Your figure is off by an order of magnitude. Greyscale alone has purchased more than that amount.
The relevant figure is total paid-in, minus total withdrawn, to be more precise.
And probably we can't know, given that entities like Tether refuse to show their books.
No matter what you think of bitcoin, you must admit this has been successful beyond anyone’s wildest expectations only 12 short years ago. It’s rise and acceptance into the deepest reaches of traditional finance and conservative institutions like BNY Mellon is absurd in its speed and their willingness to accept fundamental change. We are in the midst of a paradigm shift to open financial protocols and huge innovation in capital markets. On to the next decade of crypto!
Also, financial protocols!= currency.
It gives people locked out of the global financial system by the warrantless financial mass-surveillance regime, aka the global AML regime, a lifeline:
https://www.coindesk.com/money-reimagined-ugly-side-kyc-aml-...
>>At a 2015 blockchain event, Nairobi-based bitcoin pioneer Elizabeth Rossiello answered an audience question about the impact on Somalians of a recent shutdown in remittance inflows after the U.S. government had labeled the country a “high-risk jurisdiction.” The AZA Group CEO’s answer was blunt: “They starve.”
Remember, under financial-mass-surveillance (AML) laws, you're guilty until proven innocent, and your nationality and residency can be considered as proof of guilt.
Proof of work does a good job contributing to increasing problems with global warming and wreaking havoc on the computer hardware market.
There's talk about major cryptocurrencies switching to proof of stake. Good luck on that, because the current powers that be would hate to see their cash cow affected.
Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. A bunch of early adopters are getting VERY rich because everyone else is FOMOing hardcore. That's never a good reason to buy into this charade.
Our species is so greedy, we will do whatever it takes to fuck everyone else and get ours, I guess. We created a monster. I wish we could own up to it before it's too late.
That alone is a huge global market and it’s barely started.
I think a best case scenario is something like the Lightning Network grows in scale and popularity and becomes a defacto standard for online and mobile purchases.
It has high upkeep costs, requiring you to have your LN node online to receive payments, and for your node to have access to the LN funds via a connection to the private keys, which is a security liability.
To monitor for fraudulent channel closes in order to be able to react in time to challenge them, it also requires you to have an always on-line node, or a trusted third party delegated to do that on your behalf. And if you want rapid/automated reaction to fraudulent channel closes, that node needs to have access to the private keys to your LN funds.
Then there are routing issues when the topography of the network changes with every transaction, and where the existence of routes is dependent on sufficient capital being locked up in channels.
There's a reason why there's 100 times more BTC locked up for use in Ethereum dApps than for use in the LN. Ethereum-based scalability solutions could, ironically, provide BTC with the scalability needed to gain mass-adoption as an instrument for peer-to-peer payments.
Idk where this will go, but I will ride the bubble/pyramid.
