Marketcap perspective

[annette786]

Fun with marketcaps....

Investment	Marketcap	BTC price @ 10.5 Million float
Websense	$520 Million	$49.52
Shutterfly	$980 Million	$93.33
Groupon	$2.5 Billion	$238.10
CNA Financial	$7.6 Billion	$723.81
Paychex	$12 Billion	$1,142.86
Barcays	$50 Billion	$4,761.90
Visa	$120 Billion	$11,428.57
HSBC	$190 Billion	$18,095.24
Apple	$500 Billion	$47,619.05
Gold (165,000 tonnes at end of 2009)	$10.1 Trillion	$961,904.7

To the people that say they don't want the price to rise too quickly...  If you are a hedgefund with a few hundred million under managment, you don't even look at stocks until they reach a certain marketcap.  How would an alternative fund go about buying $5 million in BTC?  Once we hit a $1 billion, for reasons of liquidity, BTC actually becomes safer.

Don't let me them shake you out.  We've got a long way to go.


Any other fun stores of value or currencies we can compare BTC to?

[chriswilmer]

I like these kinds of posts!

[annette786]

I like these kinds of posts!

Thank you! 

Even if BTC doesn't emerge into some sort of default currency and it just becomes a secure store of value, an Apple marketcap is not unreasonable.

[chriswilmer]

Timely post. Today Bitcoin hits a record high for marketcap!!

[flipperfish]

I always like to compare BTC to Facebook. As I often say: Facebook is "a tool to spread gossip" and Bitcoin is a tool to transfer money/wealth/ressource allocation, which one should be valued more? Also Facebook can give a hint on possible userbase.
Facebook currently has a market cap of about 60 Billion USD, so it would be just above Barclays in your list. Or the other way round: With a userbase of 1 Billion monthly active users (October 2012, [1]), that would mean, that each BTC user had an average of 4.5 BTC (@13.20 USD/BTC), if Bitcoin was Facebook. (Which of course wouldn't work out, as there had to be 4.5 Billion Bitcoins obviously.) Or in another perspective: Each Facebook user would only get 0.021 BTC (on average).


[1] http://newsroom.fb.com/Key-Facts

[RodeoX]

I like these kinds of posts!

Me 2. I have learned a lot about money here.

[Kupsi]

Timely post. Today Bitcoin hits a record high for marketcap!!

It was higher in June 2011, but we can reach a new all time high soon. We need the exchange rate to be around 18 USD / BTC.

[goldlyre]

What if you compare the marketcap of Bitcoin with that of the apartment suites of premium quality in Shanghai?

The current price of one suite is about 14 million USD plus, and that shall account for 10% of all bitcoins already produced today.

[jl2012]

I picked some small economies and found their M0.

Iceland (pop:320,060): 36,706,350,000 ISK = 290,316,525USD (13.8USD/BTC, assuming 21,000,000BTC)
Qatar (pop: 1,757,540): 44,971,500,000 QAR = 12,352,771,620USD (631USD/BTC)
Norway (pop: 5,052,800): 101,976,000,000 NOK = 18,149,076,624USD (864USD/BTC)
Hong Kong (pop: 7,103,700): 273,959,000,000HKD=35,349,477,688USD (1683USD/BTC)

[byronbb]

Interesting about Iceland, they have considered adopting the Canadian Dollar as their currency, but maybe they should look at bitcoin? 

http://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-canadian-dollar-heidar-gudjonsson-2012-5

[julz]

Interesting about Iceland, they have considered adopting the Canadian Dollar as their currency, but maybe they should look at bitcoin? 

http://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-canadian-dollar-heidar-gudjonsson-2012-5

By moving to Bitcoin, not only would they stand to gain fabulous wealth simply as an 'early adopter' nation, but they have a natural advantage for large-scale bitcoin mining due to their climate. They are already taking advantage of natural cooling for data centres.

Sadly, that's a pretty pie-in-the-sky idea even for Iceland I think.

[SlaveInDebt]

I Googled this:

http://www.worldometers.info/drugs/

A United Nations publication of 1998, "Economic and Social Consequences of Drug Abuse and Illicit Trafficking," states that:

"With estimates of $100 billion to $110 billion for heroin, $110 billion to $130 billion for cocaine, $75 billion for cannabis and $60 billion for synthetic drugs, the probable global figure for the total illicit drug industry would be approximately $360 billion. Given the conservative bias in some of the estimates for individual substances, a turnover of around $400 billion per annum is considered realistic."

Someone watched Breaking The Taboo 

[byronbb]

Interesting about Iceland, they have considered adopting the Canadian Dollar as their currency, but maybe they should look at bitcoin? 

http://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-canadian-dollar-heidar-gudjonsson-2012-5

By moving to Bitcoin, not only would they stand to gain fabulous wealth simply as an 'early adopter' nation, but they have a natural advantage for large-scale bitcoin mining due to their climate. They are already taking advantage of natural cooling for data centres.

Sadly, that's a pretty pie-in-the-sky idea even for Iceland I think.

They have geo-thermal energy source too. But ya pie in the sky for sure.

[annette786]

Hmmm.... So where are we now?

[Xendrios]

Interesting about Iceland, they have considered adopting the Canadian Dollar as their currency, but maybe they should look at bitcoin? 

http://www.businessinsider.com/iceland-canadian-dollar-heidar-gudjonsson-2012-5

By moving to Bitcoin, not only would they stand to gain fabulous wealth simply as an 'early adopter' nation, but they have a natural advantage for large-scale bitcoin mining due to their climate. They are already taking advantage of natural cooling for data centres.

Sadly, that's a pretty pie-in-the-sky idea even for Iceland I think.

They have geo-thermal energy source too. But ya pie in the sky for sure.

Looking at how governments usually lag behind on laws concerning new tech I can't imagine any countries making any laws concerning bitcoin for another several years. By which time bitcoin will be quite irreversible because too many highly placed persons will have a stake in it by then aswell as the business done in btc might be too big. :-)

[RodeoX]

Hmmm.... So where are we now?

Getting closer. 
Also how reliable are the valuations on companies vs. bitcoin?

[caveden]

Iceland (pop:320,060): 36,706,350,000 ISK = 290,316,525USD (13.8USD/BTC, assuming 21,000,000BTC)
Qatar (pop: 1,757,540): 44,971,500,000 QAR = 12,352,771,620USD (631USD/BTC)
Norway (pop: 5,052,800): 101,976,000,000 NOK = 18,149,076,624USD (864USD/BTC)
Hong Kong (pop: 7,103,700): 273,959,000,000HKD=35,349,477,688USD (1683USD/BTC)

This is interesting. I wasn't aware that Bitcoin M0 was already so higher in aggregated price than those of some governmental currencies like the ISK.

Does anyone know a place with a ranking of countries per M0? It would be nice to see where Bitcoin is in such ranking. I still see some people arguing that Bitcoin is "not serious enough to be called money... it's only used by junkies, come on!".