Bitcoin Forum

In the simplest form how would it be possible for the price not to rise substantially in the next couple of years?
Diminishing supply + growing exposure + exponential investment + trading options = positive price increase.

I'm not sure why anyone would be concerned about investing in the technology... this is a great time to expand the wallet.
How many will be regretful for not taking advantage of early 2015 pricing?

There are lots of ways. One giant way is a critical bug is found that kills bitcoin.

But assuming no technical issues, you have an ever increasing supply at a steady, known rate and an erratic uptake of the ecosystem with a sporadic demand. Couple that with the fact that miners will immediately sell their coins to pay for their costs and you have a lot of coins going into the market and not many coming out. Most merchants do not hold or use their bitcoins, they convert them to fiat.

That is only two of the ways the cost of a bitcoin could go down in the next few years. How likely is that? I don't know. There are many other scenarios where it could go down (and likely will go down) as well.

Bitcoin being used as a secure method of value transfer, but not storage would see the price plummet quite a bit as well, since it would be considered to have no utility beyond a secure transfer mechanism, so the price would stabilize right around what it costs to create and/or store one, which is very little once you take initial hardware costs out of the equation.

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/2586664217/o78k5fogx5g3hdy6peai.jpeg


The price is going to continue falling. The main issue with Bitcoin is it's only really useful for criminals (drug dealing, money laundering, etc.)

Think about it: Why would someone convert their fiat into BTC so they can then go to Taco Bell, or Wal-Mart, or fill in the blank, and buy a bean burrito with bitcoin? The additional exchange step is unneeded. To make matters worse you have to keep a record of capital gains. And buying bitcoin is not easy.

Fact: Bitcoin is unneeded by 99% of the world population. It's a fun experiment with limited practical use.

Steve Jobs and Bill Gates created something that everyone wants, Satoshi created something that every criminal wants. Fortunately, there are a lot of criminals in the world to sustain the currency, but there's not enough ordinary consumer demand to get bitcoin mainstream.

agree with op. Bitcoin is the leading cryptocurrecy, whose fate connects with the other crytpcurrencies. Bitcoin has some issues before, such as double spending, 51% attact etc, which are resolved at the end. Maybe we will encounter some issues in the future, but we will fix them.
As the adoption rate grows, we will see the price will increase.

It is a common sense that every single investment comes with some amount of risk, which should be avoided at some extent by the investors. Can we imagine what the ppl who bought at $1200 / Bitcoin is thinking about now? For them it was nightmare and they almost lost 82% of their initial investment! Then we are still talking about the potential of bitcoin at the current time. Does it make any sense? 

maybe

what about integrating bitcoin, in something that everyone wants, like products from appale or microsoft? or payment in bitcoin for youtube video? the real problem is that merchants are still offering fiat between the payment options, and it's obvious that many will still choose them, we should force those people to choose bitcoin, by removing other payment options, this could be not an elegant solution i know....

Wow calling all Bitcoin users criminals? There are loads of people out there, who are not criminals and they use Bitcoin every day.

Most people convert to BTC because other centralized online payment systems are simply not secure.

Lots of these people are sick of having to pay high fees for sending their own money to families in other countries.

The price drop was simply a panic sell of a few people on localbitcoins.com, who thought it was taken down, when they had technical difficulties yesterday.... Now everyone is going on about prices again.. and how bad Bitcoin is.   

A 1% adoption rate would be fantastic. That would be 70 million people using Bitcoin. If you replace 1% of the $16 trillion monetary base with bitcoin, 1 bitcoin will be worth $12,000.

yeah, 1% would be huge. thank you!  ;D

for the rest of you: BTC is not just a "coin"...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0oDDIy0P2s

I dont think its possible for the price not to go up in the next coupe years without almost complete death.  The way that bitcoin is designed and the historical public reaction to it has meant growth in the past. It just taking the time it needs to make the next step. The average joe public just dont yet understand why its a better form of money.

In an ideal world bitcoin's value should increase as adoption is very likely to keep on rising, but bitcoin seems to be completely unpredictable. We still get small levels of adoption daily and its use is growing yet the price only falls or stagnates.

Its because it went from $10 to $1000 very quick, right now its still pretty amazing growth vs any usual investment but more to come no doubt.

this mean that for now  bitcoin can only achieve a maximum price of 1.2M per coin, not bad

The answer is simple: enormous price drop in the last 2 years, almost no price increase compared to 2013.
I also think we are at the bottom at $200 but going up from here can take months. Some people don't want to wait that long and there are other investments to choose from.

So, if this is the case, how come the price s been constantly going down during this and previous year? Fundamentals which you have mentioned ve been the same.

Basically everyone not investing as much as possible into trying to stack up on BTC is committing a really serious mistake that will haunt them to the grave. This low price has been a blessing for me, I thought it was game over after we crossed 700 (price too high to stack anything remarkable).

bitcoin is very useful for criminal,but not only for criminal, it's also very useful for gambling site, a lot of gambling site were developed recently.

I agree like you, maybe if the purchase of digital products are not used FIAT then peoples will start using bitcoin

woww that is interesting fact to know about that, if that is going to happen in near future and Bitcoin price dramatically increase to the this level 1 Bitcoin = $12.000 than i will be millionaire, i wish that prediction will become true very soon,
for Bitcoin price rise more adoption, more merchant and more public awareness would helpful to go to the moon.

In the early days of internet, these same critics were depicted  :D

It is a little known fact that the iconic theme music "come on down" from The Price Is Right, was written by Canadian female; Crystal Waters

Only care about gadgets while missing the big picture? Satoshi created something that free everyone from banks' slavery

People want to convert their fiat into bitcoin because fiat is a scam, why accept something that is created out of thin air instead of something created with real valuable resources? Of course most of the people are so ignorant that they don't understand the scam of banks, but with the help of internet, more and more people will wake up

Seriously...  Just wait in the sidelines for now.  Keep saving money in your warchest and wait for a better price to get in.  You get more bang for your buck in the process.

I can agree with your concept and ideas. But you need to understand something. People are slaves of current system and majority of us are blind to see that they are being sucked dry, enslaved and exploited.
Think of our situation as similar to Matrix. Satoshi created bitcoin and it is like red pill for people. What I am trying to say is we need a whole generation to pass and embrace bitcoin, we need new blood born in a new reality and then bitcoin may succeed. It won't happen in our lifetime probably.

It seems you are very pessimistic about imminent future of bitcoin.
I think that people will change and adopt bitcoin much faster, as this will be the best option for them.
Already now people are aware of very bad banks practices and they opinion is changing slowly (Occupy Wall street).
So, very soon people will start looking for other financial options, how to get rid of banks and financial debts and achieve financial freedom.
They will realize that BTC is perfect tool for them and start using it.
When this happen, price of bitcoin will raise again.

Its better to prepare and holding bitcoin and forget it ever exist then come back to it.

Cause all this does is add stress to the individual, who knows.

If you held 20 btc and forgot about it then come back to it since you can be up $20k potentially if prices skyrocket over time.

It doesn't add stress at all. Only people who are not really made for investing experience stress. These people shouldn't get involved in investing money.

People are here to use Bitcoin every day, not to forget it for a few years. And even if that was their plan, only 1% of the people would be capable of doing so.

I believe it's another form of money. It actually isn't that similar to money, many people like to stress that Bitcoin is more of an asset (I guess they're right with that assumption). Thing is: We don't know what Bitcoin actually it, and I don't think that we'll ever be able to put a definitive tag on it, either. It has different aspects, and I don't think that it will, for example, replace FIAT anytime soon - probably never!

Saying that for the first money in history of the world is plain ignorant. Take a look at the Fiat-Gold-Bitcoin comparison table and realise it's the most groundbreaking invention since Internet.

Here's where I disagree. For the utility you're describing, Bitcoin isn't needed by the "1%" (more than 1% but a large percentage of the developed world whose economies & currency work fine). It's the "99%" who live in an economy affected by sanctions, inflation, lack of infrastructure / services and it becomes very promising.  In this instance it isn't about buying a coffee or taco, it's about retaining value at the expense of rentier fees and about transferring that value to wherever & whomever you like.

Extrapolate on from this and any economy that is adversely affected by global currency wars or a future credit crisis may also not give two pennies about buying a sandwich but may be interested in bitcoin as a store of value. It obviously is not a proven store of value at the moment and we haven't seen bitcoin react to a full boom bust cycle because it's still teething and the buckets keep bailing out any water in the global dinghy. But, citizens are definitely interested in retaining their value as exemplified by hoarding of gold. If bitcoin becomes thought of in the same way as gold, then forget your burritos, it'll be cold wallets in secure vaults instead.

also the point is not if it is needed or not, but if it offers a valid alternative, one could argue that for "bitcoiners" fiat is not needd at all, even today i could purchase thing directly by using btc, so why i should use fiat?

This makes the most sense out of everything posted so far. BTC sounds awesome to libertarians/techno-geeks/criminals/gamblers such as us fine forum-goers, but we make up a pretty damn small portion of the world population. Joe Schmo doesn't care how his coffee is paid for as long as it's fast and convenient, and nothing beats credit cards/cash for convenience at this point.

I think yeah 99% of people wont use it to a day to day basis, but it has other measures.

The technology is what should be accounted for, if its not looked as a currency and instead what it can be. Its like having email for the very first time, provided by a certain company but in this case there is no company.

So any future company who wants to adopt it has to buy it a certain cost.

I wouldnt say everyday, cause the hassle of getting bitcoin is a burden still.

Loops and established accounts on coinbase or however means to get bitcoin just makes the new user feel like its impossible. My friend who knows nothing but is a day trader pointed something hard.

If you feel no attacthment to your money, then I think the person is delusional. Its like saying I`m okay with losing $50k?  ???

The price is always right.... as long as you plan to buy and hold.  ;)

We don't need Bitcoin as a payment system for coffee, steak, or whatever. We may need it to pay for our online purchases, for example if you don't want to give away your credit card information or have some distinct items on your credit card bill. I think we definitely need Bitcoin as the first open protocol for transferring wealth in which everyone can take part if they want to - without having to register, even. Also, Bitcoin makes for a pretty interesting asset. Why would people buy gold, actually?

Yeah, using BTC as a payment system in brick-and-mortar stores seems rather cumbersome. Even Apple Pay seems to suffer from some startup problems, and that thing is far better integrated than even the best BTC wallets, if you ask me. Bitcoin's worth has always been the technology, the open nature of the protocol and the fact that it's kinda unique, no - really unique, actually.

Everything new and revolutionary that exploded into the mainstream was used by criminals only at the begining. Wireless communications, internet, encryption... it all ends up used by the mainstream, BTC will be no different.

good investment for future anyway!

Exactly. Bitcoin has several useful aspects. That those aspects are also useful for criminals is no wonder - hell, I bet they also eat and drink. Criminals simply always have an incentive to "stay ahead of the curve" in order to have an advantage over law enforcement, etc.