Am I the only one that just sat there seeing BTC transactions of $1m+ and thinking "Damn, who's that guy?"
I do feel bad for the people who are buying into the "digital gold" narrative at this point in time. I hope none of these big buyers are just regular joe's with sub-7-figure net worths who are just being irresponsible with their money due to the "hype"
A million doesn't feel like that much money anymore for billionaires. That's like spending $1 if you've got $100 in your wallet.
You are off by an order of magnitude.
Furthermore I highly doubt that it's mostly billionaires with >$1m USD holdings of BTC. There simply aren't enough to sustain this level of transactions.
Its estimated that at least 40% of the coins are lost.
What is the volume of legal purchases versus speculative and blackmarket transactions? Why do people have any confidence in these digital assets?
That is a reasonable argument to hold coins if the expectation is increased adoption. However, when sales are restricted for illegally bypassing sanctions (eg US) or enabling capital flight (eg China), we will see the market fall to near-zero because bitcoin is not a currency.
If every nation banned trading Australian dollars, they would still hold value in Australia... and there are millions of people working to ensure AUD continues to hold value and confidence outside of Australia.
If every nation banned trading bitcoin, they would be worthless... in fact, they would be worthless if only a couple key nations banned the coins.
Many of the large transactions are likely payment processors moving bitcoins into and out of exchanges, not any individual. Or mining rig operators cashing out to finance their power bills (and I'm talking the big mining operations, not someone's one or two miners in their apartment).