Quote from: HairyMaclairy on April 05, 2018, 05:43:29 AM

Quote from: marcus_of_augustus on April 05, 2018, 05:25:32 AM

... allow me to butt in ... while the total expansion capacity of bitcoin value might seem infinite from our current 'small-time' vantage point it is most definitely finite, realistically we have at most 1.5 to 2 pimple tricks remaining (1 order of magnitude expansion over previous). A btc valuation in the USD300-700k range puts it at ~10trillion market cap or ~10% of global fiat monetary supply.

Another pimple trick after that would be almost total global domination of all monetary assets, which while possible is probably not realistic or desirable anyway.

Bitcoin currently has a market cap of $116 billion. The NYSE has a combined market cap of $21 trillion. It seems reasonable enough that the Bitcoin ecosystem could rival the NYSE in market cap, especially if security tokens start cannibalising the traditional stock exchange model. Of course to get there, we need side chains which can provide coloured coins or similar tokens. But people are working on it.

... for these purposes, comparing bitcoin 'market cap' with NYSE market cap would be only be marginally useful and maybe even misleading. Stocks on the NYSE are shares in companies that generate earnings. Bitcoin is primarily a monetary asset, like gold, euro, jpy, FRN debt notes (and their electronic substitutes), total monetary assets on the globe total ~$100 trillion equivalent.

However it is not cut and dried, since the current western monetary model of using Tier 1 capital (usually sovereign and multi-national corporate paper) to 'back' fiat deposits, through fractional reserve models, has muddied the accounting waters sufficiently that devising reliable metrics for assessing total 'monetary' assets quickly becomes a confidence game of which nutshell has the pea under it. Now factor in depreciating fiat promissory notes, through intentional monetary inflation, that scares a lot of wealth into many alternative assets such that real estate, fine art, collectibles like classic cars, etc become partially 'monetised' in waves of successive speculative bubbles. Then the total available market/latent demand for a sound currency (mildly deflationary or neutral) that can successfully be used for global medium of exchange, storage of value and unit of account, could conceivably be as high as ~$200 trillion (today usd equivalent), after all the speculation, excesses, misallocated resources and monetary premiums are drained out of other assets that it is suboptimal to have monetised.