Over the past year, Bitcoin, the world’s leading cryptocurrency, has been dominating both headlines and the interest of the financial and political world. With an increasing number of investments, the cryptocurrency is now worth more than some of the world’s most successful companies. What’s more, with a market cap value of over $172 billion, it is worth more than some countries!
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A new infographic produced by the team at CoinList explores the success of Bitcoin by comparing it to countries on factors such as economy size, energy consumption, population and demographics.
Economy
If Bitcoin was a country and we compared the market cap value with countries’ GDP, it would position itself as the 58th wealthiest country in the world, positioned below Qatar and above Kazakhstan.
Energy Consumption
Due to the high energy consumption caused by coin mining, Bitcoin would be the 60th most energy consuming country. This means it would consume more energy than Belarus, Denmark, Serbia and Morocco amongst others.
Population
As Bitcoin can be bought and sold anonymously, it is difficult to estimate how many people own Bitcoin. However, we do know that at least 13 million people use one of the main providers of Bitcoin exchange, Coinbase. If we compare the population of Bitcoin users to inhabitants of countries around the world, Bitcoin would be the 75th most populous country in the world, positioned just below Somalia and just above Guinea and South Sudan.
Population Growth
The number of people using Bitcoin is doubling every 12 months. If we compare that to the population growth of other countries, Bitcoin would be the fastest growing country in the world. To put it into perspective, Lebanon is on second place at 9.37%.
Assuming the current population of Bitcoin is 13 million, by 2020 it would have increased to 39 million users.
Demographics
More than 90% of the Bitcoin users identify themselves as male, so if Bitcoin really was a country, it would be a serious shortage of female inhabitants.
As the largest proportion of users are aged 25-34, it would also be a very young population.
Average salary
The average income for Bitcoin-owners if between $50,000 to $100,000. So if Bitcoin was a country, its citizens would be the 6th wealthiest in the world, after Luxemburg, Switzerland and Norway.
Read on and learn how competitive Bitcoin would be on the world stage, as a country.
Infographic source: CoinList
