Bitcoin may not have fulfilled its goal to surpass fiat completely but that has not stopped it from entering mainstream realms.
The Central Intelligence Agency [CIA] of the United States of America has been known to keep tabs on influential individuals and countries and their World FactBook is a testament to that. The list ranks counties in terms of their Stock of Narrow Money and according to the latest rankings, the European Union has come out on top.
The Stock of Narrow Money is the total quantity of currency in circulation plus the demand deposits denominated in the national currency. This currency can be held by nonbank financial institutions, state and local governments, nonfinancial public enterprises, and the private sector of the individual economy. Keeping this metric in mind, the European Union had a stock of 8.775 trillion followed by China which held a stock of 7.947 trillion. The list comprised of 194 countries and if Bitcoin was placed side by side with them, the digital asset would have taken the 34th position.
Currently, the world’s largest cryptocurrency had a market cap of $131.837 billion and was trading for $7.270.89. BTC’s 24-hour market volume was $23.07 billion after a 2.34 percent dip on the daily spectrum.
This would mean that Bitcoin would beat the Stock of Narrow Money figures of bigwigs such as Portugal, the United Kingdom and Malaysia. Even up-and-coming economies like New Zealand, Qatar and Kuwait were below Bitcoin when it came to Stock of Narrow Money, with each country holding $44.400 billion, $35.54 billion and $33.35 billion respectively.
The monumental rise of Bitcoin on such a chart goes to show that the asset has been a tremendous growth accelerator. As the decade comes to an end, Bitcoin has shown to be one of the best-performing assets on the planet. Since its inception in 2009 and its first trade, Bitcoin has grown by 62,500 percent. The mammoth increase was in line with the cryptocurrency’s shoot up in 2017 as it climbed towards the $20,000 mark.
Bitcoin’s price hike was so significant that it even beat stocks of Netflix, Domino’s Pizza and the Jeff Bezos led technology giant Amazon. The above-mentioned companies grew by 4280 percent, 3000 percent, and 1250 percent respectively. The success of Bitcoin even sparked China to create its own digital currency called the digital yuan. The People’s Bank of China confirmed that the currency won’t be ” for speculation or require the support of a basket of currencies“. Mu Changchun, the head of the People’s Bank of China stated:
“It is different to bitcoin or stable tokens, which can be used for speculation or require the support of a basket of currencies. The top-level design, formulation, functional research and testing of the Digital Currency Electronic Payment had been completed.”