An extremely arbitrary milestoneā¦ it would be a bit more notable if bitcoin's market cap was higher than the total value of all gold in circulation. We're a long way off that [0].
[0] https://twitter.com/ChrisLundkvist/status/835087450829701122
This is a pretty meaningless comparison because bitcoin is infinitely divisible. An ounce of gold is now the same price as somewhat meaningless quantity of bitcoin.
There was a time when something else was even more valuable: tulips.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_maniaLove the bitter comments in hacker forum avoiding self-reconciliation of ignoring the fundamental advantages of a scarce global currency.
Side note: Bitcoin's market cap is still vastly under gold's.
Which weighs more, a pound of Bitcoin or a pound of gold?
.. And in other news anyone interested in my new math for factorising thousand bit numbers
Everyday I feel like an idiot for selling my bitcoin when it was worth almost nothing...
Its a ponzi scheme they said, you need a rack of nvidia to get 1000 bitcoin they said...
The Chinese thieves who want to move money out of the country are giving Bitcoin a ride. Otherwise, it died long ago. The blockchain is still vital, but given that even Ethereum didn't get the expected traction, it just a matter of time for Bitcoin to crash back to $0!
Bitcoin is only valuable because it has the first-mover advantage. If people start to value privacy and fungibility in crypto currencies, then Bitcoin won't stay valueable.
I remember seeing the white paper for Bitcoin here on HN years ago. While I'm not that adventurous (otherwise I'd be a "Bitcoin millionaire"), for anyone who is, or is looking for a project to contribute to, consider Monero:
https://github.com/monero-project/monero
Monero is a private (no one can see how much your wallet contains without a view key) and fungible crypto currency (other's can't see where your "coins" came from).
Disclaimer: I own some Monero, but not enough to make me a millionaire if it becomes popular like Bitcoin.