Market cap of Bitcoin sure is tiny...just sayin'

[TonyT]

...saying the obvious.  http://blockchain.info/charts/market-cap  (US $ 5 Billion market cap is peanuts)

Long on BTC however.  But if this ever goes mainstream, we will all be rich.  If...

[N12]

True story. WhatsApp, a damn chat program, was sold for 22 billion.

[ElectricMucus]

True story. WhatsApp, a damn chat program, was sold for 22 billion.

Hey look at this overvalued overhyped thing, surely our overvalued overhyped thing should be worth much more.

[N12]

True story. WhatsApp, a damn chat program, was sold for 22 billion.

19 billion Blitz. This is the second time you've given the wrong number! (I realize your error doesn't change your point in any way.)

I don't know, first time I wrote 19 but edited it to 22 as I stumbled on newer sources. Are you sure?

Here's one of the sources for 22: http://time.com/3477028/facebook-whatsapp-19-billion-dollar-deal/

True story. WhatsApp, a damn chat program, was sold for 22 billion.

Hey look at this overvalued overhyped thing, surely our overvalued overhyped thing should be worth much more.

There's nothing wrong with that reasoning. Financial markets aren't built on much more than delusions.

[chopstick]

All supposed "value" is technically made up and arbitrary anyway. Tomorrow we could all decide to use hello kitty plush dolls as currency, drop the dollar, and then $ would be worthless and whoever has the most hello kitty plush dolls wins.

But it won't happen because this is what we are used to.

In my opinion Facebook is worthless but it's worth tens of billions. Bitcoin is way cooler than facebook, and provides a much more important service for humanity than facebook (in my opinion.) Yet if bitcoin had the market cap of facebook then the price would increase by a factor of ten.

[N12]

Facebook market cap is in the hundreds of billions, not tens of billions.

[Melbustus]

All supposed "value" is technically made up and arbitrary anyway. Tomorrow we could all decide to use hello kitty plush dolls as currency, drop the dollar, and then $ would be worthless and whoever has the most hello kitty plush dolls wins.

No. Things can be somewhat arbitrary short-term, but usually not long-term. There are actually few things that serve well to reduce the friction of exchange.

In my opinion Facebook is worthless but it's worth tens of billions. ...

Facebook's market-cap is $196 billion with a PE of 82. You can argue with the PE being too high, but to assert that FB is worthless is just silly. They bring in plenty of net revenue.

[chopstick]

Facebook market cap is in the hundreds of billions, not tens of billions.

Then that would put bitcoin at like 10K+ per coin. Ridiculous

[piramida]

True story. WhatsApp, a damn chat program, was sold for 22 billion.

Chat program's cost itself is about zero. Money were paid for 500mil users locked in to using that particular chat program.

But yeah, still valid - there's quite a lot of room for the userbase to grow. Simple tools that I can recommend to my friends as safe wallets are already here, but we also need larger number of applications which are only possible on blockchain. Looking for some very interesting multiparty contracts next year and an OpenBazaar release, among other things.

[chopstick]

All supposed "value" is technically made up and arbitrary anyway. Tomorrow we could all decide to use hello kitty plush dolls as currency, drop the dollar, and then $ would be worthless and whoever has the most hello kitty plush dolls wins.

No. Things can be somewhat arbitrary short-term, but usually not long-term. There are actually few things that serve well to reduce the friction of exchange.

In my opinion Facebook is worthless but it's worth tens of billions. ...

Facebook's market-cap is $196 billion with a PE of 82. You can argue with the PE being too high, but to assert that FB is worthless is just silly. They bring in plenty of net revenue.

Well I did forget about gold.

I meant FB is worthless as a service (IMO), obviously they bring in lots of revenue because there are plenty of people who use them.

[ElectricMucus]

There's nothing wrong with that reasoning. Financial markets aren't built on much more than delusions.

Not by that merit, because it's kind of arbitrary. You can argue that the Bitcoin market cap could be higher based on that or even that it should be higher based upon some rational use case, but not that it should be higher based upon the Dr. Evil "One Million Dollars" method of valuation.

[chopstick]

All supposed "value" is technically made up and arbitrary anyway. Tomorrow we could all decide to use hello kitty plush dolls as currency, drop the dollar, and then $ would be worthless and whoever has the most hello kitty plush dolls wins.

But it won't happen because this is what we are used to.

Sure value is subjective, but we do have some common sense...

We value things that are useful to us, and I don't think Hello Kitty dolls have many useful monetary properties.

One would think these FIAT money/debt notes in our pockets are worthless, but unfortunately that isn't quite the case yet.

[vipgelsi]

Billions is a tiny number.

[yayayo]

There's nothing wrong with that reasoning. Financial markets aren't built on much more than delusions.

Not by that merit, because it's kind of arbitrary. You can argue that the Bitcoin market cap could be higher based on that or even that it should be higher based upon some rational use case, but not that it should be higher based upon the Dr. Evil "One Million Dollars" method of valuation.

Basically you're right. But you should consider that markets can behave irrational to a high degree (not saying that's necessary for Bitcoin to gain value).

Bitcoin has great potential but also high risk. The lower the market cap the better the risk-reward relation. Compared to what's possible (best case: Bitcoin worldwide trade currency) the current market cap is tiny indeed. Everybody has to decide for himself if it's worth to take the risk.

ya.ya.yo!

[wilth1]

200x seems reasonable for stable "currency"

[CyberSuzy]

When you buy worthy things there is just not enough satoshies. You can pay with LTC the rest then.

[jubalix]

eh there at least 3~5 orders of magnitude left for btc to grow into

[TonyT]

eh there at least 3~5 orders of magnitude left for btc to grow into

3 orders of magnitude is 1000.  So if BTC is $400 today it will be worth $400 000 a coin then.  Five orders is 100000, so btc will be worth $40,000,000 a coin.  Forty million a coin!!!  I will be rich with my tenth of a BTC coin holdings!

[cbeast]

eh there at least 3~5 orders of magnitude left for btc to grow into

3 orders of magnitude is 1000.  So if BTC is $400 today it will be worth $400 000 a coin then.  Five orders is 100000, so btc will be worth $40,000,000 a coin.  Forty million a coin!!!  I will be rich with my tenth of a BTC coin holdings!

Some people think that is rich and some don't. Some people are not happy without many billions. Someday it will be trillions. Besides, he said 3-5, not absolutely 5.

[XxionxX]

Facebook market cap is in the hundreds of billions, not tens of billions.

Then that would put bitcoin at like 10K+ per coin. Ridiculous

So does this start to affect the global currency market at this point? Would anyone happen to have any running theories?