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Comment by 1001101 | Hacker News Reader

Someone that owns a substantial sum of coins recently put it to me this way: there are ~16 million millionaires in the US. If each one of them wants 1 Bitcoin... I'm long again.

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Wow that’s some amazing rationalization they’ve done there. What happens in the incredibly more likely scenario that most of them want none?

Sure - think of it more as a thought experiment rather than a forecast and this from a professional trader that's been long since 2013. Either way, I thought I would share it, and we'll see which way it goes.

Those 16 millions of guys might want to buy a book that I will eventually write.

If each one of them wants to buy one book... you've got 16 million in sales right there! I don't see anything wrong with this line of thinking.

That's like saying "If every millionaire wanted a bar of gold my stash of gold bars would be worth more."

It's not wrong, buuuuut....

Yes, that's exactly what happens when economic uncertainty sends the price of gold higher.

Right, but the fact that demand for something can make the price go up isn't useful investment advice. Gold hasn't been doing well against the USD recently, but yes, it's conceivable that it could shoot up if more people decided they want some.

1001101's person is betting that it will, and I agree that it's a possible outcome. Wouldn't put all my eggs in that particular basket, but hey, maybe I'm wrong.

That's why it's such a big deal that Bitcoin (derivatives) are now trading on regulated exchanges in Chicago and New York.

Whereas before those millionaires may have been reluctant to open an account with (i.e., send all their identity documents to) some unregulated crypto exchange, they already have brokerage accounts that can now or will soon be able to trade them.

Ya, and if every person in American gave me just 1 penny, I'd be a multi-millionaire.

That's a nice way to frame the type of position (long vs short) against the type of market (bull vs bear) in the context of supply vs demand.

Thanks for sharing.

Bad news for such people is, rich people in general happen to be smart with their money and they don't exactly like to waste their money this way.

All just to make up for somebody's bad investments?

If you want to know how stingy people are with their money, you have to only look at how they think about paying taxes.

If they average 10k investment each, that's 160 Billion.

...what?

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