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Comment by jaltekruse | Hacker News Reader

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.

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A better comparison is between bitcoin and countries currencies... it's something like number 59 in the world, though that is from a couple weeks ago.

Bitcoin is really a new currency, and comparing it to company market caps and banks sizes is not really fundamentally useful, but it is useful for giving an idea of the size of the bitcoin economy.

Number 59 based simply on the amount of Bitcoin owned, or the rate of real world transactions (as opposed to mere speculation) conducted in it? I would argue that the latter is a more valid way to measure a currency, and I seriously doubt Bitcoin would crack the top 100 by that measure. The Bitcoin "economy" is almost entirely made up of currency trading.

Ranked by value. I don't get how "mere speculation" is considered a bad thing, or makes bitcoin irrelevant. IF it's digital gold right now, fine. Its gold that costs nothing to store, and very little to transport, unlike actual gold.

Gold has a market cap of $8T. If that's the use case bitcoin ever has, it will still ultimately be worth $380k each if it grows to bitcoins size... and it has several advantages over gold.

Is gold worthless because its "merely speculative"??

I didn't say Bitcoin was worthless, it clearly is not. But it is not a viable currency yet. Gold is also not much used as currency anymore, though it once was.

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 :)

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.

Wow, dollars in the world is $20T or some multiple? That's a great figure! I did not know that. Yes, $1T was the figure in 1990 but for physical dolla dolla bills.

I was attempting to link USD in circulation to BTC, not paying attention to BTC market price. With your updated figures $21T USD in circulation makes each Bitcoin $1M yes, your math checks out. ($1M x $1M is $1T ... were we to somehow make BTC our new Cryptographic "Gold standard")

With each bitcoin worth $1M, that makes each Satoshi about ... a penny?

100 million satoshi to a penny.

I don't really know what the ultimate value of bitcoin will be-- really determines on how well it resists attacks, and what level of services are built on top of it.

It's still the very early days.

Absolutely, it's not something transparent at this point, what the true realized value of a coin will be over the long-term. I appreciate your insights regardless, thanks for updating me on the amount of USD in circulus

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