I really wonder how all that transaction mechanics works on the stocks for BTC, in terms of real money availability on stocks' balance.
According to this site current "bictoin capitalization" is around 11,2 billion $
http://www.coinometrics.com/bitcoin/bmixand current amount of btc existing is 12,2 millions
But we understand, that "capitalization" is oversimplified model, basically calculated as
[current value per bitcoin ($/btc) multiplied by the number of bitcoins in circulation]It's nice to think in terms of "that huge amount of money" but it's just the stock, and price is fully depends on the supply/demand, as example
On 5th of december, selling ~200 000 bitcoins (2% of total) on btc-e caused price drop from 1068 to 556 in 3 days (by 50%).
We might add there other stocks, as ~175k for bitstamp and ~200k on gox, it's still aboout 5,5% of all volume.
That's how fast wealth disappearing.
Now, the most interesting question for me - is how much money was invested into btc by now? It's certainly not 11,2 billions, nor it's 5 billions. Sum must be way, way less.
Most of these sums must be stored on main stocks (btistamp, gox, btc-e, okcoin/huobi?), who performed transaction operations. //assuming, that people not cashed out to fiat//
And in the end, that sum will determine how much btc you can sell, without going price to zero. Because if one (or several guys) wants to liquidate his BTC holdings, if sum will be big enough, there just wouldn't be enough demand ($) in stock balance to buy even at low levels (and deposit takes several hours), and that will crash price to zero.
Having approximate amount of all cash invested to btc, which are in stocks now, might allow us to predict how much % btc will be required to completely crash the market.
Sure we can't predict how much support (buying power) will be waiting on $100 mark, but in the end, it's all about current cash on stock balance - if potential buyer don't have much cash his order will be filled up and price will drops further.
If we have some figures about stock balance funds, we can create approximation scenarios (like 1kk btc to be bought at $100 before cash ends and drops further, etc).
Is there any way to obtain something like that?
I mean all stocks are legal organisations and must provide some finance reports to the govt (and at least partly these reports are open to public).P.S. in before "who the hell will liquidate all his holdings at one day" stuff - scenario might happen if several major holders (up to I dunno, 1kk BTC?) will liquidate their positions at once for whatever reasons.
I don' really see the problem here. As all companies are valued in the same way, and a market cap has a sort of acid/base buffer system in it, people rush in to buy if it goes don to low, and seel when it goes up to take profits, so it's ok. Of course look at volume as well.
The Cardinal difference between the BTC market cap and say Apple Market cap, it BTC's is infinitely respendable. Eg that BTC buying power does not disappear when I pass it on to someone, like cash. An apple share however can not be used in this way, it can only be swapped again within its share market. So that means there is circa 10 billon of buy power on the table all the time that is not diminished. This inchoate property of a currency, is what often makes people give discounts for cash. Cash is infinitely transmutable to the need you have.