Let’s explore Bitcoin priced in gold (all prices as of August 2023).
The entire market cap of Bitcoin is currently roughly 570 billion US dollars (i.e. over half a trillion US dollars).
At current market prices, one kg of gold is approximately $60,000, giving us one metric tonne of gold having a price of approximately 60 million US dollars.
Dividing 570 billion by 60 million then gives us the price of the entire Bitcoin market-cap in terms of theoretical tonnes of gold:
570,000,000,000 / 60,000,000 = 9,500 tonnes of gold.
The entire market-cap of Bitcoin in terms of gold would be approximately 9,500 tonnes of gold (or 9.5 million kg of gold – if you prefer kg).
Some quick comparisons:
Let’s do some comparisons to get more of a handle on how much gold this is.
The US gold reserves, according to Investopedia, are approximately 8,000 tonnes of gold.
So our answer of 9,500 tonnes is just under 20% more than this amount.
To date approximately 244,000 tonnes of gold has been discovered (according to USGC).
Our theoretical answer of 9,500 tonnes then, would equate to just under 4% of all the gold ever discovered.
Bonus comparison: the total US debt, according to Wikipedia, is approximately 31.5 trillion dollars. In gold then, this would equate to just over 500,000 tonnes (more than double the amount ever discovered!). Or approximately 55 times the entire current market-cap of Bitcoin.
That’s it. That’s a wrap!