Bitcoin, the Whales & Mass Adoption

[marjil]

The current population of the world is 7,628,581,589 (it keeps changing every second though, but you get the idea!).

Bitcoin in circulation is 17,088,962.

There are 1,600 wallets containing at least 1,000 bitcoin. The total bitcoin of these wallets is about 5,000,000.

(Total bitcoin held on wallet exchanges is about 2,200,000.)

Total bitcoin "lost" (figures vary depending on data sources) is about 4,000,000.

So, 17m bitcoin minus 4m lost equals 13m actual "live" bitcoin. 5m in the hands of 1,600 whales. That leaves 8m in the hands of the rest of the population.

7,628,581,589 - 1,600 = 7,628,579,989 is the rest of the population! 8m between them equals 953 bitcoin each!

That means, with the current circulating supply of bitcoin, and accounting for the "whales" and "lost" bitcoin, there is enough bitcoin available for every person on the planet to own 953 bitcoin. (In fiat money that means there's enough for all of us to own bitcoin valued at 953 x $6,865 = $6,542,345).

Let me repeat that: there's enough bitcoin in the world for everybody to own $6,542,345 worth!

So, what's happened!?

[BrewMaster]

So, what's happened!?

what happened is that you are making a lot of assumptions only to make the conclusion that you want. otherwise if you only move based on facts you can see how wrong you are. and also your math sux

for example

(Total bitcoin held on wallet exchanges is about 2,200,000.)
Total bitcoin "lost" (figures vary depending on data sources) is about 4,000,000.

you don't know either one of these. you are only making a guess. there are a lot of exchanges and a lot of big services that hold a lot of bitcoin belonging to a lot of users. for example Coinbase coins are unaccounted for and they are offering service to millions of bitcoin users.
and the lost coins is just your pure 100% guess. and off the mark by a lot.

7,628,581,589 - 1,600 = 7,628,579,989 is the rest of the population! 8m between them equals 953 bitcoin each!

your math is horribly bad also

lets say there is really 13 million coins in circulation or what you call "live bitcoin" then 13000000BTC/7,628,579,989 = 0.00170411BTC which is about 10 bucks worth of bitcoin.

953 bitcoin each for 7.6 billion people means the supply is 7,242.8 billion bitcoin!!!

[marjil]

Thanks for posting. Didn't look like anyone was going to.

Please note that I didn't set out to make any conclusion (based on incorrect assumptions); I was just working off any available information. I also don't know what amount of bitcoins are "lost" which is why I qualified my assumption by "figures vary depending on data sources" - I'm not even sure if anybody knows, nor what we mean exactly by "lost" other than assuming that some people who had bitcoin in the past will never be able to retrieve it ever again.

If we re-do the maths, we find that actually there is only 0.00104868796 bitcoin per head of global population amounting to $7.20. That's $7.20 for every man, woman and child on the planet.

My point about mass adoption still stands; with about a third of bitcoin in the wallets of just 1,600 people in the world (again, I don't know how accurate this is exactly, so if you have better data available please share), how are we to expect mass adoption to take place?

Also, I'm happy to be corrected on any of my assumptions or figures - if, for example, it's not 4,000,000 bitcoin that are "lost" but some other more accurate figures, then please feel free to provide it/ them and we'll re-work the calculations!

[BrewMaster]

If we re-do the maths, we find that actually there is only 0.00104868796 bitcoin per head of global population amounting to $7.20. That's $7.20 for every man, woman and child on the planet.

another way of looking at it is this:
that is 104,868,796 satoshi per person. depending on the price when the mass adoption happens it can be worth a great amount.
a year ago the same amount was barely worth $1, 2 years ago it was barely worth $0.5,... and now it is $7+ and in a couple of years it will be a lot more.

[elachious123]

Wow! This is very insightful, how were you able to gather this figures, this statistic is a clear indication that more people will adopt Bitcoin. Thanks for this piece.

[erickkyut]

7,628,581,589 - 1,600 = 7,628,579,989 is the rest of the population! 8m between them equals 953 bitcoin each!

your math is horribly bad also

lets say there is really 13 million coins in circulation or what you call "live bitcoin" then 13000000BTC/7,628,579,989 = 0.00170411BTC which is about 10 bucks worth of bitcoin.

953 bitcoin each for 7.6 billion people means the supply is 7,242.8 billion bitcoin!!!
[/quote]

That's the first thing I noticed. I'm thinking if he got his computations correctly! Lol! Bitcoin supply is very limited compared to the total population of the world. That is one of the reason why they created altcoins. If all Bitcoin would be mined and will ciculate in the market, it is impossible for every person to obtain a single Bitcoin.

[First77]

Total bitcoin "lost" (figures vary depending on data sources) is about 4,000,000.

Those 4 million Bitcoins are the one that were most likely purchased at $50 and their accounts are inactive.

Those 4 million Bitcoins will be sold (most likely)