5,000 BTC used to get you a pizza — now it’s worth more than some countries.
Bitcoin held steady over the weekend, and as of the time of publication on March 4 — with a current value of $66,500 — it stands on the precipice of reaching its all-time U.S. dollar high of $68,991.
BTC $67,226 total market value to $1.31 trillion, or about a billion dollars more than all the Swiss francs in circulation. In fact, if Bitcoin were a fiat currency, it would be the 13th-largest in the world by market capitalization.
Bitcoin around the world
As of the time of publication, there are a reported 19,644,462 BTC in circulation. Bitcoin has a technical limit of 21 million total, but due to the way mining rewards are calculated, it is unlikely to ever become 100% mined.
It’s impossible to predict the price of BTC going forward, but by taking a snapshot of where it is today as it hovers around its previous all-time high, the total global impact of Bitcoin can be put into perspective.
There was a time when 10,000 BTC would get you a couple of pizzas. Today, a single Bitcoin would buy nearly 1,000 shares in Papa John’s, the fourth-largest pizza chain by market value — and the restaurant Laszlo Hanyecz’s famous pizzas came from.
At its current market value, a hodler with 10,000 BTC in their portfolio would have around $666.4 million and, technically, more global purchasing power than 97 countries.
Source: CoinMarketCap
This means there are only 12 fiat currencies with enough circulation to buy all the Bitcoin currency available.
China’s yuan leads the world with a market cap of 620,521,346 BTC and is closely followed by the U.S. dollar, which has a circulation supply worth 597,177,334 BTC.
Things drop off quickly after that, with the euro’s total market cap only worth about 242 million BTC. At spot No. 12, just ahead of Bitcoin’s own market cap, is the New Taiwan dollar, which has a total circulation worth a little more than 29 million BTC.
Bitcoin market cap vs. fiat
For perspective, there are approximately 2.7 trillion Icelandic krona in circulation today. That’s just enough to buy about 80% of the existing supply of Dogecoin
DOGE $0.18 in the world. If the country of Iceland wanted to pool all of its krona into Bitcoin, on the other hand, it could only lock down about 1.5% of the current total supply.
Taking things a step further, if Bitcoin were to hit $100,000 per coin, based on current rankings, it would likely wind up somewhere between seventh and eighth on the list of most valuable fiat currencies by market cap. This would put it between the Indian rupee and the Canadian dollar.
At a million dollars a coin, Bitcoin would have a market cap of somewhere slightly below $21 trillion. At this hypothetical threshold, BTC would have a larger cap than any other fiat currency, except for the yuan and U.S. dollar.
