In 2020 we will have a 6.25 btc block reward. But for a $10k coin $9 million a day would have to flow into the ecosystem. That seems like a stretch. Maybe in 2024.
Think global. The world probably spends more than $9 million a day on intimate wipes.
The black market alone could get us to 10k. Think about it:
9 million per day is ~3.3 billion per year.
In the United States, the illegal drug market is a 100 billion per year industry. Less than 1% of that business is conducted on the web.
It took internet shopping 15-20 years to go from near zero percent of retail sales to the situation now in 2015 where 7% of all retail sales take place online. We needed Paypal, reputable brands (like Amazon), and time for the idea of shopping online to diffuse into popular culture.
Bitcoin is what will allow black market internet drug sales to go from near zero percent of drug sales to something closer to 7% over the next decade.
7% of 100 billion in the US will be 7 billion per year. That's far more than 9 million per day. (It's ~19 million USD per day.) That is totally ignoring Europe, Canada, and the rest of the world. And totally ignoring any other use-case for bitcoin.
Gemini, COIN, colored coin NASDAQ, and Wall Street taking us to the moon in a speculative frenzy ... that is all wishful thinking. But these people who are buying drugs every day on the Silk Road-like marketplaces need bitcoin every day. It's not a matter of speculation or market sentiment. They
need the coins to run their businesses. In some cases, they need the coins to satisfy their addictions.
And it's just a matter of time before these buyers and sellers collectively need 19 million USD per day worth of bitcoin. That's enough to eat up the entire 2021 daily supply of new BTC (900 BTC) at $10,000 per BTC and then ask for more from existing holders.
I don't see bitcoin as a huge gamble anymore. Those dark net markets are already in place and rapidly growing every year. Already, these markets offer better prices and better availability than local drug markets for most people. The same way that Amazon did on the clearnet. So we're steadily marching towards more daily demand. At the same time, we're steadily marching toward blockhalvings that decrease daily supply. These two developments are uncontroversial.
If the dark net markets turn out to be a 3-5 year fad and people stop ordering drugs with bitcoin within the next few years and the markets stop growing, then I'll be wrong. I've been wrong before. I don't mind being wrong nine times as long as I'm right once.
