This thought experiment is probably full of some large holes, but just as an evening diversion I thought I'd throw this in here.
Western Union made $1.16 Billion on transfer fees in 2011.
$1,160,000,000One percent of that figure is:
$11,600,000Total number of BTC that represents at a current market price of
9.14 is:
~1,269,146That number is about 13.38% of total Bitcoins in circulation.Now, looking at mtGox's order book:
http://mtgoxlive.com/ordersAt the time of this posting it would take
$432,281 to reach the price of
10.93Now, the
'big leap' - if we can assume that same dollar amount for every
+$1.79 of price movement
(offers consistently appear) then:
$11.6 million divided by $432,281 =
26.834 multiples of $1.79 rise in price, so the final price is:
26.834 * $1.79 =
48.03357Current price 9.14 + 48.03357 =
57.17357And now, this is where you say
'no offers will come' and
'we won't get 1% of international wire transfers'. Still, interesting based on some really small figures from the real world, wouldn't you agree?
This is the 1000th time I've seen a thread saying, "if Bitcoin were to capture Herp industry and Derp fees and Hurr business, one bitcoin would be worth $10000000000000000."
I've got a constructive recommendation: perhaps we should move all of these threads of the same form into a megathread, titled "Price Scenarios" or something.