Submitted by Taps Coogan on the 22nd of June 2017 to The Sounding Line.

Bitcoin has experienced a meteoric rise in the value this year, rocketing from $985 dollar per Bitcoin at the start of 2017 to over $2,722.00 at the time of writing. This rise in value has been primarily driven by surging retail investor interest in Japan and Korea, as well as emerging economies where trust in local currencies is low. As a result, the total value of all outstanding Bitcoin has surged to over $41 billion dollars. While that may seem like a lot of money, the following info-graphic from howmuch.net puts Bitcoin’s market cap into perspective:

“Currently, all the bitcoin in the world is worth $41 billion. If that amount is hard to grasp, just think of it as one Larry Page – because $41 billion also happens to be the net worth of the guy who co-founded Google with Sergey Brin.

You’ll find both fortunes at the right side, and the lower end, of this graph, which gives you an idea of all the money in the world. You and I don’t figure on it unless you’re Larry Page. Or Bill Gates. The richest man in the world is worth $86 billion, or the net worth of Larry Page and Bitcoin combined – with enough change to buy the L.A. Lakers, the Toronto Maple Leafs, the Chicago Cubs and the Solomon Islands (not a sports team, but an entire country).

Bitcoin is the Uber of cryptocurrencies: the biggest, baddest and best-known, but not the only one. Add it up to Litecoin, Monero and all the others, and the total volume of virtual money floating around the internet, out of the reach of governments and banks, is a whopping $100 billion. That is about as much as the current GDP of Morocco – the 60th-largest economy in the world.”

“The current world supply of mined gold is around 171,300 metric tonnes, which could be molded into a cube with sides of about 68 feet (20.7m). Its total value? Currently around $8.2 trillion. Or about 200 times the total value of Bitcoin (or Larry Page)”

Bitcoin is getting a lot press based on its price advances this year. It is important to keep some perspective. There is a long long way to go if it is going to become major player in the global financial system.