Bitcoin could be considered a top-10 global currency based on its “stock of narrow money” or M1, the money supply that is composed of the most liquid forms of assets, according to a ranking created by Casa’s Jameson Lopp and made to resemble a CIA webpage.
Bitcoin’s market capitalization (the USD value of one bitcoin multiplied by the current total supply of bitcoin) of $1,185,601,872,889 would put it above Canada in estimated M1 supply, per Lopp’s rankings, leaving it just behind Spain, which has an estimated $1.5 trillion M1 supply.
Per the ranking, which appears to be derived from the code of an out-of-date CIA webpage and is hosted on Lopp’s personal website, M1 “is the total quantity of currency in circulation (notes and coins), plus demand deposits denominated in the national currency, held by non-bank financial institutions, state and local governments, nonfinancial public enterprises and the private sector of the economy. The national currency units have been converted to U.S. dollars at the closing exchange rate on the date of the information.”
Most of the information for the countries ranked on the list have reference dates of December 31, 2020, while Bitcoin’s listed market cap is up to date as of the time of this writing.
Though the ranking could be considered an apples to oranges comparison between a cryptocurrency market cap and a nation’s liquid money supply (and it does not actually reflect a public CIA ranking of bitcoin in comparison to national stocks of money) it does serve as a signifier of just how valuable the bitcoin market has become.
