Category Archives: bitcoin

Bitcoin Market Cap, How Much Could 1 Bitcoin Be Worth?

Posted on by
Reply

Much of this post was taken from this tweet from  MD₿TC@MDBitcoin. I felt this information was very helpful so I wanted to share and expand on it.


Original tweet below

The Inevitable Path of #BTC 

I. Global wealth = between $400-$900T

II. Let’s say 10% of Bitcoins are lost.

III. Let’s do a conservative estimate that #BTC captures  ONLY 1% of global wealth, the value of one #Bitcoin would be? 

then imagine 5%?, 10%? 20%? 50%?  

There is no other path, accumulate as if your life depended on it. 🟠

Complete Calculations:

Available Bitcoins:

Total Bitcoin Supply: 21,000,000

Lost Bitcoins: 10% of 21,000,000 = 2,100,000

Available Bitcoins: 21,000,000 – 2,100,000 = 18,900,000

1% of Global Wealth:

Lower Bound:

1% of $400T = $4T

Value of one Bitcoin = $4T / 18,900,000 ≈ $211,640.21

Upper Bound:

1% of $900T = $9T

Value of one Bitcoin = $9T / 18,900,000 ≈ $476,190.48

5% of Global Wealth:

Lower Bound:

5% of $400T = $20T

Value of one Bitcoin = $20T / 18,900,000 ≈ $1,058,201.06

Upper Bound:

5% of $900T = $45T

Value of one Bitcoin = $45T / 18,900,000 ≈ $2,380,952.38

10% of Global Wealth:

Lower Bound:

10% of $400T = $40T

Value of one Bitcoin = $40T / 18,900,000 ≈ $2,116,402.12

Upper Bound:

10% of $900T = $90T

Value of one Bitcoin = $90T / 18,900,000 ≈ $4,761,904.76

20% of Global Wealth:

Lower Bound:

20% of $400T = $80T

Value of one Bitcoin = $80T / 18,900,000 ≈ $4,232,804.23

Upper Bound:

20% of $900T = $180T

Value of one Bitcoin = $180T / 18,900,000 ≈ $9,523,809.52

50% of Global Wealth:

Lower Bound:

50% of $400T = $200T

Value of one Bitcoin = $200T / 18,900,000 ≈ $10,582,010.58

Upper Bound:

50% of $900T = $450T

Value of one Bitcoin = $450T / 18,900,000 ≈ $23,809,523.81

Buy the quantity that you can and put it in cold storage, wait a decade and watch the inevitable path.

-End original tweet. 


There is a lot to unpack there. 

Let’s start with the basics. 

There is between $400T and $900T of wealth in the world. 

For reference at bitcoin’s current price of $26,000 and total coin maximum number of bitcoin ever of 21 million coins, bitcoin’s current market capitalization is $546 billion. This is between 0.067% and 0.13% of all the value in the world. That’s pretty small currently!

Gold has a current market capitalization of $12 trillion. 

That comes to between 1.3% -3% of all the value in the world. 

As noted above, if bitcoin was to capture 1% of the world value  it would be worth between $211k and $476k per coin. This doesn’t even get it to the same market capitalization as gold!

Lower Bound:

1% of $400T = $4T

Value of one Bitcoin = $4T / 18,900,000 ≈ $211,640.21

Upper Bound:

1% of $900T = $9T

Value of one Bitcoin = $9T / 18,900,000 ≈ $476,190.48

Since bitcoin has many features that make it more useful than gold it has a good chance of at least gaining the adoption of 1% of the store of world value. Bitcoin doesn’t have to be used for every daily transaction for it to be useful or valuable. Gold has value and it is not very useful at all for daily transactions. 

Bitcoin has multiple benefits over gold, it can be sent around the world nearly instantly, it can be broken down into very small units (1 satoshi = 0.00000001 bitcoin  which at $26k/bitcoin = $0.01 is equal to 37 satoshis) and various other benefits that bitcoin has). 

These are just a few of the reasons that I think Bitcoin will likely continue to stay around as a store of value and continue to gain adoption and grow in price and value.

How To Buy Bitcoin

Posted on by
Reply

As bitcoin continues to be adopted many people will have a lot of questions. One of the main questions is probably “How do I buy Bitcoin?”

Here is the quickest and likely one of the safest ways to buy bitcoin, go to the google play store (or apple store) on your phone and download “Cash App”. 

Link your bank account. 

Click “Buy bitcoin”. 

Boom, you now own some bitcoin!

I recommend Cash App because they are a Bitcoin only company. There are many copies of Bitcoin like Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) and many others. Don’t be fooled. Only buy Bitcoin (BTC ticker symbol). Since Cash App only sells Bitcoin (BTC) this is not a problem. That is why I recommend Cashapp for starting.
Companies like Robinhood, Coinbase and others sell Bitcoin (BTC) but also sell others like Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV), Ethereum (ETH) and thousands of other cryptocurrencies. You want to buy Bitcoin (BTC) only. 

Now you can start learning about bitcoin. Luckily Cashapp has news articles about bitcoin linked in it’s app so you can read there.

You can also follow Michael Saylor on Twitter. He has a lot of great information about bitcoin. One of the best podcasts I have heard about Bitcoin is “The Saylor Series” By Robert Breedlove on the “What is Money Show”. 

Now, owning bitcoin and holding it on the Cashapp app isn’t the safest way to hold bitcoin. While Cashapp is relatively safe, there is still risk that Cashapp goes under. 

An option now is to download a hot wallet to your phone like Muun Wallet, or GreenWallet (from the company Blockstream),  also from the google play store. You can then transfer your bitcoin from Cashapp to your hot wallet, if you want. You don’t have to do this. You can keep your money on Cashapp. It’s like keeping money at a bank. Using Muun wallet is like keeping cash in a safe at your home. I would suggest learning more about wallets before you transfer your bitcoin to a wallet. I also wouldn’t buy thousands and thousands of dollars in bitcoin until you understand it more. 

Continue to learn more about Bitcoin through various articles. Don’t buy more Bitcoin than you need. You only need as much as you’ll never sell. Bitcoin is not a thing to sell. Bitcoin is a thing to buy, regardless of price.
Don’t panic sell your Bitcoin if the price goes down from $100k to $50k or even $30k again! This is the nature of bitcoin, it is volatile.

Don’t FOMO into thousands and thousands of dollars of Bitcoin unless you are ready to temporarily lose 50% or more.

Don’t invest any more into Bitcoin than you are willing to lose. While I think it will be fine, it’s always possible something wild could happen and it could go to $0 (I doubt this but keeping all possibilities open).


Welcome to Bitcoin!

Oh, and you can always contact me with Bitcoin questions!

BIPs Biggest Threat to Bitcoin

Posted on by
1

Reply to – 

A u s t i n | Open Source Fitness

@_AustinHerbert

If #bitcoin fails, we’re fucked. But at this point, how does #bitcoin fail? one sentence ↓

My 1 sentence reply – 

Biggest threat to bitcoin is BIPs Messing with the btc code and making it not btc. BIPs should take min of 10 yrs to review/run on another chain first etc. Mostly I’m against BIPs  “Bitcoin Introduce Peril’s”

My longer reply – 

What is the point of a BIP (Bitcoin Improvement Protocol)? It is to change the Bitcoin base code that is running on nodes to “improve” Bitcoin in the eyes of the people proposing the improvement. But what needs to be changed with Bitcoin?

The critical things to make Bitcoin Bitcoin are:

21 million coins which supply never increases – That already exists. 

Bitcoin needs to be able to be transferred – This is possible on the base layer. That is the whole point of bitcoin, to transfer value.

These are the only things that are important to bitcoin. Lightning network (allows very small transactions to buy a coffee, etc) is very nice and convenient. But you don’t need it for a currency or store of value. Gold has a market cap that is 10x bitcoin. No one is buying coffee with gold.

I think the Bitcoin community needs to be very skeptical of any BIPs and should really resist most BIPs aggressively. 

The necessary thing for bitcoin is adoption. From all the people I have talked to about bitcoin and money a total of 1 has really understood how money works or the value of a store of value that doesn’t have inflation as a possibility. I think people who are working on BIPs could serve bitcoin much better by teaching people about bitcoin and how it works than trying to change it and potentially destroying it.

Is Now A Good Time To Buy Bitcoin?

Posted on by
1

Is now a good time to buy Bitcoin? I think it’s going to $10k in a few months. These are the type of things people say when I ask why they don’t own any bitcoin. 

Questions I prefer to ask them are “What is your time horizon?” What is your goal with buying this bitcoin?

If you want to double or triple your money and “get rich” when bitcoin goes to $100k and sell it then no it’s not a good time to buy bitcoin. It actually never is. That is speculation and I hate speculation, in the stock market, or in anything really. That shows you don’t understand the point of bitcoin. Bitcoin should be held forever or at least until $1 million/ coin. I pick $1 million/coin because I think once it’s worth $1 million per coin it will be much more obvious that it is a store of value.  When it’s worth that you may think “Why would I sell this for USD?” You can probably trade it directly for goods and services at that level.
If you have any plans to sell bitcoin in the short term, just don’t even buy it. 

Consider if you buy bitcoin now the downside is $26k to $0, or whatever amount you invest.

The upside is infinite, when measured in dollars.

21 million bitcoin that will ever exist, divided by 8 billion people = .002625 bitcoin per person. 

X$26,000 (current bitcoin price) = $68

So if you invest just $68 you can at least secure your equal amount of bitcoin. 

Get your fair share of btc today.

Realistically even owning 0.002625 bitcoin is more than a lot of people ever will because as we know no money is equally distributed. So the average person will likely own less. That is actually ok. Wealth inequality is the expected state since people have unequal talents and are willing to take different levels of risk.
Bitcoin is your chance to opt into a system that doesn’t reduce your wealth via inflation though!

Once you own a little bitcoin you’ll be more inclined to learn more about it. I bought it for the first time in 2017. Then got distracted by a different coin , litecoin, that was “a better bitcoin”. I lost money on litecoin but continued to learn. Eventually I came to learn the problem that bitcoin solves and why there can’t be a better bitcoin.

“If you don’t believe it or don’t get it, I don’t have the time to try to convince you, sorry” – Satoshi Nakamoto ,  creator of bitcoin.


While Satoshi is probably right that he didn’t have time to try to explain it to you, I think I do. I enjoy trying to help others learn about bitcoin. Don’t hesitate to ask questions if you are genuinely interested in bitcoin!

Bitcoin Catalysts

Posted on by
Reply

Bitcoin has a slew of catalysts on the horizon. The first three are increasing demand/buyers.

  1.  As I’ve written about before Microstrategy, the public company that owns the most bitcoin is selling $750 million worth of new stock to buy more bitcoin. 
  1. El Salvador, the first country to make bitcoin legal tender, is on their way to selling $1 billion in bitcoin bonds. $500 million will be used to buy bitcoin directly.   $500 million will be used to buy bitcoin miners. 
  1. At least 7 Bitcoin Spot ETF’s have been filed in the USA. This in itself is not new. There have been many filed in the past that have been rejected, for no good reason. The first one filed in this latest round has been pushed off by the SEC and opened for comments by the public, a delay tactic. But they can’t delay forever. They have to give a final ruling in January 2024. Many other countries around the world have bitcoin spot ETFs active. There is no good reason to not approve one. One will eventually be approved in the USA either now or later. Once that happens there will be a lot of new buyers of bitcoin. Currently it is rather difficult to buy bitcoin with many funds, 401k’s, IRA, regular brokerage account. But when you are able to buy a bitcoin spot ETF in any of those funds with money you already have in those accounts that just opens a lot more money to buy bitcoin. 

The 4th catalyst is a supply reducing catalyst. The next bitcoin halving is currently going to happen on April 17th, 2024. Bitcoin miners are rewarded for protecting the bitcoin network with “new” bitcoin. They have to sell a lot of these bitcoin to pay for their electricity costs. They currently receive 6.25 BTC per block. In April 2024 it will drop to 3.125 BTC. Since there will be less bitcoin being sold by miners, if the demand remains the same it’s likely bitcoin will appreciate in value. 

While bitcoin is very volatile it should be remembered that the goal of bitcoin is to not be volatile. It is currently volatile due to all the people speculating on its future value. Some people bought it 6 months ago and it’s doubled in price so they are selling because they have made 2x their initial money. In the long run bitcoin’s price will only go up as the value of goods grows. It will only go up with inflation. That is the end goal of bitcoin.

Tesla Should Accept Bitcoin NOW!

Posted on by
Reply

As both a Tesla shareholder and a Bitcoin holder, I think it’s time Tesla starts accepting bitcoin for payments again.

Tesla currently holds hundreds of millions of dollars in Bitcoin on their balance sheet. 

Tesla accepted bitcoin for Tesla purchases for a very short time in 2021 but then quit accepting it due to concerns about the emissions from bitcoin mining.
His “rules” laid out above in a tweet June 13th, 2021 was that Tesla would resume accepting Bitcoin when bitcoin mining was using greater than 50% green energy. It has been clearly shown by the Bitcoin Mining Council that bitcoin mining is 59.9% green! 

“Based on this data, the global bitcoin mining industry’s sustainable electricity mix has improved marginally to 59.9% and remains one of the most sustainable industries globally,” the report stated. – Bitcoin Mining Council

Direct link to Bitcoin Mining Council Q2 2023 report. 

This is well above the goal set by Elon for Tesla of 50%. Because of this, I think Tesla should immediately start accepting Bitcoin for payments again.


Of course Elon could be waiting for “reasons”.

One might be that he expects whenever Tesla starts accepting Bitcoin to have a small flood of buyers. He might be waiting for this until a time that he perceives that he needs a small demand boost? This is my only speculation on why he hasn’t started accepting bitcoin yet.I hope Elon will have a chat with Michael Saylor (Chairman of Microstrategy, the largest corporate holder of Bitcoin and also an instrumental figure in the Bitcoin Mining Council) soon!

So Elon, what are you waiting for?

Microstrategy $750 Million to Buy MORE Bitcoin!

Posted on by
2

Microstrategy is a large software analytics company. It is also the company which holds the most Bitcoin. Microstrategy currently holds 152,800 bitcoins.

This is 0.73% of all Bitcoin that will ever be created! There will be only 21 million Bitcoin ever.

It’s also estimated that perhaps 4 million bitcoin have been “lost” with old computers that people have lost so that means 152,800/17 million = 0.9% of all Bitcoin that will ever be available! Only 19 million bitcoin have been issued. The final 2 million will be issued over the next 120 years, so that means there are only about 21-2-4 = 15 million bitcoin available for purchase today. So Microstrategy owns over 1% of all Bitcoin available today!

And they are buying more!

MicroStrategy is planning to raise up to $750 million via a stock sale and says it may use the proceeds to buy more Bitcoin- Cointelegraph

The reason Microstrategy is buying more bitcoin is because they see it as the supreme ownership asset. In a world where more fiat currency (USD, Euros, Yen) are created everyday something that is ultimately scarce is valuable!

You can watch the Chairman of Microstrategy, Michael Saylor, discuss bitcoin here, for 1 hour, or if you are really interested he discusses history, energy and bitcoin here for many hours. I watched the hours and hours podcast as it’s fascinating!
This development, Microstrategy, buying more and more bitcoin, is a signal in the noise of everyday life where people are talking about if you should buy bitcoin, or gold, or stocks. There are things that are signals and things that are noise. This is a signal. KPMG putting out a paper about bitcoin being ESG friendly is also a signal. 

You should watch for signals and act accordingly!

Remember! Don’t FOMO buy thousands and thousands of dollars of Bitcoin unless you are ready to temporarily lose 50% or more.

Don’t invest any more into Bitcoin than you are willing to lose. While I think it will be fine, it’s always possible something wild could happen and it could go to $0 (I doubt this but keeping all possibilities open). 

KPMG – The Bitcoin Narative is Changing

Posted on by
2

https://advisory.kpmg.us/content/dam/advisory/en/pdfs/2023/bitcoins-role-esg-imperative.pdfKPMG is considered one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, it is the 4th biggest, but still pretty big in the grand scheme of things.KPMG recently released a document, linked above and here, sharing how Bitcoin fulfills all 3 values of ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) investing. This is a pretty big change in the narrative about bitcoin in the media compared to the erroneous FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt) that had been being spread and is still being spread about Bitcoin’s “high” energy usage. That is disputed in this article, and elsewhere. Bitcoin has a small overall energy usage compared to many other industries. It also has a greater than 50% usage of renewable energy, which is the highest of any industry in the world. There are even bitcoin mining applications that can have negative emissions such as using methane from a landfill to power the bitcoin miner. If that methane was just released into the environment, like it is at many landfills now, that methane is 80x worse for the environment than CO2.I encourage everyone to learn about bitcoin. You can read my older posts. You can also find many bitcoin books from my reading list.As Jason Maier said in his book “A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin” – “You don’t know any intelligent person who has studied Bitcoin for 100 hours and thinks it’s a bad idea.”I encourage you to read his book.  

Isn’t The Bitcoin Guy in Jail?

Posted on by
Reply

I was recently in the hospital (that part of the story isn’t important) and had a Bitcoin book, A Progressive’s Case for Bitcoin: A Path Toward a More Just, Equitable, and Peaceful World, out on my desk to read while I was sitting around doing nothing. One of the nurses asked me if I “Was into Bitcoin?”. I naturally said “yes” enthusiastically and asked her if she wanted to talk about it. Her first comment was “Isn’t the bitcoin guy in jail?” I explained to her that “no there is no ‘bitcoin guy’” The guy who is in jail, who I’m assuming she meant Sam Bankman-Fried (SBF), although we didn’t clarify that, I explained to her, was a fraudster but not directly linked with bitcoin. I explained to her that Sam and his company FTX were more or less committing fraud on a level similar to Enron. She seemed to understand that. 

Fighting basic narrative errors about bitcoin like this is important for bitcoin adoption. There is so much false news and when people don’t really have that much interest, this is the type of error they can make. 

I also got to mention to her that there is a limit of 21 million bitcoin ever and it fixes the problem of governments stealing our savings via inflation. She did like that! She mentioned that she had a “lot of cash” and “wished the government would stop stealing things”. Not the most technical conversation, but I’m hoping that by.

1 . removing the connection of SBF/FTX to bitcoin and

2. Connecting the idea of bitcoin saving you from government created inflation, she might be more open to bitcoin the next time she hears about it. 

She also mentioned that she “isn’t tech savvy” but somehow mentioned she has Venmo. You can buy bitcoin on Venmo (it’s not the favorite platform for the “hardcore” bitcoin folks but it works). So I did mention to her that she would be able to buy it there pretty easily.

Nobody Wants to Buy Bitcoin… Yet

Posted on by
3

I have tried bringing up bitcoin to quite a few people over the last year (2022) and haven’t had much interest. I have finally realized that 99.9% of people won’t have any interest in Bitcoin until the price starts going up dramatically, perhaps around $100k people will start being interested again. I have decided that is fine. I am going to write this for people whenever they start becoming interested and wonder “How do I buy bitcoin?”

If you have recently seen Bitcoins price rise from $30,000 to $100,000 or more and are now having FOMO (fear of missing out) and you need to buy bitcoin NOW! Here is what you should do.

Go to the google play store (or apple store) on your phone and download “Cash App”. 

Link your bank account. 

Click “Buy bitcoin”. 

Boom, you now own some bitcoin!

I recommend Cash App because they are a Bitcoin only company. There are many copies of Bitcoin like Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Bitcoin Satoshi Vision (BSV) and many others. Don’t be fooled. Only buy Bitcoin (BTC ticker symbol). Since Cash App only sells Bitcoin (BTC) this is not a problem. That is why I recommend Cash App for starting.

Now you can start learning about bitcoin. Luckily Cashapp also has news articles about bitcoin linked in it’s app so you can read there.

You can also follow Michael Saylor on Twitter. He has a lot of great information about bitcoin.

Now, owning bitcoin and holding it on the Cash App app isn’t the safest way to hold bitcoin. While Cashapp is relatively safe, there is still risk that Cashapp goes under. 

An option now is to download Muun Wallet, also from the google play store. You can then transfer your bitcoin from Cashapp to Muun, if you want. You don’t have to do this. You can keep your money on Cash App. It’s like keeping money at a bank. Using Muun wallet is like keeping cash in a safe at your home. 

Continue to learn more about Bitcoin through various articles.
Don’t panic sell your Bitcoin if the price goes down from $100k to $50k or even $30k again! This is the nature of bitcoin, it is volatile.

Don’t FOMO into thousands and thousands of dollars of Bitcoin unless you are ready to temporarily lose 50% or more.

Don’t invest any more into Bitcoin than you are willing to lose. While I think it will be fine, it’s always possible something wild could happen and it could go to $0 (I doubt this but keeping all possibilities open). 


Welcome to Bitcoin!

Oh, and you can always contact me with Bitcoin questions!