Really interesting thought Peter R. Think it is beyond our imagination what happens of some Francs from the Swiss mountains are moved into bitcoin.
Now lets pretend we are Putin, and he wants to move one billion from his Swiss bank account into bitcoin. Lets try to help him, because I really see a few hurdles:
- Volume on online exchanges is way too low: getting 2 million bitcoins is near to impossible
- Therefore the price of one bitcoin needs and will rise, so less bitcoins are needed. But this only happens because of the one time instant demand, and likely pops afterwards. Not really a safe storage of value, when 50% of your Francs are happily converted from bitcoin again in fiat by all the current bitcoin holders.
- Think it would maybe be interesting to get a deal with a large mining pool?
- Better ideas?
At the moment getting a billion into bitcoin and not losing your principal because you pushed to price artificially high is simply not possible.
Less than 8% of all bitcoins are available on exchanges and other sources for purchase.
Putin would be better off buying about $500,000 worth per day for the foreseeable future, it's not going to be a billion for a long time, but it's the safest way to do it. Even now I think $1,000,000 a day would be too much.
Other sources are the holders of 100,000+ bitcoin, but why they would sell and loss an instant 25% to tax I don't know.
Putin could get a hundred million fiat into bitcoin if given a year, but a billion is not realistic.
Of course in a couple of years, if Ethereum or Bitcoin is truly a 100,000,000,000 economy, getting 1 billion becomes much easier (Of course if this happens, his 100,000,000 this years becomes worth billions in its own right)