. The market trends downward for a while and people sell their assets to avoid the "crash" or potential "forever loss" of assets. So, people will also likely sell their bitcoins off at this time, and in general the price will be lower for a good sprint. Thanks for clarifying, I believe I caught your gist.

creatrixcordis 9y ago

When "the bitcoin" starting gaining momentum, i thought that "bitcoin" and the public distributed ledger was an exercise to see if the psychology of people has evolved to reduce the dependence on institutions and find out if inequality is because of these institutions or the 1%. However as we are finding out, the same problems are arising but with new technology. The ones with money to risk are playing the game and the public distributed ledger and bitcoin is yet to show us anything different other than the status quo. Who gives a shit if it's decentralized and "transparent" if the problems that a lot of people touted bitcoin/blockchain would "solve" are just replicated. Kinda like who cares if there are many choices, if you don't have the capital to exercise those choices. I am beginning to think that bitcoin is just another channel to speculate on that promises anonymity but fails badly at it. Maybe it's pre-packaging as an antidote to pre-bitcoin financial structure was empty. I don't see how the average world citizen is able to invest with these prices, therefore aiding mobility. I thought wrong... but sure wish i bought it when it was $20 :)

jstanley 9y ago
OK then, enlighten me. In what ways does Bitcoin recreate the status quo problems of (1) the central bank being able to print arbitrary amounts of money, and (2) all individual-to-individual payments subject to censorship by a very small number of third-parties?
- twayamznacct 9y ago
  (1) Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, etc. Effectively "printing money". Perhaps not entirely arbitrary, as it's limited to the number of bitcoins in existence in the "main" chain at the time of the fork, but good enough. (2) There are a very small number of third parties that control the vast majority of hashing power
- creatrixcordis 9y ago
  There is nothing in the protocol that will prevent anyone from hoarding or buying large amounts of bitcoin because they already have the capital to begin with. Therefore you can think of those people as similar to institutions or the 1%. So bitcoin is just another investment mechanism. That's all. No panacea here, just an over-hyped new technology that helps create profit for the ones who already have money. One that currently is only available to people who have enough resources to risk. The panacea that "bitcoin" was touted as across the web and forums galore, is just utter bs. I see a world of many private blockchain implementations but nothing that solves these censorship and printing money issues you speak of. Since according to popular theory when you print money your currency get devalued, but bitcoin also goes down when a gov say we don't like it or someone decides to start cashing in at a large scale or overhype of an issue or underhype of another. The end result is the same, less value. But here are your answers: 1) You live and take advantage of many things you might take for granted in a society that has a certain framework that must be maintained by service providers and it is maintained implicitly by the hordes of people on earth, when greed occurs or kinks in the system happen, printing money or not printing money are just tools to deal with issues. 2) Last time i bought something on craigslist, ebay, alibaba, amazon or from Sandy down the street i don't remember any censorship. I could be mistaken though. Maybe i did not think about something. I would like to see an example of this payment censorship you say largely affected your personal life. Now definitely if you are trying to buy armored tanks, automatic weapons, drugs, women, censored dildos, yeah i could definitely see censorship. I just don't try to buy those things. :) Don't get mad now, my sense of humor is an acquired taste :)

jaltekruse 9y ago

Wouldn't it make more sense to compare the value of all of the bitcoins to the total assets under management of the large banks? Many of them manage over a trillion in assets. Bitcoin is designed to be a replacement for bank accounts and credit cards in a sense, just without all of the centralized authority and meat powered overhead to keep everyone trusting it. Its kind of crazy that it has worked out so well. While there have been significant investments on hardware to power the network, I'd have to assume the cost of maintaining the network is pennies compared to what a bank spends to manage assets. That is the real disruptive power of bitcoin.

sova 9y ago
You know just recently I did my own research in this vein. I looked at the total number of USD in circulation, worldwide. In 1990 it is reported that the number of USD in circulation surpassed 1Trillion. If we make BTC the new "gold standard" to back every single dollar bill in existence, that makes every bitcoin worth about $100. Now, since 1990 was over 17 years ago, if we assume that the figure has perhaps doubled to 2Trillion dollars in circulation (somewhere between 1 and 2 Trillion certainly) then one bitcoin is worth about $50.00 One bitcoin today runs for about $5,700.00 Anyway, just a very interesting thing, because if you divide the total number of dollars by the total number of bitcoins, you get the figures above ($50 - $100 per coin) Which means, using my super simple maths, that bitcoin, as an international bank, is currently performing at 1/10th the cost :)
- rothbardrand 9y ago
  Gold's money supply is about $8T, and I think Dollars (not just physical bills) is much bigger-- at least $20T. I think your math is off. Bitcoin is approaching a $100B market cap, and there are only 21 million bitcoins that will ever be in existence. To match the dollars $20T total supply (a low end number depending on which money supply number you use it could be a multiple of that) then each bitcoin would be worth about $1M. To match gold in market cap, would be $380,000 per bitcoin. Truth is, though, when bitcoin comes into its own, the value of the dollar will drop (well, its true value will be realized) so prices would likely be much higher... assuming bitcoin succeeds and becomes a common world currency.

rothbardrand 9y ago

You can buy a fraction of a bitcoin! People don't seem to get this. Unlike Berkeshire Hathaway or any other stock, you don't have to buy a whole unit. BRKA shares at 6 figures are out of range for most people because you have to buy at least one whole share. Bitcoin is divisible down to the satoshi-- 100,000,000th of a bitcoin. That's too small to transact in currently, but there's nothing stopping you from buying 0.1 or 0.01 bitcoin.

petraeus 9y ago

Bitcoin is just another virtual assets, like .. paper gold. Its never going to be a currency. The whole model is flawed.

kapauldo 9y ago

Anyone know what the ratio of payment transactions over speculation transactions is with Bitcoin? Is it knowable?