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Comment by whatshisface | Hacker News Reader

Considering that anyone trying to sell that much bitcoin at once would pretty much crash the currency, how much is it really worth?

Perhaps some kind of revolutionary mathematical fact could be worth even more? This is a very interesting question.

EDIT: A lot of people responding to me seem to be trying to contradict my argument by pointing out that if it was true, it would be true for almost everything. I don't get how that works, because it is true of everything! Flooding the market will always reduce the value of what you are selling.

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That argument proves too much [1]. The same can be said for almost all stock, e.g. Bill Gates could sell of his shares of Microsoft and crash the stock price.

[1] http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Proving_too_much

No he couldn't. Microsoft shares have intrinsic earnings, and while the stock price might go down, I wouldn't expect them to go down far enough to generate predictable excess returns. Lots of people want predictable excess returns and they have enough money to buy all of Gates's shares and then some.

Considering when you sell all the gold in Fort Knox all at once would pretty much crash gold's value.

How much is the gold in Fort Knox really worth?

http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/?action=fun_f...

Amount of present gold holdings: 147.3 million ounces. The gold is held as an asset of the United States at book value of $42.22 per ounce.

http://www.bloomberg.com/markets/commodities/futures/metals/

COMEX Gold Value: 1,250.40/per troy ounce

1 ounce = 0.911458333 troy ounces

$167,875,968,689 USD

You are correct. Selling that much gold at once would decimate the gold market.

I'd find it really odd if the ounces they reference aren't troy ounces, which is the true de facto for precious metal weight quotes.

To the true matter though is that valuing things by their liquid value is problematic especially when their liquidity isn't ever really going to be utilized.

I sent a tweet to @usmint to find out. I'll update my post accordingly.

Unless you think bitcoin is going to disappear in the next 6-12 months, it's worth a lot.

You could easily liquidate out of that entire position over the next six months without crashing the bitcoin market. In fact, the added liquidity might help lessen the volatility.

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