There are 3 quadrillion times more atoms of gold than "satoshis"

[remotemass]

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

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

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

-remotemass

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[DooMAD]

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.

[kryptqnick]

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 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.

[bithisach]

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.

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?

[OroroMunroe]

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

[Ozero]

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.

[o_e_l_e_o]

To send 1 satoshi how much would you have to pay in fees, the same? At least 1 satoshi right?

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).

doesn't this give bitcoin a hard cap on maximum possible price?

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.

[Twentyonepaylots]

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.

[GazetaBitcoin]

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

[remotemass]

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

[cryptoperkele]

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.

[BlackHatCoiner]

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

[Wexnident]

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

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.

[abuya55]

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

[CryptopreneurBrainboss]

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.

[roadrunnerjaiv2025]

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. ;-)

[davis196]

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.

[NavI_027]

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. ;-)

Hahaha I wondering where too ? 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.

[figmentofmyass]

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).

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

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

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.

[BlackHatCoiner]

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