Bitcoin Forum

Do you know that using the current rate of bitcoin against the USA dollar, the smallest denomination of bitcoin, a single Satoshi, is now worth more than some national currencies like:

- Iranian Rial
- Vietnamese Dong
- Indonesian Rupiah

The 1 Satoshi is at USD $0.0000772318 while Iranian Rial is at 0.0000237959 USD, Vietnamese Dong at 0.0000426711 USD and
0.0000700676 USD is for Indonesian Rupiah.

I didn't know that, at least i not made any research. The main problem in my opinion is that sometimes not worth to send low amount of bitcoin, like 100 satoshi or 1000 because fee can be higher than amount sent.

In Venezuela it was way worse with a rate of: 1 USD = ~248,487 VEF which is 0.000004 USD

1 Satoshi was worth 20 VEF at one point, this was changed recently due to the insane inflation in Venezuela and the old VEF was converted at a rate of 1:100.000

There are a few others that are close:
https://www.x-rates.com/table/?from=USD&amount=1

It's a nice little bit of trivia, but what does it really mean? For example, economy of any of those countries is far bigger than Bitcoin economy, and those currencies have more users than there are Bitcoin users in the whole world. There are currencies that cost more than the US dollar, like how Kuwaiti Dinar costs $3.29, but this doesn't really mean that it is better than US dollar in some way.

To be honest I take Bitcoin more as a store house of value , as in investment , rather than taking it as a Currency therefore it's something that is supposed to happen .

It's more like gold , per kg , it's going to be more than any Currency for sure , for a Currency we need stability and global recognition , which is yet pending.

Stability we see time to time but , its still not good enough.
Therefore I don't think if we can treat that as a Currency or not , also we usually use it in smaller amounts like0.000003 and such , with the lightning network it is slightly getting better though.

Who know ?
Maybe it will be a global currency 10 years from now.

It means nothing.The usability of a currency is more important than the value or price of that currency.
Bitcoin is more investment asset than a fully functional currency.

I think it is already global since Bitcoin is already acknowledge by different countries, its that these country cannot use Bitcoin to replace their own fiat currency.

---

Seem the rarity of Bitcoin is really kicking in, surpassing other fiat currency value in USD with its smallest unit - the satoshi.  There is no doubt that time will come, the value of 1 satoshi will be greater than 1 USD.  Reason, USD value is depreciating while Bitcoin is appreciating, at one point Bitcoin's satoshi will meet 1 USD into 1:1 ratio before leaving USD behind.

Bitcoin LN will solve that problem. I think an extensive study needs to be done on the merit of OP's post and find out why even some national legal tenders are worth less than a single satoshi.
This also presents the dilemma of getting confused between the use of Bitcoin as a pure investment asset or a real transactional currency. With rising value, even LN would become expensive one day.

Maybe someday we will be talking more in terms of Satoshi instead of dollars.  I know seeing one coin be worth thousands of dollars can be very intimidating since most people don't know about smaller denominations like mBTC or satoshis.

This is something like an interesting fact but nothing more.
It doesn't really matter what is the price of the national currenty. The most important thing is its stability. You can earn $100 per monts but you will be still more poor than the guy that earns billion of his cheap money.
From usability point of view BTC deflation is a bad thing.

Doubt it, Bitcoin will always be pegged to USD or some kind of currency, I don't see Bitcoin ever working alone, it has no intrinsic value, it just cannot happen. I don't think it's intimidating, many countries have absurd numbers as their currency, some of them use millions like nothing.

Great observation and good job for doing a research about this. We could see that Bitcoin is really a developing currency with a very huge potential to take over other currencies.
It's actually exceeding the value of other currencies and I'm sure that if most countries would welcome and accept it, there's a possibility that it could rise better than dollar in the future.

It's definitely interesting to know, but the comparison is a bit unfair when it comes to long term value preservation. Fiat units of weak countries go down much harder against the US dollar than any other fiat currency, and when you put something that goes down a lot against something (satoshi units in this case) that goes up a lot, then you'll realize how different the economical models are.

What I do consider interesting is putting Bitcoin in 2018 during its bear market against Venezuela's fiat currency. Both tanked hard, which makes the comparison a bit more fair; what stands out is that even if you bought Bitcoin around the peak levels of $20,000 and held it all the way down to the $3000 level, you still did better than holding Bolivars during the exact same period.

Bitcoin's 85% correction from top to bottom made you lose less purchasing power than the Bolivar. Let that sink in for a moment.

That is right. I remember a colleague of mine talking about her being a millionaire in Korea when they exchange our currency (Philippine Peso) to the currency of the country that they've gone to (South Korean Won). She said that is the first time she became a millionaire but the prices there are so expensive based on the money she had, a million is not enough.

You don't have to depth research about it, there are converters on the web like this.

--> https://www.bestchange.com/converter/

Soon in the future, it's possible when price goes high.

I had the same experience when I was in Vietnam and Iran.  ;D At the time when I went to Iran, the paper money was also literally big as compared to regular paper money. You will really feel that you have a lot but the value is very low. I'm wondering why they created such denominations? Is it to feel that they have a lot in their pockets at least even if you really can't use it to buy your necessities?

I agree with the first statement. Comparing the value of currencies with each other without taking into perspective the economic fundamentals of each country, even something as simple as the CPI and the liquidity of these currencies is completely useless.

However, I don't agree with your statement about bitcoin's stability, and deflationary nature.

BTC will prove to be a better long term store of value than the majority of fiat currencies given the fact that it is unaffected by inflation, and currency debasement especially in countries where the banking system is not robust and the central bank uses their jurisdiction to finance governments. Furthermore, it is important to note that bitcoin is not deflationary - it is inflationary, just at a decreasing rate.

That's quite interesting but of course, the transaction fee will have an impact on those values, because Bitcoin cannot make a transaction without the fees involved, so it's useless to discuss the comparison on small unit.

Wow I have never thought about Venezuela which has become the poster child for bitcoin use lately. What is happening in Venezuela is really saddening. The country has all the potential to be an economic power, has many of needed resources, got political leadership that shifted away from USA (they should have used that as a big advantage) but then it was mired with wrong policies and corruption got in the way. I am wishing well the people and the government of Venezuela that things will go right soon.

It's always the people not the country. A lot of countries are fucked only because their leaders are greedy, a lot of 3rd world countries have probably more resources than many 1st world countries and yet they are still poor. Of course sometimes its not their fault but other countries leaders fault, cough cough, US, cough cough.

This is not really the case for many currencies that are undervalued neither. I may not really understand the situation very well so I am sorry if I understood it wrong but for example you can stay at a hotel in Venezuela for 7 dollars (5 star best hotel btw) as well but in their currency it takes thousands of their currency.

Which means there are currencies with inflation that are like 20 thousand of fiat of that country equals to 1 bitcoin but when it comes to purchasing power the dollar and bitcoin worths a lot and can be used to purchase a lot of stuff whereas you would need thousands of Zimbabwe currency to do the same.

Smaller denomination doesn't always means its better or worse, bigger could mean bad things too sometimes. Like euro for example has better denomination than dollar and stronger whereas Iranian is lower too but means bad things.

This is a situation that would just get worst as time goes by, because Fiat currencies in 3rd world countries are failing at a rapid rate and they are trying to print them out of trouble to keep the local economy from collapsing.  ::)

Hyperinflation is also a real problem and the next global financial collapse will trigger a global currency crisis. People will soon realize why Bitcoin is a safe haven against Hyperinflation and toilet paper currencies.  ;)  <Examples : Zimbabwe & Venezuela>  >:(

But it still gives a warm feeling

I agree that those countries are bigger than Bitcoin in most aspects, but this is definitely not because Bitcoin is somehow worse than the respective currencies. It just happens that the countries mentioned have many millions of people living there (e.g. Iran or Indonesia), and all these millions have to use the official currencies whether they like it or not. But do people outside these countries use them? I guess, not much. But Bitcoin is used across the world and that's a real thing and a real advantage. Simply put, in real competition on equal grounds Bitcoin will beat most of fiat monies out there and with a vengeance at that

Wow, I have never done my research to this length and it is really good to know that Bitcoin value is better than some country’s value. This may be the reason why some smaller countries are really the ones very friendly to cryptocurrency and adopting it.

Once Bitcoin becomes a global currency in future, it will surely be able to solve some of the challenges that these countries are having with their economy that is making their paper coin valueless, with Bitcoin, they will be used to digital currency which will also give them an idea as how to make their own currency work. Bitcoin being a global currency still doesn’t stop each country from having their own digital currency.

comparing the price of bitcoin with USD is actually a wrong thing,it should be done with satoshi value.I guess there are many fiat currencies value against USD is very low so there are many comparision can be given other than these three.