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THERE ARE 1,297 TRILLION BITCOINS NOW AVAILABLE!

The 400 troy ounce gold bar is the only size recognized by players in the inter-bank market for settling gold trades of unallocated accounts. Specifically, players accept the 400 troy-ounce London Good Delivery bar, 99.9% pure (.999 fine).

An accepted estimate of total gold ever mined by mankind is 171,300 metric tons (BBC). Since 400 troy ounces is the equivalent of 438.9 U.S. customary unit ounces, 171,300 metric tons calculates to 6.04243 × 109 ounces. Said another way, if the 171,300 metric tons estimate is right, for all the gold ever mined, mankind could fashion a total of 13,767,212 and ¾ bullion bars.

If every ounce of gold ever mined were coined into one ounce coins, there would be 6,042,430,000. That is six billion forty-two million, four and thirty thousand coins.

Right now, one 400 troy-ounce London Good Delivery bar sells for a princely sum of $577,984.80!

Bitcoins have been the rage de jour for the last eight months or so going back to at least December 2013, ever since the US dollar price of a Bitcoin hit US$1,147.25 back on December 4, 2013.

As of this writing, XE reports that one full Bitcoin (1 XBT) sells for US$649.16, CAD$693.31, €477.079, £378.11, and AUS$690.63. Other quote sites include Bitcoin Watch and Blockchain Info.

Most have been looking at Bitcoins quite wrong. Most see one Bitcoin (XBT) much as a one-ounce gold coin. Yet, one XBT is more akin to one bullion bar rather than one coin. For this reason, one XBT should be known as a Bitbar and not a Bitcoin.

An XBT is the sum of 108 discrete data, each datum known as a "Satoshi." So one Bitbar consists of 100,000,000 Satoshi bitcoins. All software that implements the Bitcoin protocol, which enables participants to transfer ownership, transmits in Satoshi and not the popularly quoted XBT as most might believe.

Right now, there are 12,975,575 XBT existing, each consisting of 100,000,000 Satoshi. So in total, there are 1.2975575 × 1015 Satoshi in possession and capable of being circulated.

Written out, that is 1,297,557,500,000,000! Said another way, there are one quadrillion, two hundred and ninety seven trillion, five hundred and fifty seven billion, five hundred million true bitcoins in existence already rather than the misleading 12.98 million most often quoted by almost everyone.

Huckster promoters of Bitcoins rave about the limited number of Bitcoins in existence. I don't know about you, but one quadrillion two hundred and ninety seven trillion plus of anything should not strike anyone as limited.

Between 1849 to 1889, the United States Bureau of the Mint coined gold dollars consisting of 0.04837 of one troy ounce or 0.0530688 of one U.S. ounce. If all the gold ever mined were coined as U.S. gold dollars of the 1849 through 1889 design, there would be 113,860,309,636. Spoken that number is one hundred thirteen billion, eight hundred sixty million, three hundred nine thousand and six hundred and thirty six 1849-1889 gold dollar coins.

Right now, already there are 11,396 times more Satoshi (bitcoins) in existence than if all the existing gold were coined as 1849-1889 U.S. gold dollars! If mankind gathered all the extant gold and coined that gold into one ounce coins, there would be a whopping 214,741 times more Satoshi bitcoins than one ounce gold coins, .999 fine.

If mankind play with Bitbars into the future, the total number of Bitbars, which anyone can produce is 21 million. Bitcoin users can break up 21 million Bitbars into 2.1 ×1015 Satoshi, which is 2,100,000,000,000,000 Satoshi!

The current estimate for gold yet to be mined is 53,000 metric tons (BBC). 53,000 additional tons could yield another 1,869,520,000 one ounce coins or 35,228,232,031 1849-1889 style U.S. gold dollars.

So when all is done, in one future, there would be 265,421 times more Satoshi than all the one ounce gold coins that ever could be coined from all the gold ever expected. In another future, there would be 18,146 times more Satoshi than all the 1849-1889 style U.S. gold coins that ever could be coined from all the gold ever expected.

The current market capitalization of Bitbars is US$8,423,224,267, or US$8.4 billion. The current market cap of gold is a whopping US$7.9554633 × 1012, which is US$7.955 trillion! The market cap of gold is 944.5 times bigger than for Bitcoin.

At the current quoted price of US$649.16 for what should be called one Bitbar, one Satoshi would trade for U.S.$0.0000064916. So, one million Satoshi would trade for US$6.49. Thus, US$1 would buy roughly 154,045 Satoshi.


Since hitting a peak of US$1,147.25 on December 4, 2013, the price of one XBT in USD has fallen a whopping -44.5%, falling at an annualized rate of -58.6%.

UPDATE: From the peak to November 4, 2014, , the price of one XBT in USD has fallen a whopping -70.5%, falling at an annualized rate of -73.6%.


In 2013, global e-commerce retail spending summed to $1.25 trillion. Total retail spending perhaps summed to $30 trillion in 2013.

Likely, there are many trillions of transaction in real world retailing. A fair estimate would be 4,280,000,000,000. If you can't read that number, try four trillion, two hundred eighty billion based on assumption of $30 trillion annual transactions at average of $7 each transaction, likely a high estimate for outlay per transaction.

Right now, it seems Bitcoin data transaction rate is near 63,000 a month or a yearly rate of 23 million transactions. That means as a percent of worldwide yearly retail transactions, Bitcoin data transaction constitute 0.00053738317%!

If you can't read that number, at this current rate, Bitcoin data transaction will account for 5.4 ten-thousandths of one percent of all retail transaction. Likely, the percentage is much, much smaller as the $7 average is high.

There are many hipsters swallowing the hype over Bitcoin. There are many pump and dumpers pushing that hype.

When western world economies begin to rise after this long economic depression, and you can be sure that will happen sooner rather than later, what shall become of Bitcoin? Shall it rise along with it? Instead, shall ever more become part of various banking systems using debit and credit cards rather than Satoshi?

The Bitcoin craze reminds me of the Beanie Baby craze, those plush toys that made Ty Warner a billionaire. Because of Ty's Beanie Babies, a marketing smarty at AuctionWeb, which later became eBay, fibbed a story that eBay's founder Pierre Omidyar created the eBay site for Omidyar's girlfriend to buy and sell Beanie Babies.

Numerous sites have sprung up since 2012 to buy and sell Satoshi in the same way.







To comment about this story or work of the True Dollar Journal, you can @ me through the Fediverse. You can find me @johngritt@freespeechextremist.com

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