How Much Will Bitcoin Eventually be Worth?

As BTC surges in recent months and passes the remarkable $1 trillion market cap it certainly leaves one to wonder how high the value of one coin can actually go.

First it is important to consider that market cap itself is a misleading number. As it stands there are only about 18 million bitcoins in circulation and furthermore 15-20% have been lost from the early days in lost wallets or wallets with lost passwords.

Thus in reality there are maybe 15 million bitcoins in circulation.

If we look at the $1,000,000 valuation that Binance CEO CZ has thrown out as possible it would set the true market cap at 1 million x 15 million, or $15 trillion. At the high end he guessed a BTC could be worth 10 million, and thus the market cap would be $150 trillion.

This number is the same as total US wealth in 2020! How can that be possible? That all the bitcoins could have the same value as all the collective wealth in the US?

Even the market cap of all US stocks combined is only $50 trillion. Could BTC be worth more than that?

Perhaps a better way to consider the value is the total number of BTC that are actually liquid. Since the majority of BTC are in storage by HODLers the supply that is begin exchanged is the only real money.

As of last year it was estimated that only 3.5 million BTC are actually exchanged.

At $1 million per coin the market cap would then be $3.5 trillion. This is reasonable. Even $10 million per coin could occur with a resultant true cap of $35 trillion or about 10% of total global wealth.

The major issue for growth however is that as bitcoin gets more expensive less and less people/entities will be able to afford it and prices will eventually stabilize. This could even occur prior to the $1 million mark. The risk at that time of course is a flood of BTC into the market as all the HODLers decide to sell en masse which would drive the price down parabolically.