Bitcoin took another hit on Monday, dropping another $2,500 to a low of $91,482. The drawdown left the world's largest crypto-currency down nearly two percent for the year-to-date.
Some of the issues that plague bitcoin in its billing as "digital gold" and a store of value are wild swings up and down and the number of "whales" who own large stakes in the 21 million bitcoins that will eventually be mined.
As of today, only about five percent of the available bitcoin is left to be mined, a little more than one million "coins", which puts the mining business in a tough spot. At $100,000 per bitcoin, it's a trillion dollars of bitcoin to be mined, a tidy sum, though it is split up among a group of tough competitors, making that business model something of a moot point over time despite the last bitcoin to be mined will be in 2140. That's if it lasts that long. Mining bitcoins for $100,000 a pop is one thing. If the price continues to decline, spending millions on high speed computers, energy, and equipment to cash in on multiple $50,000 or $40,000 awards might not be such a tempting concept.
With about one million bitcoins remaining to be mined over the next 115 years (2025 through 2140), it breaks down, linearly, to about 8700 bitcoins a year. At $100,000 each, that's $870,000,000 a year. Not bad, if one company mined all the bitcoin. But, if there are 10 miners, that's only $87 million each. Some of the companies mining bitcoin are very highly valued. 11 of them have market capitalizations of more than $1 billion. Over 115 years, mining all the remaining bitcoin at a price of $100,000 comes to $100,050,000,000, or, just over $100 billion dollars. In today's world, that's chump change and draws into question the valuations of companies mining bitcoin like Iris Energy (IREN), Cipher Mining (CIFR), and Riot Blockchain (RIOT). The combined market cap of the top 22 bitcoin miners is $53 billion. That math does not add up.
What happens to these companies when they're mining bitcoin at $50,000, $30,000, or even $20,000. Most will go out of business, costing investors millions. The founders and executives won't care. They've made their money in salaries and bonuses, but, billions of dollars will have been eviscerated, gone with the wind.
This is the point at which bitcoiners become aggressive and defensive, arguing that the math implies a higher bitcoin price due to scarcity and the difficulty and cost of mining those remaining bitcoins. Those arguments put the cart before the horse, so to speak. Just because there aren't many Joe Nuxhall rookie baseball cards, doesn't make them particularly valuable (Nuxhall was a pitcher for the Cincinnati Reds in the 1950s and 60s). So too, the value, or price of 21 million bitcoins - not extremely rare in any sense - is tied to the desirability of ownership. Who wants to own bitcoins? And why? The obvious reason for the past decade or so has been price appreciation. Not utility. Not value. It is a pure speculation. And, if the price is going down, fewer and fewer people will want it. BlackRock and Michael Saylor could end up owning most of it. Then what?
Bitcoin needs massive adoption in order to achieve scale and utility as a medium of exchange. It hasn't happened, despite being available for buying, selling, and some payments on platforms as diverse as Stripe, PayPal, and Square. In the U.S. and Australia, for instance, less than two percent of the population uses bitcoin to transact. That's not going to cut it.
Then there's the issue of the number of large holders of bitcoin. In an ecosystem that was supposed ot be built on fairness, trustlessness, and anonymity, having large shares of the currency acts as a detriment. Who wants to hold "money" that's controlled by a small number of "whales" who could conceivably move the price of bitcoin up or down alone or in collusion? While that construct may be similar to stock ownership, it's a different situation. Stocks are assets. Bitcoin is supposed ot be "money."
Here's a short list of the estimated top 10 bitcoin holders (or "hodlers", if you prefer):
- Satoshi Nakamoto (founder of bitcoin): 1.1 million bitcoins
- BlackRock’s iShares Bitcoin Trust (IBIT): 800,000
- MicroStrategy (now, Strategy): 640,000
- Binance-coldwallet: 248,598
- United States of America: 207,000
- Fidelity Wise Origin Bitcoin Fund (CBOE:FBTC): 205,000
- China: 194,000
- Grayscale Bitcoin Trust (GBTC): 173,502
- Robinhood-coldwallet: 140,575
- Bitfinex-coldwallet: 130,010
- Winklevoss twins: 70,000
All told, this top 10 holds about 4 million bitcoins, or, nearly 20%. Should any one of them decide to cash out, or, worse, yet, a few panic at once, bitcoin could fall precipitously.
General ownership of bitcoin is quite top-heavy. Motley Fool estimates that 0.03% of all Bitcoin addresses hold more than 100 BTC, but those wallets control more than 60% of all Bitcoin in circulation.
That doesn't leave much for Joe and Jane Sixpack. Again, it's akin to stocks, where institutions hold most of the shares and the best individuals can hope for is to go along for the ride, which, hopefully, is to the upside.
What's been happening lately is probably mostly retail speculators cashing out as the big gains for 2025 have already been made. In fact, bitcoin's price today is right around where it was this time last year. On November 19, 2024, one bitcoin was worth $91,546. So much for getting rich quick. Bear in mind, this "digital gold" compares to actual gold, up more than 50% this year, and actual silver, up 70%.
Bitcoin might as well be called "digital hopium." Other crypto-currencies, alt-coins, etc. are doing even worse. Etheruem, or Ether, as the cool kids call it, is down nine percent year-to-date. Solana is down 30%, Cardano, down 45%; Dogecoin, down 52%.
It's all speculation, and, right now, the long specs are losing. Add in the amounts lost in various ETFs and other derivative crypto plays and you have the crypto ecosystem imploding in real time. This has happened before, and, if human nature plays out as it usually does, it will happen again. Michael Saylor will proclaim bitcoin a bargain at $35,000. Many morons will follow where fools dare to tread and buy it. They may profit. They may lose. The best thing would be for bitcoin to go to zero along with all the other fakes.
One has to wonder, if bitcoin is so awesome, why doesn't Mr. Saylor or BlackRock or the other institutional players invest in some of the other offerings? Probably because, they, like most sane people, realize that a world of crypto-currencies is a fantasy. Suppose you went to a restaurant for dinner and found out when the check came that they didn't accept bitcoin, ether, solana, dogecoin, or even fartcoin, even though you had plenty of each in your virtual wallet. The maitre'd informs you that the establishment prefers cash, as in U.S. dollars, Visa or Mastercard.
Well, there you go. Explains why crypto is "crap-to" for lack of a better term. It's numbers on a ledger, and, while it shares some similarities to dollars, yen, euros, or pounds, it's not accepted at the millions of locations that take cash or cards.
Crypto is trash. It may not have been in its infancy, but, as soon as Wall Street stuck its claws into it, it became un-ownable. Essentially, there are a lot of people in the world who don't own any and an equally large number of people who feel, "if BlackRock owns it, I'd rather not."
In real terms, 0.01 bitcoin was worth $1,243 on October 7. Today, $910, and falling. Overnight, it was a low as $89,500. That's a screaming SELL. Beware of big waves caused by whales flopping on the water. It's all been a very nice speculation. Let BlackRock and Michael Saylor eat the losses. Enough is enough. Let's move on.
The trillions of dollars being pumped into bitcoin, crypto, and all the derivatives are fueling a massively-building liquidity crisis. Paraphrasing a quote often ascribed to 1950s-60s Senator Everett Dirkson, "a trillion here, a trillion there, soon enough you're talking real money." A couple of trillion dollars suddenly vanishing from the bizarre crypto bazaar has its share of ripple effects (no pun intended), and the stock market has been exhibiting obvious signs of pain.
Monday was another day for taking chips off the table, and futures are looking very promising. Just before 9:00 am, Dow futures were off 390 points, NASDAQ futures had shed 150, and S&P futures were down 31.
Since its peak on October 7, bitcoin is down more than 26%. The slide has accelerated recently, however. In just the past week, since November 11, bitcoin is down $15,000, or about 14%. Between falling prices in general, margin calls, and forced liquidations, the amount of money leaving crypto-land is staggering. In just the past 24 hours, nearly $1 billion in forced liquidations have taken place. The outward effects are being reflected in the general markets, which are themselves wildly overvalued.
From all appearances, bitcoin is adding to the dumpster fire on Wall Street in a big way. If there's a general collapse in stocks, bitcoin's losses are likely to be even more severe. With the major stock exchanges set to open in less than half an hour, the condition appears dire.
At the Close, Monday, November 17, 2025:
Dow: 46,590.24, -557.24 (-1.18%)
NASDAQ: 22,708.07, -192.51 (-0.84%)
S&P 500: 6,672.41, -61.70 (-0.92%)
NYSE Composite: 21,213.42, -256.84 (-1.20%)
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