Even after weathering a bear market that wiped out more than 60 percent of the flagship cryptocurrency’s value, the bitcoin price continues to trade at a mark far above what its critics thought it could ever reach. Nevertheless, it still has a long way to go if it hopes to supplant the U.S. dollar or even become a viable tool for global payments.
That’s according to a new report from Swiss investment bank UBS, which found that the bitcoin price must reach $213,000 to replace the estimated $3.63 trillion worth of USD in circulation, commonly referred to as the M1 or “narrow money” supply.
At present, bitcoin has a circulating market cap of $127 billion, which is roughly the size of the M1 supplies maintained by the United Arab Emirates and Turkey. At its peak, bitcoin boasted a market cap larger than the M1 supplies of all but about 15 countries.