No, not how much land can you buy with 1 BTC. What I'm asking is how much land would you have if you divided all the land area available on earth by 21M.
The total land area of the Earth is about 150M square kilometers or 57.5M square miles. Divided into 21M equal pieces, that would be 7 square km or about 4.35 square miles. That is 2783.74 acres of land per bitcoin. That's equivalent to a fifth of Manhattan. There are private islands with less acreage.
So how much land would be equivalent to a sat? There are 100M sats in a single bitcoin. So let's divide 7 square km by 100,000,000. That would result in 700 sq. cm, about 0.75 sq. feet. That's about the size of a MacBook Pro.
So if you keep stacking those MacBook Pros, you'll eventually get a private island! :)
That's a good analysis, but you have to also take into account that:
  • There's a substantial portion of land on earth that isn't habitable (mountains, deserts, etc)
  • Not all land will be worth the same; a sq meter in Miami will be far more expensive than in the centre African region.
  • Bitcoin will not only be used to trade land, so dividing all land by 21M might not be correct.
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sorry @majjin, there's one of these in every group.
@ax, it was a visualization, not a prescription
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I actually thought about removing habitable land but I wanted to keep the post short and simple. Plus like @bixxxin mentioned, this is a way to visualize how large a sat is compared to a whole coin, not an analysis on bitcoin's present or future purchasing power.
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I agree that working only with habitable land is a better analogy, and since we're at it, what is the estimated amount of bitcoin that will still be accessible by the time all of it has been mined?
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That's assuming bitcoin is only used as a medium of exchange for land only. But it will be used to exchange for goods, services, even hypotheticals on stacker.news. So in theory, 1₿ will be worth more than 7square km. ✌️
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I definitely agree but this isn't really an analysis on Bitcoin's present or future purchasing power. Its a visualization on how large a single bitcoin and sat are.
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Enough for a very small kingdom
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really puts things into perspective, even after recognizing @ax’s points
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This assumes all land is habitable
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I actually thought about removing habitable land but I wanted to keep the post short and simple.
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Probably should have made this more clear in the post, but this isn't supposed to be an analogy on the present or future purchasing power of bitcoin.
This is a visualization on how much "real estate" a whole bitcoin or a single sat takes up out of the 21M coins. I used the land area of Earth as an analogy since as the saying goes, "They aren't making it anymore." Its finite so I thought it fit.
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2783.74 acres of land almost anywhere in north america for $20,000 is a steal. Most indoor real estate rents for $10 to $20 per sqft, no idea what arable bare land rents for per square foot, but I can guarantee you its much more than a sat.
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