$2.5 million BITCOIN... What would that do?

[voyager23]

Just read the usual article BTC to hit $2.5 million blah blah...

If it did, could the world handle that many millionaires? Wouldn't inflation kick in? Just like the raising of the minimum wage is a con because as soon as that happens, the price of commodities just follow the same percentage. Fiat currency just loses value every year.

So would a $2.5 million BTC actually be more like $250,000 or even $50,000.... I just can't see 50% of the world's population being millionaires.

[mocacinno]

2,5 million/BTC seems a bit unrealistic to me... But still...
Let's assume that in a couple of years, about 20.000.000 exist. Satoshi isn't around anymore, so at least 1.000.000 BTC are lost.

Let's (for the sake of argument) say that most of those oldtime holders decide to sell their holdings, and 15.000.000 BTC are in circulation (this is a big stretch).
The monetary value of those 15.000.000 BTC would be 15.000.000 x 2.500.000 = 37.500.000.000.000

There are 8.000.000.000 people in the world. That's ~4700 USD worth of BTC for each inhabitant of earth.
If you assume only half of the population holds btc, that's still only $9400 worth of BTC/person. This wouldn't make half of the earth's population millionaires i'm afraid...

Let's add the fact that i don't see 2.5 million/BTC exchange rate, and i don't see those longtime holders all selling their stash to get a circulation of 15.000.000...

This tweet from glassnode is interesting: https://twitter.com/glassnode/status/1344020551942238212
They estimate only ~5.000.000 BTC to be in circulation.

This makes the claim you sometimes see that guesses BTC might rise to $500.000 by the end of the year at least plausible:
(5.000.000 x 500.000 ) / 8.000.000.000 = $312 worth of BTC/inhabitant of earth.
Even if only 1% of the population holds btc, it would only be $31.200 worth of BTC/holder.
I see this as overly optimistic, but not completely inpossible.

[DapanasFruit]

This makes the claim you sometimes see that guesses BTC might rise to $500.000 by the end of the year at least plausible:
(5.000.000 x 500.000 ) / 8.000.000.000 = $312 worth of BTC/inhabitant of earth. Even if only 1% of the population holds btc, it would only be $31.200 worth of BTC/holder. I see this as overly optimistic, but not completely impossible.

You nailed it. And remember that Bitcoin is not being distributed to all the people of the world, in the first place. I understand that this is just for the sake of discussion, and we have to remember that not all the things we are thinking will be happening in the real world. In case Bitcoin can be reaching the $2.5 million level of price, surely there can be a good spike of millionaire, but I don't think that it can create or will be the catalyst for a runaway inflation as not all will be converting their Bitcoin to cash and not all holders are residing in only one country.

[mk4]

The feasibility of $2.5 million per BTC aside (because mocacinno already responded):

As time goes and as the US Dollar inflates and inflates and lowers in value through the years, the 'millionaire' sort of title will slowly but surely reach irrelevancy to the point that being a 'millionaire' isn't that much of a big deal anymore. When will that time be? Idunno. Maybe sometime in this decade or maybe sometime in our grandchildren's lives, but it's not really an 'if', it's just 'when'.

[Yaunfitda]

The feasibility of $2.5 million per BTC aside (because mocacinno already responded):

As time goes and as the US Dollar inflates and inflates and lowers in value through the years, the 'millionaire' sort of title will slowly but surely reach irrelevancy to the point that being a 'millionaire' isn't that much of a big deal anymore. When will that time be? Idunno. Maybe sometime in this decade or maybe sometime in our grandchildren's lives, but it's not really an 'if', it's just 'when'.

Yes, actually being millionaire right now is not a thing anymore, the race is now how to become a billionaire. Just look at the distribution of millionaires of today, it used to be in US only, but now you can find a lot of them, mostly in Asia.

So yes, our society can handle millionaires as it can evenly distributed across the globe now.

[Lorence.xD]

As time goes and as the US Dollar inflates and inflates and lowers in value through the years, the 'millionaire' sort of title will slowly but surely reach irrelevancy to the point that being a 'millionaire' isn't that much of a big deal anymore. When will that time be? Idunno. Maybe sometime in this decade or maybe sometime in our grandchildren's lives, but it's not really an 'if', it's just 'when'.

The title of millionaire will only be irrelevant when the dollar enters the hyperinflation like what happened to Zimbabwe and Post-War Germany so when it happens, I think that it will be for a long time and I don't think that a war will break out anytime soon because countries knows the cost of going to war and I think that they are finding ways to win over others by not firing a single shot. USD is still a strong currency and given the extent of the tentacles of their foreign policy, I think that many governments will not let this kind of thing from happening, a lot of countries have USD as their reserve currency. 2.5 USD per bitcoin is still unreachable at this moment but I think that the only time that we will reach that is when either bitcoin becomes so scarce that you can put any price on it or as mentioned before, a hyperinflation.

[mk4]

The title of millionaire will only be irrelevant when the dollar enters the hyperinflation like what happened to Zimbabwe and Post-War Germany so when it happens, I think that it will be for a long time and I don't think that a war will break out anytime soon because countries knows the cost of going to war and I think that they are finding ways to win over others by not firing a single shot. USD is still a strong currency and given the extent of the tentacles of their foreign policy, I think that many governments will not let this kind of thing from happening, a lot of countries have USD as their reserve currency.

Nope, hyperinflation isn't even needed. It could reach to that point slowly but surely in the span of a good number of years; it doesn't necessarily need to happen in the span of weeks and months like what happened in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

I like your optimism though.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M1#0

[Lucius]

mocacinno has actually explained everything important in a potential situation, although I have to admit I don’t understand why people (I mean OP) are constantly emphasizing such a high price and linking it to some sort of mass creation of new millionaires. According to some data, at the end of 2020, there were 46.8 million millionaires in the world, and until a few years ago we were talking about only 36 million if memory serves me well.

I just can't see 50% of the world's population being millionaires.

I don’t understand why you think 50% of the world’s population could become millionaires? Most of those who own BTC actually have a very small percentage (I believe it’s some 0.1 BTC on average), and even if by some miracle a few thousand new millionaires were created it wouldn’t change the world.

Here is an interesting piece of information for comparison ->

In spite of all the talk about trade wars, conflicts in the Middle East, tariffs and fears of a recession, we’ve witnessed an increase of 1.1 million millionaires from mid-2018 to the middle of 2019. This elite group is collectively worth $158.3 trillion.
The U.S. leads the world in the number of millionaires. America has added 675,000 new millionaires over the past year, bringing its total to 18.6 million people. China added 158,000 new millionaires in this period, raising its total to 4.5 million.

[passwordnow]

In case Bitcoin can be reaching the $2.5 million level of price, surely there can be a good spike of millionaire, but I don't think that it can create or will be the catalyst for a runaway inflation as not all will be converting their Bitcoin to cash and not all holders are residing in only one country.

There will be a lot of millionaires but most of the goods and services have already inflated by that time.

I just can't see 50% of the world's population being millionaires.

Do you have a valid source for that estimation of potential millionaires in the future with that percentage because of bitcoin? Just like the theory that bitcoin might become $2.5M in the future, you're also having a theory about the number of potential future bitcoin millionaires. There will be massive selling from $100k-$500k at that point of them and most likely, many will sell all of their bitcoins at that range.

[stompix]

Really nice explanation from mocacinno, but just because OP was concerned what are we going to do with half of the world population being a millionaire..

I just can't see 50% of the world's population being millionaires.

Let's assume the best distribution possible, everyone holding just one million in bitcoin, not a cent more, all the bitcoins including the ones truly lost, not only Satoshi's coin let's even throw in the coins that haven't been mined yet  and try to make half of the world population a millionaire due to Bitcoin.

Pretty simple math, 4 billion people, each of them would get 0.00525 BTC and one bitcoin would have to be worth $476 million, this assuming perfect distribution!
And now, imagine loaded dumping the GDP of China, USA and EU combined on an exchange! 

[Wilhelm]

Since we grow an order of magnitude each 4 year cycle. $1-2M BTC in 2025-2026 isn’t as much as a pipe-dream as some might think.

[Red Pie]

If one day bitcoin becomes $ 2.5m, it means that there will not be many people holding bitcoins in the world. There must be a few people so that the bitcoin is $ 2.5 million each. otherwise, with inflation, money is worthless and everyone becomes a millionaire. I agree with your general thoughts and will follow up on this question.

[yhiaali3]

Of course, not all or half of the world's population can be rich. If everyone becomes rich, life will definitely stop. Everyone will sit at home or in front of computer screens watching exchanges and no one will work outside the home.
In any case, I do not expect that Bitcoin will reach such prices, it is possible that Bitcoin will reach a maximum of 1 million dollars according to my opinion, but this will not happen for 10-30 years, at that time many concepts and things will have changed.

[eaLiTy]

So would a $2.5 million BTC actually be more like $250,000 or even $50,000.... I just can't see 50% of the world's population being millionaires.

If you knew the global population it is around 7.8 billion and if you estimate the number of BTCitcoin investors i do not think you will see more than 100 million users investing in the market and in that how many users will be holding more than a BTCitcoin. So even if you speculate that the price of BTCitcoin crosses a million dollars you will not see half the population becoming millionaires .

[Quidat]

Just read the usual article BTC to hit $2.5 million blah blah...

If it did, could the world handle that many millionaires? Wouldn't inflation kick in? Just like the raising of the minimum wage is a con because as soon as that happens, the price of commodities just follow the same percentage. Fiat currency just loses value every year.

So would a $2.5 million BTC actually be more like $250,000 or even $50,000.... I just can't see 50% of the world's population being millionaires.

Nothing is impossible with bitcoin in most cases but even talking with 1 million per coin is already a dream or cant be achieved by this market even if we do say about full adoption scale
then its really hard to reach out these numbers.Im not that negative but people shouldnt anticipate that much because you would really just got frustrated for this thing to happen.
Its much better on not to put attention to those kind of sentiments on where most noobs do normally fall of these kind of FOMO or shilling out too much.
Better to invest and secure profits while you still can.

[pooya87]

Your confusion is because you think just because bitcoin price could reach a certain price that should mean people would become millionaires. The reality is that only a very few number of people would actually become rich from bitcoin and the majority will make small profits or lose a lot of money.
For example look at the history of bitcoin, at charts, see how many panic sells there are. In fact we are in a panic sell situation this very moment! These are the majority who are losing money even though bitcoin price is going up.

[Poker Player]

As time goes and as the US Dollar inflates and inflates and lowers in value through the years, the 'millionaire' sort of title will slowly but surely reach irrelevancy to the point that being a 'millionaire' isn't that much of a big deal anymore.

I proposed the term "bitcoinaire" in order to have an objective way of measuring someone wealthy, equivalent to what a millionaire is nowadays, that doesn't depend on the devaluation of $ or the appreciation of BTC: a bitcoinaire has enough bitcoin holdings to buy a house of median price in the US and also 10X the median income. I say US because when international statistics of millionaires are made, they take the S1M net worth as reference, but it could be applied to other developed countries.

[hatshepsut93]

If it did, could the world handle that many millionaires? Wouldn't inflation kick in? Just like the raising of the minimum wage is a con because as soon as that happens, the price of commodities just follow the same percentage. Fiat currency just loses value every year.

Assuming BTC rise would create a lot of millionaires, why should it increase the price of consumer goods? Will these millionaires rush to hoard bread and eggs? I can only see increased demand for luxury goods, so the general population will not be affected.

[arufox]

So would a $2.5 million BTC actually be more like $250,000 or even $50,000.... I just can't see 50% of the world's population being millionaires.

No, only real holders will be millionaires, Reach $2,5M/Bitcoin will take a long time, so only people who can hold their Bitcoin for long time will become millionaires, If people join in crypto when Bitcoin reach $2,5M, he is not a millionaire. So the time wiil comes, 10years, 20years, who knows? But prepare yourself to become the real Holders

[palle11]

Just read the usual article BTC to hit $2.5 million blah blah...

If it did, could the world handle that many millionaires? Wouldn't inflation kick in?

The world is facing inflation already or don't you think so ? The economic situation in the world has gone bad and covid-19 isn't helping also. Countries have pushed out money for palliatives and support to families, acquiring vaccines and those are lists of money going into the system. It is not the fault of bitcoin if it gets that high as inflation is already on the increase for now.