Choose: All Bitcoin, or New Zealand

By Darryn Pollock

As Bitcoin continues to grow and grow, people try to quantify where it stands in relation to other markets, companies, people, and even countries. As it stands today, Bitcoin is worth more than the GDP of New Zealand.

Of course, this makes it sound like a dangerously huge entity, and also makes it sound like it is inflating to a bubble-pop point, but with all these comparisons; from the Queen, to Warren Buffet and Bill Gates, it is more important to look at its market status.

Bitcoin can buy you a lot of things, in terms of retail, but in terms of value globally, it can buy a lot more. However, despite the buying power of this digital currency, it is still that same small fish in a large market ocean.

What can all Bitcoin buy you?
If suddenly, you found yourself in possession of every Bitcoin in existence, you first stop should be your own private Island; Richard Branson-esque. But instead of a sandbar, why not buy New Zealand whose GDP sits at economy, is valued at $185 bln, according to World Bank data.

You could also instead opt for Qatar, Kuwait and Hungary.

Business more of your thing? You could get into the banking market ironically and buyout Goldman Sachs and UBS. Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s market cap is $97 bln while UBS Group AG came in at about $67 bln. Add those numbers together and it still falls short of Bitcoin.

Traveling will be important with your new found fame, so why not buy Boeing? The aeronautics company has a market cap of $162 bln thanks to over a century of building the aerospace frontier. Bitcoin is worth more than that and is less than 10 years old.

Perhaps you are a little paranoid about this earth and would like some military hardware, you could spring for 14 aircraft carriers. The USS Gerald R. Ford, the first of a new class of nuclear-powered supercarriers, was delivered to the US Navy in May. It cost an estimated $13 bln.

There is also a chance to be the richest person in the room if that room had the mega-rich Warren Buffet, Bill Gates, and even her majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Gates and Buffett come in with nearly $90 bln each while the Queen chips in with a paltry $383 mln.

Impressive, but meaningless
All these comparisons really illustrate is that there is value in Bitcoin and that it has buying power. Many can look at that as signs that this emerging currency is getting too big for its own good, but it’s not.

Comparing the residential real estate market to how many aircraft carriers you can buy (1,2461 by the way) it is ridiculous and nonsensical. That is because the real estate market is just that, a mega-market that has structure in place that can collapse, and even pop.

Bitcoin is too small to pop, despite what many of the major money men feel, such as Buffet. Buffett claimed that Bitcoin is a “real bubble,” when giving a speech in early October.

“People get excited from big price movements, and Wall Street accommodates. You can’t value Bitcoin because it’s not a value-producing asset.”

Jim Rogers, the famous investor guru and founder of the Rogers International Commodity Index (RICI) has expressed his opinion that Bitcoin “looks and smells” like a bubble.

Via a technically sound ‘smell test’ Rogers has suggested that Bitcoin is a bubble. In fact, the investment guru said:

“It looks and smells like all the bubbles I have seen throughout history.”

Secret symbol № 27: w

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