Bitcoin has increased over $250 in the past 24 hours and has breached the $3,800 mark and continues to trend upward. Will the new all time high break $4,000 this weekend?

The current market cap (value of all Bitcoin in existence) is just shy of 63 billion. The market cap has increased by approximately 29 billion in the past 30 days.  This may sound like a large sum (and it is) but it is a small fraction of what it could achieve if it replaces any part of Gold holdings or US currency.  The estimated value of all mined gold is 8.2 Trillion (8,200,000,000,000…that is a lot of zeros!).  The value of gold is 130x larger than the market cap of Bitcoin.  In other words, the market cap of Bitcoin is less than .8% of the value of gold…yes, that is less than 1%.  If a mere 5% of value stored in gold moves to Bitcoin it would increase the price of BTC by more than 600%, increasing the price per coin to $22,800.

Bank of England gold holdings

This is only when comparing a mere 5% of the value of gold and does not include people and countries that accept BTC as a replacement or compliment to their current fiat currency.  Many countries with unstable governments may accept BTC with open arms as an alternative.  Japan actually just passed a law in April, 2017 that will make BTC a legal method of payment for business and merchants.  All signs point to BTC becoming a mainstream, global, method of payment in the next few years.

*Note – This recent run up increases the value of Steve’s locked Bitcoin (in a safe with no key) from $50,000 to almost $65,000!  Full story can be found here.