The paper linked speculates that a small group of people mined the first 20,000 blocks of Bitcoin. 20,000 blocks (@50 coins each) is 1,000,000 bitcoins, which @ $1000 is $1 billion.
Yeah, it's worth more like $50M if you place your sells across exchanges:
1,600,000.00 bitcoins can be sold for 35,066,701.01 USD on Mt. Gox with a slippage of 1,544,789,298.99 USD (97.78%)
222,043.14 bitcoins (insufficient bid volume) can be sold for 15,395,973.27 USD on Bitstamp with a slippage of 1,493,404,026.73 USD (98.98%)
I think that's coming from the idea that the "ultimate value" of the BTC money supply should be ~$1 trillion (in order for it to replace real-world currencies in a significant fraction of transactions). 20,0000 Bitcoins is ~1/1000th of 21,000,000 potential Bitcoins.
Comments
Where did you get that 20,000 Bitcoins are worth (even hypothetically) one billion? Even at $1,000 per BTC that's just $20M.
The paper linked speculates that a small group of people mined the first 20,000 blocks of Bitcoin. 20,000 blocks (@50 coins each) is 1,000,000 bitcoins, which @ $1000 is $1 billion.
Ah, got it. Confused bitcoin with blocks. Thanks.
Some people estimate his net worth to have been not 20,000, but 1.6 million bitcoins. That adds to over a billion dollars.
http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/who-is-satoshi-nakamoto-the...
But $1B in nominal marginal priced BTC is faaar less liquid (less order book depth) than most other assets.
Yeah, it's worth more like $50M if you place your sells across exchanges:
I think that's coming from the idea that the "ultimate value" of the BTC money supply should be ~$1 trillion (in order for it to replace real-world currencies in a significant fraction of transactions). 20,0000 Bitcoins is ~1/1000th of 21,000,000 potential Bitcoins.