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Just don't forget these words by Hal and you all will be good.

"With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million."

Hal was a smart guy, but he arrived at that number through faulty economic reasoning.

Well no economics was involved.. he just did the math and it's correct.

He literally said he thought the total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world.
Which is nonsense. It is not because something is being expressed in a unit, that that unit needs to expand to whatever is being measured. For example, let's say I measure the length of my furniture by comparing to the length of my thumb. Why would there then need to be as many of my thumbs as there is furniture in the world? If that sounds strange or weird, that is because it is weird and nonsensical.
Money is just an asset class on its own, which takes up a certain portion of total wealth in the world.

sauce : https://twitter.com/DrBitcoinMD?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1165004233663496197%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cryptopolitan.com%2Fhal-finney-bitcoin-price-prediction-10-m%2F

I like bullish BTC price predictions as much as the next guy, but if we just switch off our critical thinking whenever somebody says something nice about bitcoin, we are more of a religion or cult than anything else. Which is not needed imo, as the realistic scenario for bitcoin holds plenty of upside and promise.

Well he didn’t say it will happen but he stated it as “an amusing thought experiment”. On other hand if that happens and Bitcoin becomes the standard global currency in the world then measuring bitcoin against dollar will be as useless as it’s today… 1 BTC = 1 BTC

Anyway yes it might be insane but not when you take it as an amusing thought experiment.

Quote from: https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10152.html

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world. Then the total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.

... you've pulled the piece of Hal's comment out of context. The full comment was about the asymmetric upside bet. To estimate the asymmetry he needed a ballpark figure for an upside value of btc, at the time it was worthless, so to get an order of magnitude estimate Hal used total global wealth which for a ballpark order of magnitude estimate is fine.

... then he compared the upside value potential of bitcoin with the odds of bitcoin achieving monetary dominance, which he then estimated only needed to be less than 100 million to 1 for to make sense to acquire/hodl some bitcoin, which at the time were worthless remember. He was resoundingly right and the statement still stands, the asymmetric bet was worth it.

Edit; relevant portion of Hal's comment

Quote

One immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even
ignoring the practical problem that virtually no one will accept it
at first, there is still a difficulty in coming up with a reasonable
argument in favor of a particular non-zero value for the coins.

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and
becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world. Then the
total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all
the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household
wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.

So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute
time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million
to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim,
are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about...

Hal

His broader point about game theory was spot on, but I don't think I pulled his reasoning for arriving at the 10 million usd number out of context at all. He clearly says "if BTC becomes dominant, then it should equal the value of all the wealth in the world".
Which is faulty logic. I don't like pointing this out as Hal seemed to be a very likeable and smart person, and given his early involvement deserves to be seen as a hero of sorts. But people throw this number around as if it was some magic truth predicted by the prophet, and it's just wrong.

Oh gawd.

If one of Hal's main points was to attempt to characterize aspects of bitcoin's asymmetric bet like Marcus mentioned, then why get so fucking caught up on the details of how Hal might have been wrong about some details or how people might worship him, when none of that hardly matters... and the points that Hal had been making were more than valid as overall points and even proven largely correct through history.. so who gives any shits or wants to be persistent about quasi-irrelevant details.. in regards to our buddy pal, aka Hal - the - man. Go HAL!!!!!!

In udder words, bitcoin still remains an asymmetric bet at this very point as I type this post and perhaps even a better bet today than it was in 2009 - even though in 2009 the potential for gain in terms of starting with almost no price was greater, so devolving into seemingly nonsense jealousy regarding how Hal might be worshipped too much by the masses (which is also hardly relevant to anything - except to perhaps want to drag down bitcoin's history) does not take away from the point that Hal asserted that BTC was an asymmetric bet, and so far bitcoin has shown itself to continue to be an asymmetric bet, and whether we are further down the path than Hal expected in terms of BTC price appreciation or if it is going to take longer to get to $10 million or whatever other high-side value (or inflation-adjusted or all the world's value - who cares) might not matter so much because the point stands that bitcoin was a very promissing asymmetric bet in 2009 when Hal was contemplating ideas around it and bitcoin remains a great asymmetric bet in the present while at the same time, even asymmetric bets are not guaranteed to come true even if someone might point out some specific guidelines in terms of where the thing (referring to BTC price here) may well go.

If you have not done so already Spaceman_Spiff, you might want to pick up a wee bit of bitcoin, in case BTC might catch on... and by the way, you might not need to buy very much to get rich as fuck.. that's the nature of an asymmetric bet.. that has been playing out for more than 12.5 years and likely to continue to play out for quite some time into the future... so what is the point of denigrating where bitcoin might be going or what Hal said about it 5 years before he died..and then even with Bitcoin being a asymmetric bet, there have been a whole hell of a lot of people wanting to hoard BTC, so if you can get it with lower prices, you should probably consider ur lil selfie as lucky rather than wanting to denigrate bitcoin's upside potential as if it were not important in terms of capturing the wealth of the whole world or whatever other hyperboles might be made from time to time in order to communicate the idea that bitcoin is likely one of the best investments that anyone can make in these here times and seems to be damned well a part of a BIG ASS wealth transfer that is going on even if diptwats like ur lil selfie seem to want to poo-poo such idea and quibble regarding largely meaningless details.