What happens if some1 rich buys it all?

[JamesTaylor]

I know it's impractical and can't be done within probably even a day nor a week, but what would happen if someone very rich would like to spend ~1 billion on bitcoins and buy it all?

At first glance looks like it would be the end. Thinking a bit more it suggests that the later bitcoins would be so expensive that even he couldn't afford it, but he would have so much that could make a huge profit out of it.

If there's someone more literate than me in economics, I'd love a detailed and argumented response.

[cliff101]

I think someone with $billion + would be smart enough to realize that they would either go broke in the process. Current market cap is around $1.4billion. By the time evil Bill Gates finished buying the last bitcoin, he would have spent some $100billion+.

[bozak]

I know it's impractical and can't be done within probably even a day nor a week, but what would happen if someone very rich would like to spend ~1 billion on bitcoins and buy it all?

At first glance looks like it would be the end. Thinking a bit more it suggests that the later bitcoins would be so expensive that even he couldn't afford it, but he would have so much that could make a huge profit out of it.

If there's someone more literate than me in economics, I'd love a detailed and argumented response.

It is simply not possible to buy it all even with an infinite amount of money.  The simple reason is that not all bitcoins are for sale.  Currently, the only ones that can be purchased are on the exchanges.  If someone spent a large amount of money on the exchange, the exchange rate would rise and this would probably lead to other coins being available on the exchange, but it would never lead to all the coins being available on the exchange. 

[wolverine.ks]

I love these questions. ...

[BazkieBumpercar]

Well, I'm pretty curious myself..

What if Bill decides to buy all 'reasonable' sell offers on the large exchanges, continuously, until all his money is spent?

What would this do to the BTC price? How much would it end up at when bill has spent all of his ~60 billion usd? How much bitcoins would Bill then have?

It's impossible, obviously, to exactly predict these numbers... but can someone smart make some educated guesses? I'm very curious

[wolverine.ks]

If you look at mtgoxlive.com you can make an estimate,  however,  that's a dynamic picture of bids and asks. The higher the price goes, the more to the right everything will go.

[Arcas]

Well, I'm pretty curious myself..

What if Bill decides to buy all 'reasonable' sell offers on the large exchanges, continuously, until all his money is spent?

What would this do to the BTC price? How much would it end up at when bill has spent all of his ~60 billion usd? How much bitcoins would Bill then have?

It's impossible, obviously, to exactly predict these numbers... but can someone smart make some educated guesses? I'm very curious

If he bought most of the coins in existence, the remaining ones would be priced extraordinarily high just because those people know he is willing to pay top dollar for them.

[BitChick]

It would certainly raise the price. 

More people would decide to sell their hoard of BTC as the price rises. 

There would be less BTC to spread around to new people that want BTC.  So BTC will start being sold in smaller increments. 

I am all for it. Anyone know a billionaire looking to invest? 

[Jaxkr]

You can't buy them all. They won't all exist until a hundred years in the future.

[wolverine.ks]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVp-zIONsrs



if someone started to buy up all the btc in the world, if they did it fast enough, could create their own bubble, a huge increase in price followed by an equally huge crash, and then months if not years of stabilization.

if they did it slow, they would gradually increase the price, which could in theory bring in more vendors wishing to sell their products for this new and lucrative commodity/currency. however, most likely the bitcoin economy would not be able to support that kind of growth, and you would get another collapse.

i think ideally, if you wanted a billionaire to voluntarily buy enough btc to make most current holders rich, it would have to be incredibly slow, or wait until there is much much much more liquidity.

[Cluster2k]

If someone incredibly wealthy decided "I want all (or most) of this new digital commodity", three things would happen:

- The price would rocket up in a massive bubble. 

- I would sell all of my bitcoins for evil nasty fiat currency and pay off my house, set up my family for life.  No need to work again.  Travel the world.

- No one would want to buy the hoarded bitcoins, because the greatest fool had just bought all of them.  It's trivial to set up another bitcoin chain for those that want to transfer value outside of the banking system, and the billionaire would find no one to buy bitcoins from him or her.

[ISAWHIM]

Then everyone who picked a high price to "sell", will get a lot, while everyone who has prices listed for a low price, will get a lot less.

Everyone still holding shares, (Unlisted on any selling market), will be subject to the price-fix of that person who purchased them.

Everyone who is listed as wanting to buy for less than that price set now, will simply raise the "willing to buy" or "bid" price, higher to match the charts super-high new value, as the purchase of coins is made.

EG, to buy 1 BTC, it costs you about $120... but to buy 1000 BTC, it may cost you $160 per BTC. (Because not everyone is listed with an ASK price of $120, just the last person who sold one, was at $120 per BTC.)

Now, to buy 1,000,000 BTC, would cost you $350 per BTC, because the majority has listed a price above that value. SO the chart will show the new price of about $500, since the AVERAGE of that whole purchase was $350, but the HIGHEST price paid for one of those coins was $500, which was neutralized by a purchase of $120...

Thus, the FALSE value will be listed as $500, while the actual "purchased value" was only $300. And the market will sharply fall back down to $300, at-least, but realistically return back to $120, if that is what the true value is, for the remaining majority.

It is the opposite if you sell... The more you sell-out, the more the chart drops to a false price. Causing it to swing back up slowly, as new listings begin to roll-in to that false-price level.

[darkmule]

If someone incredibly wealthy decided "I want all (or most) of this new digital commodity", three things would happen:

- The price would rocket up in a massive bubble.

Since there is no way just to "buy all the Bitcoin" all at once, this would occur during the attempt to buy it all up, probably discouraging the billionaire from continuing on a course of action that would increasingly obviously be extremely foolish.

[ISAWHIM]

That is why you NEVER pay attention to a "few rare sales", which is what determines what you see on any chart like this. You pay attention to a "rolling average", and a "low-price graph", which shows you the real average potential.

To get YOUR potential in any market, you have to constantly get quotes for X-volume, and make your own charts.

Eg, if you have to sell in chunks of 10,000BTC, you need charts that show you the price for those who are buying chunks of 10,000BTC. (Or a rolling chart that has 10,000BTC in the rolling avg.)

Those charts do NOT look like the 1BTC charts we see here. Actually, these charts are more like 0.01BTC value charts. Which is why they look so jumpy.

There is also no separation of "Buy" and "sell"... they are both being used to display the same chart. If you overlay the buy chart over the sell chart, you see a "spread" or "Gap", and less jumping up and down as the chart tries to draw... buy, buy, buy, sell, buy, sell, sell, sell, buy....

[ISAWHIM]

This is sort-of what is going to happen with all the ASIC's coming out...

They are going to earn all of our coins (taking the percentage of coins we earn by reducing the power we are mining with as a percentage), and TRY to cash them all in, as fast as possible. LOL, all exchanges already set limits in place to stop them from destroying the value of the market too fast... Because without a flowing market, the exchanges don't make money.

This will drive the PRICE CHART down, which will COST THOSE CASHING IN, a major loss. EG, They will cash-in all the low prices, which will make them get lower and lower and lower... eventually causing them to have to cash-in more, to get the same money, which they are easily mining from us, and they will take that loss, because they can afford it.

Until they can't afford it, or are unwilling to keep selling them for half-price. Thus, they will have to hold-on to them, until the market rises again, and then cash out again...

It will become a long drawn-out process. The smart ones will only cash-out in a steady and small stream. Letting the listings get listed higher, which takes time. Thus, all these coins they have, will take them 20 years to cash-in, to get this high price. Not one month, like they are estimating.

By then, we will all have moved on, because it will be only a few dozen people mining, and they will not have anyone willing to pay them the high prices for the easy coins they stole from us. (Us who have worked hard to get the coins we have now, and will be pushed out by ASICs in the next few months.)

We take our value and coins with us... to scrypt coins, that they can not mine. Thus, to get our money, they have to use BTC to buy alt-coins, then cash-out... again, at that point, we will not want BTC, so it won't matter. The price for BTC will continue to drop, while alt-coins continue to rise.

Best thing to do is cash-out now, while the coins still have value, and the ASIC miners have not had a chance to take all those high bids from the charts before you get to them.

[townf]

if someone started to buy up all the btc in the world, if they did it fast enough, could create their own bubble, a huge increase in price followed by an equally huge crash, and then months if not years of stabilization.

But what keeps it stabilized after the crash? If they had huge sums of money, they could rise the price again almost immediately. The current USD amount of the entire bitcoin money supply is roughly the same as the amount of fresh money pouring out of a spigot into the FED's balance sheet every 10 hours (rough guess).

Like this could happen instead maybe:
Buy, buy, buy until they have a whole shitbox full of bitcoins, like way more than enough to move the market in a big way. It gets to the point to where the price is huge and everybody is giddy and nervous like you say, a bubble. Then they spout FUD and place huge sell orders at low asks, not with all their coins, but just enough to make the bubble pop. Then they immediately start all over again at the bottom, but they start out with more bitcoins than last time. If they did this repeatedly, people would get all annoyed and lose faith, and they could maybe get the vast majority of bitcoins.

[BitCloud]

someone buying $1B of btc would double the current price back to $260 or so and it would probably run a little higher than that

so... lets find a billionaire to do that

[wolverine.ks]

people like to say bitcoin is a friction less economy.  But it's not.  a billionaire buying and selling still has to pay transaction fees and day traders who trade correctly are really going to make them pay dearly to move the price. eventually they run out of money or give up. additionally,  if they were successful at destroying bitcoin then everyone moves to another cryptocurrency and we stay over until the billionaire runs out of money or gives up.  It's only a matter of time before bad actors lose and the free market wins.

[scalar33]

It would be hard just to get a million or two.

[thegato]

someone buying $1B of btc would double the current price back to $260 or so and it would probably run a little higher than that

so... lets find a billionaire to do that

You only need 16M on gox to rise the price to $260 right now