By
Bhushan Akolkar
August 29th, 2022
Let’s have a look at astonishing data.
Bitcoin is the cryptocurrency that simply doesn’t give up. It’s fade has been predicted numerous times with experts claiming that its value 18 times more volatile than the U.S. dollar. Still, it keeps going. HowMuch.net published a report where its experts put into perspective and demonstrated how Bitcoin really looks like in comparison with the world economies.
Last year, Bitcoin appeared to be more stable than gold, it’s price rocketed again and surpassed that of an ounce of gold for the first time. Now all the bitcoin in the world is worth $41 billion – the net worth Sergey Brin, Google co-founder.
Though Bitcoin is the biggest and best known cryptocurrency, it’s not the only one that exists. There’re also some notable players on this market and the total volume of all virtual money as much as $100 billion what is equal to the curent GPD of Morocco which, in its turn, is the 60-th largest economy in the world.
As HowMuch notes, the monetary value of world’s major tech companies such as Amazon ($402 billion) and Apple ($730 billion) is equivalent to the GDP of much bigger economies (Nigeria and the Netherlands, respectively). Just take a bit more than two Apples to see the true amount of actual money in dollar notes and coins in circulation around the world today – $1.5 trillion.
“Money, of course, is fiduciary, which means it only has as much value as the trust we place in it. The same goes for gold: it derives its value solely from its rarity, combined with its desirability. The current world supply of mined gold is around 171,300 metric tonnes, which could be molded into a cube with sides of about 68 feet (20.7m). Its total value? Currently around $8.2 trillion. Or about 200 times the total value of Bitcoin (or Larry Page),” the resource adds.
Just think over this idea: even if you’re not a happy owner of at least $205 million (i.e. 1/200th of $41 billion), the monetary gap between Larry Page fortune and the world’s entire supply of gold is smaller than the distance between Larry Page’s net value and your own.
From the report one more thing becomes clear and this just blows our minds: all the money in the world — including bank deposits — is $83.6 trillion. The second biggest surprise is the whole amount of money from all the stocks trading across the globe – it totals $66.8 trillion, and more than double all the physical money in the world.
“A run towards or away from stocks would thoroughly deregulate the global economy, and nothing more dramatic than a minus sign in front of that amount would lead to the collapse of global civilization,” writes Raul Amoros of HowMuch.
Now it’s clear that Bitcoin does not reflect fancy predictions, but at the same time the growing popularity of cryptocurrencies presupposes that people are losing faith in money and other traditional measures of wealth.
