There is a lot of speculative stuff on the net regarding crypto currencies which exist between the rat poison view of Charlie Munger and the bullish this will be how money is going forwards.
Let us see if we can at least set some of the parameter for bitcoin.
This article from Investopedia has lots of useful stuff but needs updating as it is now 1 year old:
https://www.investopedia.com/tech/how-m ... y-bitcoin/In the article bit coin was valued at $8790, today bit coin is valued at $47,748, an increase of 5.4x.
Scaling the numbers from the article then gives us
value of all bitcoins 5.4x160.4 = $871.3 billion, or about 2% of all money on the planet.
Value of bit coin compared to gold, about 8.6%.
These numbers suggest to me that bitcoin is rapidly becoming a major currency, if it was to go up x10 from here it would be 20% of all money.
Mining is now done with dedicated hardware. The days when you could use a graphical processor to mine bitcoin are over. Now mining is done with ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit). In principle one could use any remote device with ASIC to mine coin. So for example if you were to attach a ASIC to a Tesla one could use the Tesla’s internet connectivity and the ASIC to mine bitcoin but you will have to have a large electricity supply and at a good rate, such as in a renewable rich region, as happens in Iceland, to get the power at a rate that will enable profitable mining with out environmental degradation.
As of yet I can find no auto manufacturer who is interested in putting a mining application into a Battery car, however, that can change.
There are many statements about bitcoin being only of use to criminal wanting to launder money, while other sources say that the trackable nature of bit coin is a blessing for law enforcement over legacy Fiat money.
Who might use Bitcoin? There seems to be a bit of a consensus that it is most appropriate for large sums of $1 million and up and for people who fear that their fiat money will be debased by central bank printing. This argument is somewhat like the argument for gold, but bitcoin is far more convenient.
The issues between bitcoin and central banks is another area where there is extensive polarisation. One camp argues that due to Crypto currencies the rate the central bank will have to offer in bond auctions will increase to compensate between the dilution of fiat currencies to the none-dilution of crypto. There are also many other camps arguing many other things.
It is always difficult to know if this is a fad or something that will define the financial markets going forwards.
As things now are I am minded to think it will become more and more important, but I could be completely wrong!
Regards,