[netman21]

When are we going to stop calculating BTC total value by multiplying number of BTC times what is, let's face it, a spot price. There is no way you could sell 2 billion euros worth of BTC. You can't convert them into real property.

[mightybyte]

A quick look at the 24-hour trading volumes of the top 10 crypto exchanges (only a single trading pair per exchange of BTC against a USD or equivalent) gives a total volume of ~3.8 billion dollars. Many people say that there is a lot of fake volume in crypto but this is still a pretty conservative number. The total BTC volume according to CoinMarketCap is about 23 billion, but I prefer the smaller number because it gives a much better picture of the volume that could be feasibly captured with pretty unremarkable exchange access. If we assume that one can capture 5% of this 24-hour volume (a reasonably conservative assumption given good enough trading infrastructure), it would take about 11 days to offload that amount of bitcoin by selling across the top 10 exchanges.

So you absolutely could convert an amount like that into "real" assets. 11 days doesn't seem like an unreasonable amount of time to me, and we haven't even talked about OTC deals or other providers offering block trading services.

[thisgoesnowhere]

You think that there is the equivalent of 3.8b dollars of inflowing to Bitcoin specifically every day?

The total amount individual traders put into stocks in the first week of the year is ~7b. Is Bitcoin actually > 3x higher than that?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-01-05/bofa-says...

[mightybyte]

Those numbers aren't new inflows of capital into Bitcoin. They're the total volume traded both buys and sells. There are traders, market makers, etc both buying and selling many times a day, and anyone wanting to make large block trades can get a sufficiently modest piece of that. 5% is very achievable with very little price impact even in markets with lower liquidity than Bitcoin.

[thisgoesnowhere]

All that matters is if there if fresh money coming in and how much there is if the German government tried to sell. We have no idea how much money is fresh and how much there is wash until someone places a legitimate market sell for a large quantity of BTC.

I'm not saying it is wash trading since I don't have a cristal ball or insider info but after the recent lack of price action from the ETFs, it doesn't suggest the existing volume is legitimate.

[mightybyte]

> All that matters is if there if fresh money coming in

Every time a trade happens, someone is "coming in" and someone is "getting out". The more trades there are, the more opportunities there are for anyone (including the German government) to take the other side.

> after the recent lack of price action from the ETFs, it doesn't suggest the existing volume is legitimate.

This is by no means the only reasonable interpretation of the price action surrounding the ETF approval. It's totally plausible that the lack of price action just means that the amount of money "selling the news" of the final ETF approval is around the same as the amount of money "buying the rumor" of a big influx of cash.

[thisgoesnowhere]

> Every time a trade happens, someone is "coming in" and someone is "getting out"

This is not true in a wash trade which is what I have repeatedly been saying.

[roenxi]

A billion dollars isn't a lot of money any more. We could start seeing trillionaires appear on stage in about 25 years; which would imply "billionaire" being what millionaire is now.

[thisgoesnowhere]

I'm talking purely in relative terms to the entire us stock market.

[yieldcrv]

the new ETFs have had inflows that high over just the last week, so, yes? if bitcoins price has barely moved by ETFs that buy bitcoin based on how much people bought the ETFs then yes there is that much liquidity

[loeg]

The ETFs had net inflows of less than $1B. GBTC had significant outflows.

[yieldcrv]

I probably had not been reading net then, thanks.

Looks like the German government will have no issue liquidating their amount quickly over several trading sessions, venues and OTC if they desire to

[thisgoesnowhere]

The bitcoin ETFs have had 7b in us dollar inflows in a week?

[nimchimpsky]

they didn't say that, they said 3.8b of volume

[ikmckenz]

As someone who worked for a trading firm that did some* crypto stuff, you absolutely could sell 2B Euros worth of BTC, in a matter of weeks (contingent on market conditions), without significantly impacting the price.

*Some being trading volumes under but approaching $1B/month, although we didn't really have directional price exposure.

[huytersd]

Sure you can, you’ll have to do it slowly over years.

[yieldcrv]

2013 called and wanted its argument back

that hasnt been true for a very very long time

and its simply the same standard used for all other asset classes. lets normalize talking about bitcoin using the same standards we use on other things, of course that would require even knowing how other assets are talked about

[loeg]

It is pretty normal to consider the trading volume of a stock or asset when discussing valuation of huge lots.

[yieldcrv]

when discussing selling them, which no party in the article is talking about. and its not normal when simply discussing balances

[loeg]

This thread, the one you replied to, is explicitly discussing selling: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39197062 .

[yieldcrv]

I don’t see that

and the article

> investigators cited by German news agency dpa said no decisions had been made regarding cashing in the bitcoins