Bitcoin Forum

There are about 210,000,000 kg of gold in the world.
Each kilogram of gold has 30,573,183,730,000,000,000,000 atoms.

So, there are 6,420,368,583,300,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms of gold on Earth.

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30573183730000000000000+*+210000000 (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=30573183730000000000000+*+210000000)

That is about six "nonillion" atoms (6 thousand billion billion billion).

On the other hand, there are 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis.

So there are much more atoms of gold in the world than satoshis.
Actually, there are 3,057,318,373,000,000 more atoms of gold on Earth than satoshis.
(about, 3 quadrillion times more).

https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6420368583300000000000000000000+%2F+2100000000000000 (https://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=6420368583300000000000000000000+%2F+2100000000000000)

That is: 152,865,918,650,000,000% (percent) more atoms of gold than satoshis... Way more!!!

-remotemass

And...?

Atoms aren't spendable units last time I checked.  What's the relevance of this comparison?  Surely it would make more sense to compare troy ounces instead of atoms.

Gold should be measured reasonably like DooMAD points out. Moreover, I read an article by Winklevoss just yesterday where he pointed out that the amount of gold in the world remains unknown (https://winklevosscapital.com/the-case-for-500k-bitcoin/) especially if we take into consideration nearby asteroids rather than just Earth. And it's better to know that something is definitely scarce than to rely on approximate information. There was a gold crisis leading to devaluation when a big amount of it suddenly appeared in one place before, so it could well happen again, only on global scale. The good thing about Bitcoin is that nobody can ever find any more Bitcoins anywhere in the universe, so it's more predictable.

Yeah, satoshis also kinda aren't spendable units if you think about it. To send 1 satoshi how much would you have to pay in fees, the same? At least 1 satoshi right? If that's the case then it's not practical to have 1 satoshi be worth more than 4 or 20 USD, doesn't this give bitcoin a hard cap on maximum possible price?

Carrying around Sats is way less heavy than carrying around atoms.  ;D

An interesting comparison, although not practical. However, even if we compare a kilogram of gold and bitcoin, we get an interesting situation. According to these figures, there are 210 million kilograms of gold in the world. That is, for each of the 21 million bitcoins, there are ten kilograms of gold. If we compare these measures with each other, taking into account the fact that even an ounce of gold has a price of about $ 2,000, it turns out that gold is much more expensive than bitcoin.

The minimum number of sats you can send in a standard transaction is 546, and the minimum fee you can set is 1 sat/vbyte, which would be somewhere around 140 sats for the smallest "standard" transaction (although the smallest ever transaction broadcast was 62 vbytes). You could pay less of a relative fee if you batched payments together in to one larger transaction, though.

This doesn't apply to using Lightning, where you can send amounts and pay fees denominated in millisatoshis (0.001 of a satsoshi).

No, for two reasons. Firstly, Lightning already uses sub-satoshi values, and secondly if we did reach a point where a single satoshi was worth $20 as you suggest, then I expect the community would back a hard fork to add more zeroes after the decimal point.

And so? does it MATTER? lol

futile comparison given between gold and bitcoin, I wished you could gave us some relevance and uniqueness coz we already discussing these two for a while. For the count, bitcoin doesn't have an ATOM, the space that it got is its size, a data size which is not an atom. What you discussed is gold's number of atom vs bitcoin's total denomination.

What's the connection between gold atoms and satoshis? I don't understand. You want to make a fair comparison between gold's smallest unit and BTC's smallest unit? You should add then other variables. Such as the difficulty if obtaining the gold, its price for transport and so on. Why don't you also add the price for tranporting 1 satoshi through the Internet?! Did you know that Internet has also a mass? Do you have any idea of the Internet mass? The Internet weighs as much as a strawberry. For this calculus were counted the masses of all electrons of all the Internet servers. If you want a more precise amount, accounting all the electrons emitted by all PCs connected to Internet, then the Internet mass is equal to the mass of 3 strawberries.

This doesn't interest you at all, does it? The same is true when you compare gold atoms to satoshis. There is no connection between them :)

Yes, a comparison between gold's smallest amount and BTC's smallest amount.

Except you can just add more digits after the decimal point. Currently satoshi is considered "smallest" amount, yet there have already been exchanges with btc pairs working with 9 digits after the decimal point so i can't see any point in this comparison.

Umm... 1 satoshi isn't equal with 1 atom of gold...

If you were to be bothered to even make a comparison, might as well compute satoshi's in atoms. Idk if it's possible, though I did find an article calculating a microsoft word file, which I didn't really understand how it worked. Pretty old article though.

https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/how-much-does-the-internet-weigh (https://www.discovermagazine.com/technology/how-much-does-the-internet-weigh)

Besides, if you were to compare a real-world entity to a virtual entity, wouldn't it most of the time result in the real world entity being the heavier one? Since the purpose of making a virtual entity was to lessen the burden, whether it be in terms of weight or size. It can be almost compared to the imagination, where it doesn't cost anything nor weigh anything.

And why does it matter? I can easily send one satoshi to somebody with Bitcoin wallet. Gold atom can't be sent or received

This won't matter after all if bitcoin won't be able to achieve what gold has in it's time duration,serving as both a currency and asset also as the safe heaven for Investors in time of economy crises etc. Demand, adoptions and utility is all that matters as gold has all that so irrespective of its supply is still can be a profitable investment. Bitcoin might have less supply but that won't matter if it doesn't have all this other advantage as highlighted above.

The goodness is bitcoin has a bright future, gold has been consistent for all these years that's why it's gaining the trust of Investors more easily than bitcoin, with time bitcoin would be treated in the same manner. Nobody digs that much into what you just highlighted as it has less significants though.

I'm not sure where I could use this information but I'll take note of it anyway. A little tweak and it can be a good intro for a bitcoin blog. ;-)

When you are writing about 210M Kg gold on the planet,do you mean that all that gold is already mined,or a big part of that gold is in the mountains(might never be mined)?
Also,when you are writing about 2,100,000,000,000,000 satoshis,do you realize that:
1.A part of the satoshis is out of circulation and lost forever?
2.A part of them isn't mined yet.
I know you want to prove a point that Bitcoin is more scarce than gold,but your calculations seems partially wrong.

Hahaha I wondering where too ;D? But yeah, the trivia is quite cool though an obvious math. Hmm maybe OP wants us to realize that gold dominates bitcoin in such a certain manner (who knows?). If that's the case then I might agree but it doesn't necessarily mean that btc is not significant anymore. It is! Yeah 21 million coins are small in comparison but each one is excessively valuable and has the potential to exceed gold.

next, tell me how many grains of sand there are on the earth, compared to how many specks of dirt there are! ::)


you can't feasibly transact physically in atoms of gold because gold can't be physically divided to that level. you could use some sort of paper gold mechanism, but that introduces trust. bitcoin's entire purpose is to eliminate trust, so i don't see what practical relevance this comparison has.

Don't bitcoins have atoms too? You know... Inside the blockchain? I think more than gold's  ;D

And the other way round. I can hold a piece of gold in my hand but I can't hold Bitcoin. I can kill someone with a gold bar but I can't do it with Bitcoin. I can make jewelry from gold but I can't show off wearing Bitcoin (unless you count Bitcoin merchandise). There's no point in starting this discussion. It's like saying that strawberries are better than apples because they have more seeds.

I didn't say that one was better than the other. I was just comparing the smallest amount of each.

For what purposes?
Comparison usually falls to pick which one is better than the other. Though your comparison is quite interesting, rather a fun fact that could be presented in a YouTube video. But, it's lacking some purpose.
Gold and Bitcoin is two different asset, one is digital and the other is physical. IMO their smallest unit doesn't matter in a transaction, just like fiat currency, what can you do with a one cent?
Nevertheless, this is quite interesting and educational stuff if the numbers you represent in the OP is correct.

??? My head about to explode about the atoms.
 
 I just know, gold and bitcoins. No need to make it so complicated. They have different use and purpose in the first place. And everyone here has it's own choice of pick from that two. As long as it does give good returns and benefits to all, whether atoms by gold or sats by bitcoin, both are worth to invest. Period.

Gold sucks if you need to flee you can not carry enough of it.

And I can move 1 billion plus dollars anywhere in the world for under 1 dollar and in under 1 hour.

BOTH SAFELY AND ANONYMOUSLY. As long as it stays in btc

Try moving 1 billion in gold bro. For under 1 dollar and in under 1 hour.





Read the fine print .

Not true. There are already tools to manipulate physical matter at nanoscale level.
See this wiki article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_(atoms) (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IBM_(atoms))

Okay, hooray for science.  But the point is, the average person can't do it.  And you certainly can't spend them even if you could.  There is no practical everyday application for measuring anything in atoms. 

And gold probably needs a shipment carrier so it can be transferred anywhere else, and plus the truck that you need for land transport. My point is that bitcoin is better than gold when need to move from places.

I love your sarcasm lmao, you'd be probably needing atleast a million if you want to transport gold from place A to place B I mean who wants to pay that transport fee? haha

^ Thank you for saying what I was thinking while reading this whole thing.

People really need to move off the whole gold vs bitcoin / gold or bitcoin argument and or discussion.  These are two completely different things that happen so share a few similar qualities.  Gold is a physical meta, that has uses that go far beyond a digital currency.  Bitcoin is a digital currency that have uses that go far beyond Gold.  The two are nice part of anyone's diversified portfolio and do not need to be compares to one another.  My take as an investment advisor is to own both assets. That is as long as you've built a healthy portfolio already.

What a joke! Imagine walking into a shop and offering 200 atoms of Gold as a payment method!  ;D ;D ;D ;D   or telling someone that you would give him 3000 atoms of Gold in return for 5000 atoms of Silver on a microscopic level.  ;D ;D ;D

I wagered 10 Satoshi on a bet on Stake.com original Slots yesterday and I won 400x and was rewarded with 4000 Satoshi in return. So you can actually do something with a Satoshi, but you can do sweet blow f#$%all with 10 atoms of Gold. (Spliting the atoms to get the 10 atoms of Gold will cost you a fortune)

Nope, try a more logical comparison, if you want to hype Gold as a more useful investment/payment method.  ;)

let's use the old "cup of coffee" example bitcoiners are so fond of.

walk me through it. let's say the price of gold has skyrocketed so that consumer goods can now be priced in atoms of gold. i walk into a coffee shop. how do i pay the cashier for a cup of coffee in atoms of gold? how do they verify the gold is genuine, and how many atoms i've paid? how to they take physical receipt?

with bitcoin, this problem can be solved relatively easily. you could transact in sub-satoshi units on another compatible protocol like LN. another way is to fork the bitcoin protocol to allow for greater divisibility past the satoshi unit. either way, free software can be used to quickly verify that a payment is genuine, and when settlement has taken place. how much would it cost for merchants to buy and maintain tools capable of physically verifying and receiving gold at the atomic level?

Maybe OP is unaware, but atoms can be split too, in electrons and neutrons. Which, obviously, are more than the atoms. Why didn't he think that gold electrons are way more than satoshis even compared to atoms versus satoshis ???

It' crystal clear that anyone can go to a shop and buy goods with gold atoms. Right? 😅 Then the same is true about gold electrons -- which are also available in a bigger number. If he compares smallest units, at least he should do it right. Lol.

So is gold similar to XRP lol?
I seriously hold that 1 satoshi value grows to be more than 1 gram of gold.

I was buying physical gold on auction sites. I managed to buy some cutlery and some coins. Do you know what I found out? It is immensely difficult to know if I did a good deal.

For an ordinary person like me, it is very difficult to prove the quality and veracity of gold. It is obvious that there are several methods, but they all involve some work. So having physical gold to transact means a difficulty when making small transactions.

This is historic. There are several companies that attest to the veracity of gold. But you still need to trust them. It's all very complicated.

So whether it is possible or not makes little difference. What drives gold markets today are virtual transactions. Certificates issued by banks. And in that the Bitcoin decentralization and its verification process is unbeatable.

You can prove that you have the ability to move something unique and that no one else has power over it.