Thought Experiment: If Bitcoin takes over the world, how much will you need to make it?

Will Bitcoin eventually supplant the entire world's supply of money? I'll leave that question to you, but for the sake of argument let's say it will. How will the fixed value of 21 million BTC be distributed among the people? https://i.redd.it/bo1ev1iodki21.jpg Let's use these current statistics as a baseline. Yes, if and when Bitcoin takes over in 10, 20, however many years, this distribution may change. Today 0.7% of people are millionaires, but in the future that's likely to shrink, as we know the wealth gap is growing. We'll also use the current value of 7.53 billion people. Again that is always growing, but for simplicity we'll use today's value. Bottom Tier: < $10,000 This represents 3% of wealth, and 71% of people. 21m * 3% = 630,000 BTC 7.53b * 71% = 5,346,300,000 people .00011784 BTC per person Second Tier: $10,000 - $100,000 This represents 12.5% of wealth, and 21% of people. 21m * 12.5% = 2,625,000 BTC 7.53b * 21% = 1,581,300,000 people 0.00166003 BTC per person Third Tier: $100,000 - $1,000,000 This represents 39.4% of wealth, and 7.4% of people. 21m * 39.4% = 8,274,000 BTC 7.53b * 7.4% = 557,220,000 people 0.01484871 BTC per person Top Tier: > $1,000,000 This represents 45.2% of wealth, and 0.7% of people. 21m * 45.2% = 9,492,000 BTC 7.53b * 0.7% = 52,710,000 people 0.18007968 BTC per person ​ Now there are countless unaccounted variables here. Aggravating and mitigating circumstances. For example even if Bitcoin "takes over the world", that doesn't mean 100% of the world's wealth will be BTC. Following this infographic, only a fraction of the total wealth is "money", especially if you include derivatives. So feel free to poke holes in this, but it's really meant to be just a "what if" thought experiment. Still, even if you add conservative or pessimistic coefficients into this Drake equation, it seems to me that if you have at least one bitcoin, you'll be just fine. I mean, there are 36 million millionaires in the world today. But only up to 21 million BTC ever. submitted by /u/narupley [link] [comments]