Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Bitcoin

Bitcoin Secures a $1 Trillion Market Cap for First Time Ever 202

The price of Bitcoin (BTC) has reached a new all-time high of $53,670, pushing the coin's total market capitalization above $1 trillion, according to crypto metrics platform CoinGecko. Market capitalization is the total number of coins currently in circulation multiplied by their current market price -- basically, the combined worth of all existing BTC. From a report: By various estimations, the value of all money in the world is around $95 trillion -- and now Bitcoin represents about 1% of that. While it's not totally fair to compare Bitcoin to money (it can be seen as an asset instead), it provides one way to put it in perspective. Speaking to Decrypt, Quantum Economics analyst Jason Deane noted that for people who were involved in the crypto space from its early days, the $1 trillion BTC market capitalization may have been a long time coming but it was inevitable.
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Bitcoin Secures a $1 Trillion Market Cap for First Time Ever

Comments Filter:
  • Tulips (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 19, 2021 @11:00AM (#61079738)
    The market cap of the tulip bulb market was once $900 trillion. Farmers burned their fields of wheat and corn, and slaughtered their cows all to plant more tulips. Sounds like a good investment to me!
  • OK (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Ecuador ( 740021 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @11:02AM (#61079748) Homepage

    Curious to see how much of that 1 trillion you can cash out if you start mass selling instead of getting more people to buy in...

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      It's like the longest running, most successful ponzi scheme ever.

      • It most certainly is not the longest running, most successful, ponzi scheme. Leaving aside the very legitimate question of the phrase Ponzi scheme to describe more of a pump-and-dump, it wouldn't hold either record. In the 1980s there was a Ponzi scheme where the perp walked away with $860MM 1983 dollars which seems far more successful than anyone who has cashed out of bitcoin. Madoff cost his clients $65 billion, which seems larger as it's unclear the 1 trillion valuation has required purchasing even $6
      • Except that the average Ponzi scheme doesn't have the carbon footprint of an average country.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Not a lot. The people holding most of that "Trillion" of hot air know that and carefully bleed out the real money.

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      Curious to see how much of that 1 trillion you can cash out if you start mass selling instead of getting more people to buy in...

      Curious how you have a mass sell-off without getting more people to buy in?

      • By causing the price to plummet. Which is exactly what would happen if people decided to sell with nobody there to buy.

        • Sounds reasonable, and it's been predicted before. But it appears that there has been a solid bottom to halt every crash thus far. There's still plenty of people looking at Bitcoin as a possible "investment", and as the price falls, more and more of them will decide it's a good time to get on board. If there are enough of those, the price will stabilize once more.

          It's still almost completely based on suckers selling crap to each others, and investors who think they are able to read or even manipulate
      • by jythie ( 914043 )
        Post sell orders, not get buyers, panic, lower prices, rinse lather repeat.
      • There are circumstances where you can raise prices indefinitely iff no one buys in: I have a rock, which I claim is worth $100. You buy it, I transfer ownership, hand you an invoice. But before you pay invoice, I ask to buy it back for $200 tomorrow. You agree, shred invoice, transfer ownership, hand me invoice for $200. Before I pay invoice, you do same the next day for $300, and on it goes. We never had any money and the rock never had any value. We can get away with it until someone from the outside buys

    • What happens when everyone starts mass selling of stocks? Alarms go off and trading is halted.

      • What happens when everyone starts mass selling of stocks? Alarms go off and trading is halted.

        Which is wrong. Stocks should be allowed to rise or fall at will. Even if everyone is piling out of stocks and the markets are plummeting, there should be no collars to prevent the decline.

        If there are no collars on the upside, there should be none on the downside. Let the market determine how far something falls.
        • There are collars to the upside, as well as downside, for listed stocks in the US. It's called Limit Up Limit Down [luldplan.com] and it's regulated by the SEC and implemented by the primary exchanges. GME is a recent example of LULD kicking in on both directions; it also happened to SNOW on its IPO day. You can go to NYSE's site and see all historical LULD trading halts they issued; it happens fairly often.

          The market wide circuit breakers in the US are the only ones that work to the downside and are based on declines in

  • Cash in. you have been warned.
    • by DontBeAMoran ( 4843879 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @11:22AM (#61079806)

      You probably said that when Bitcoin reached a value of 1$USD.
      Then you probably said it again at 10$USD, 100$USD, 1000$USD and 10K$USD.

      • You are so right!

        Even though these tulip bulbs have gone up to a value of $750,000.00 each, all the naysayers were saying not to buy at $500,000.00, so we can safely ignore their naysaying without even considering their logical argument at all!
        • I really don't get the pointless comparison with tulip bulbs, since they cannot replace fiat money the way crypto-currencies do.

          And not only can crypto-currencies replace fiat money, they do a better job at the same time by being faster and decentralized.* Think physical mail vs email. To send physical mail you need either the government (ex: USPS, Canada Post, etc) or private companies (UPS, FedEx, DHL, etc) because of all the infrastructure needed**. To send email, you only need to set up a mail server**,

          • by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @12:01PM (#61079976)

            You can’t argue with these autists. Look how brilliant they try and sound with the tired tulip comparison. They were wrong with the iPod, wrong with Tesla and now wrong with bitcoin.

          • by SirSlud ( 67381 )

            Bitcoin, from a technical standpoint, probably could. But for so many reasons that are obvious and numerous enough to not worth enumerating here, it won't. So there's that.

          • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @12:06PM (#61079990)

            I really don't get the pointless comparison with tulip bulbs, since they cannot replace fiat money the way crypto-currencies do.

            Why not? Tulip bulbs are real, physical objects. You can make more, but they are non-trivial to produce. Very much like gold. There's a Pacific island where they used to use big rocks brought from other islands as currency. The rocks were way too big to carry around so people essentially traded options on them. One day a cargo of them sank near the island. They were irretrievable, but it turned out they could still be used as money. You can use anything as money, including nothing.

            Cryptocurrency isn't based on a real, physical object. You can make more, both "coins" and whole currencies, whenever you want. While making some coins is non-trivial, anybody who has a computer and can read some simple instructions can make a whole new currency with as many coins as they like (and have done so).

            "Fiat" means by arbitrary decree. There's no fiat in tulip bulbs. Cryptocurrency has quite a bit of it.

            • "Fiat" means by arbitrary decree.

              Not arbitrary. If a group of people decide that their rocks are worth a cow each, but find out after a while that it takes 100 rocks to buy a cow over in the next village (and that they can get 100 rocks for selling a cow there), then the value of rocks will adjust itself accordingly, provided that there's enough trade between those villages. What is happening is that these people are trying to convince the other village that their rocks are really worth a whole cow each. And it may even work if all you'

              • by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

                If a group of people decide that their rocks are worth a cow each

                That's the arbitrary decree, and it's why "fiat" currencies are called that. Actually, more accurately, the fiat is usually more along the lines of "rocks are symbols are value" although there are places where they have tried to decree the actual value. It typically doesn't go well. You're completely correct that not all arbitrary decrees will have the effect you desire.

                You might also note that "hashes ending in a particular pattern of digits

          • Comment removed based on user account deletion
          • by jythie ( 914043 )
            Because BTC is still just a speculative investment that people are buying into with the hopes that they can sell them later one for money.

            As for doing it 'better', BTC and other coins were designed to be as efficient as possible. They don't do anything well. Expensive to produce, expensive to use, slowly, and it costs extra to convert them into something that is actually backed.
          • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

            by gnasher719 ( 869701 )
            Bitcoin cannot replace "fiat money" because the ridiculously low trade volume. Trade volume = about 5US dollar per day per US citizen, and most of the trade volume are whales selling forth and back to each other to increase the price.

            And right now there are people in the possession of $1 trillion on paper. Why would anyone give them their hard earned cash? F*** them. What you apparently don't get is that 1 trillion dollar = number of bitcoins times price of last trade, which has nothing to do with the va
          • by JeffSh ( 71237 )

            participating in discusssions about bitcoin at slashdot is extremely frustrating because you'd expect the technologically minded audience to not be so closed minded and resistant to change, but there's a ton of dead brains here that are completely unwilling to engage in critical thinking beyond repeating the "ponzi scheme" "uses energy uselessly" other things.

            they literally cant see what's happening as they age and a new generation comes in with their ideas and so on. its so weird and doesnt fit with my exp

            • Yes, why do people keep saying this thing is completely unusable for its intended purpose and listing all the specific ways??

              I'm certainly not against the concept in general but as is, the only thing it's good at is making the miners and the people who got in early rich.

      • And it still has a value of $0.

        Or are you the type who says glass beads had inherent value because you could rip off native americans with them?

    • by kenh ( 9056 )

      Do you mean cash out?

  • by vyvepe ( 809573 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @11:18AM (#61079800)
    There is way too much money available in our economy. Interest rates are often below zero, governments are spending like crazy. People are taking high risks to find some return on investment. This will lead to bubbles. Bitcoin may be one of them. If governments will be able to keep inflation in check once covid situation improves then some bubbles will pop and bitcoin may be one of the victims. If governments will not be able to keep inflation in check then people will need to get rid of cash. Money velocity will increase and that will increase inflation even more and the spiral starts. Everybody will want to keep his wealth in something which cannot inflate: commonalities, maybe real estate, maybe stocks and maybe even bitcoin. We will see how our governments will manage. It will be interesting.
    • by Pinky's Brain ( 1158667 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @11:29AM (#61079830)

      Every time we tried deflation and creative destruction to get rid of debt overhangs last century we got world wars. I'd rather they print.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by amorsen ( 7485 )

      Yes yes, we have been living in hyperinflation ever since the warning was first sounded in the 90's. It is terrible, I have to cart heavy loads of banknotes and coins to even buy a single loaf of bread. Life is so hard in the post-QE world!

      • Are you Danish? it's the USA that's doing the currency debasement.

      • It's true, goods and services (wages) have not seen terrible inflation even as financial assets and property have inflated through the roof. So maybe the creation and destruction of all this paper wealth doesn't matter. But it's gonna hurt so damn much when my 401k loses half its value, and I don't see how to prevent it. If stocks plummet then so will real estate and bitcoin. Maybe I should sell 25% of my stocks and put them into Amazon gift cards to live on in retirement.
        • Amazon Gift Cards is a bad example because they're denominated in dollars which may devalue. Palettes of MREs maybe?
        • by hawk ( 1151 )

          >But it's gonna hurt so damn much when my 401k loses half its value,

          You just have to plan around that.

          I *assume* that a 50% drop is in my future (and also realize that there will likely be a complete recovery within a couple of years).

          I have the advantage of a 75 year planning horizon, however, which has let me be far more aggressive. At this point, if the 50% happens tomorrow, I will *still* be far ahead of the "prudent" approach.

          If I *wasn't* planning for such a drop, I would already be retired . . .

  • by gweihir ( 88907 )

    1 Trillion of absolutely nothing. Impressive.

    • There is way more than 1 Trillion of "absolutely nothing". Pretty much the whole money on the planet is made of "absolutely nothing". Even cash is made of almost nothing (a dirt cheap piece of paper). So this isn't a good argument since the notion of currency was invented.

  • More on Bitcoin (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Sebby ( 238625 )

    Here's a couple of good Twitter threads [twitter.com] by Stephen Diehl (@smdiehl) about what Bitcoin really is (with an earlier one further down below).

    *** TRIGGER WARNING The Bitcoin boosters might want to avert their eyes! ***

    Let's discuss the environmental cost of bitcoin. Because despite all the push for sustainable and green investment in the tech sector, there's a giant smoldering Chernobyl sitting at the heart of Silicon Valley which a lot of investors would prefer you remain quiet about. Thread (1/)

    TLDR on bitc

    • by Chalex ( 71702 )

      Here is one counter-argument. By the end of this decade we may well have "free" almost unlimited solar power.
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PM2RxWtF4Ds
      Presumably all the extra and unused solar power will be used to mine cryptocurrency.

  • by itsme1234 ( 199680 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @12:01PM (#61079972)

    At this rate we'll see the fireworks soon enough.

  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @12:13PM (#61080026)

    A economy where somebody can just make up money, and then pay me with that, is not acceptable.

    Worth must be based on actual work exchangable for equivalent actual work.

    Because I'm not working my ass off to get paid by somebody who didn't, so I can pay someone else who didn't.

    That includes bitcoin "mining", almost all business in the stock market, imginary property, interest, "I'm the boss", physical property and any other form of profit. (And obviously excludes the construction and maintenance of physical things, like houses, or the cost of running a business, or paying a *fixed* amount to compensate for losses from lending money.)

    • I hate to inform you that you're probably being paid in a made up currency. It's okay though, because everyone else believes it has value so it's a useful medium of exchange. Besides, you need it to pay your taxes so it's incredibly valuable. The market as a while determines the price or value of any work, but you're of course free to assign your own values for everything, but it may be hard to find someone else to agree with them who will trade with you.

      Bitcoin mining is work, just maybe not what you'd
    • I've been told that backing the currency strictly based on labor tends to lead you towards Marxist economics--with all its inherent flaws. I'm not sure why that is, because the big argument against Marxism is usually it's reliance on revolution for establishment (heavily destructive to the economy) and central planning once established (proven to be less efficient than a well regulated market).

      • by hawk ( 1151 )

        Marx was very much into labor theory of value.

        What tends to lead labor-backed currency thinking to marxism is the notion to measure labor in time, rather than output--so an hour of super-specialized brain surgery by a surgeon with 40 years experience is the same as an hour of a teen flipping burgers on his first day.

        At that point, since that's not the way people exchange labor even under a barter system, the only way to make the system work is coercion, forcing the surgeon to work for the same "price" as th

  • I've never heard of a currency having a market cap. Does this make any sense?

    I guess it is the sum of the price and the coins in circulation but it seems like a useless number.

    • Sure it makes sense. The market cap of any currency is just the money supply multiplied by the exchange rate. It's calculating the money supply that usually gets a bit tricky. Counting the number of physical British Pound notes, for example, is easy for them. OTOH, counting the number of Pounds on account is a bit more tricky due to the way credit works, but economists have found reasonable ways to estimate these numbers and add them to the physical money supply. Add it all up, multiply by the exchange

      • Sure it makes sense. The market cap of any currency is just the money supply multiplied by the exchange rate.

        No, it doesn't make sense.

        The US reports on the money supply, yes. But there is no report on the USD "market capitalization".
        Here's the current fed US M1 report https://www.federalreserve.gov... [federalreserve.gov]

        You can find a similar report for every other currency - but not bitcoin. Because it's not a currency.

  • Criminals benefit (Score:4, Insightful)

    by hackertourist ( 2202674 ) on Friday February 19, 2021 @01:29PM (#61080290)

    So, several years ago some misguided nerds decide to run a public experiment trying to create a new kind of money. It's a flawed experiment, with wild swings in value, hard limitations on the amount of transactions and stupendously high transaction cost (620 kWh, or over $100 per transaction, 10^6 times higher than that of credit card transactions, which are more expensive than debit card transactions).
    Criminals are the first to see the unique properties of this currency and become the largest user. From criminal transactions to money laundering to fraudulent exchanges, crime flourishes.
    A few years on, low-knowledge small-time investors with too much time on their hands start buying into this weird currency, sending the price through the roof. Who benefits? The criminals who see the value of their holdings spike, and who benefit from the increasing transaction volume as it makes it easier to hide their transactions.
    The nerds who were so eager to escape government oversight have played right into the cards of the people who's business it is to escape government oversight.

  • Are they now based on something like a non-fluctuating gold standard? NO? Then what is secure? That title is an oxymoron.
  • Twisted beyond any resemblance to the intent of currency. Time to go back to the only system that works, the barter system.

Truly simple systems... require infinite testing. -- Norman Augustine

Working...