Jeff Bezos from Amazon would have enough money to buy all the bitcoins.
These are the hypotheses.
One of the mantras that drive the Bitcoin (BTC) blockchain is that it is decentralized and cannot be controlled in any way. This is due to the fact that it would require a lot of computational and economic power.Â
It is extremely difficult if not impossible to stop this asset, especially when it comes to the fact that it is censorship-resistant.
On the other hand, it is also true that there are indirect ways to get control of it, i.e. to have enough BTC to monopolize the market. It would be enough to have 11 million BTC to hold more than half of it.
But how much would it take to buy all the BTC in circulation?
Before answering this question we have to consider that as demand increases the price increases, so the assumption that we are making implies that the price does not change, hence it is a plausible but unlikely assumption.
By making a couple of calculations and considering that the blockchain is public, we can cross-reference the data we have in our possession and draw the sums to see how much is actually needed to buy all the BTC in circulation.
The first figure we have is that of the total bitcoin supply which is 21 million, although at present we know that about 18 million have been mined, so there are still 3 million to be mined in the coming years, whereas the current price of the asset is about $9200.
So, with this data available, we simply have to multiply the price per single BTC with the supply in circulation, which is the current one and we know that the final result is just under 170 billion dollars.
Is there anyone on Earth who has that kind of money?
Well to answer this question, Bloomberg has estimated and reported that the assets of Jeff Bezos of Amazon have reached 171.6 billion dollars, so in theory, Bezos could buy all the BTC in circulation.
How much does it take to obtain the majority of bitcoin?
It is interesting to note that over time, during these 11 years of life of the asset, there have been countless episodes in which users have lost, for various reasons, access to their bitcoins, and it is estimated that in total they could be about 4 million BTC.
That means that if we subtract 4 million from the total supply, only 14 million are actually available and tradable, so just under 130 billion dollars at the current price.
If we wanted to have the majority of all the bitcoins net of the lost ones, then it is enough to have 9 million BTC, and therefore 82 billion dollars, in order to control Bitcoin with this small supply.
This amount would be accessible to several other billionaires, for example, Bill Gates and, with some effort, even Bernard Arnault and Warren Buffett.
