[ritinkar]

If BTC cracks 1 million won't that mean there's 2.1 trillion dollars worth of USD BTC in circulation in addition to all the other currencies?

[jjeaff]

Only in the most theoretical sense. Since there is no underlying asset, you are going to run out of buyers real fast at that amount.

[vinceguidry]

If the market can't clear, the price will drop until it does. Saying bitcoin has reached a certain price carries with it the implication that the market is clearing at the price, i.e. that people are indeed buying.

Million-USD transactions already occur in BTC all the time.

[usrusr]

You only run out of buyers if there are sellers.

[rabidrat]

I have 1 BTC but I lost the wallet. So that's one less BTC in circulation. (Literally, it is impossible for that BTC to circulate).

[kelnos]

I'm in the same boat. CPU-mined somewhere between 1.5 and 2 BTC back in 2010 or 2011, and lost the wallet years ago. I wonder how much BTC has been lost to similar mistakes, but I guess there's no way to know or even estimate, right?

[m3kw9]

If bitcoin price is derived from the bid ask, most of the worlds money would have to be parked in bitcoin, does that even make sense?

[jjeaff]

"parked"? No, since no real money or asset is held to back up bitcoin. It could go to $100 million tomorrow based on a few transactions, but that wouldn't be indicative of what anyone else will be able to get for it.

[vinceguidry]

Money supplies are constantly inflating, every financial instrument can be looked at as a form of money, and quite a few of them are actually considered to be money, such as treasuries and traveler's cheques. According to Wikipedia, the broadest measure of money supply currently in use was 10.5 trillion, in 2013.

That cryptocurrencies are not currently considered to be money by the world economic order, it goes into a much broader range of financial assets like stocks and bonds. The S&P 500 market size reached 19.6 trillion USD in 2016

Bitcoin has a lot of room to grow before it even comes close to playing in that league. Everybody on HN should be buying crypto right now, the upside is that huge.

[john_moscow]

Except it isn't parked in any way. The money goes from the hands of the optimistic buyers into the hands of those who decided to cash out just now. The only asset "backing" Bitcoin is the people willing to buy it.

[tomerico]

21 trillions, or about 3 times the value of all gold mined in the world.

[vinceguidry]

And around the market size of the S&P 500.