Bitcoin Forum

Update!!

Mission accomplished!

Preamble

I have followed bitcoin since the very start, and I think everyone will agree bitcoin has been a fantastic experiment to date.  A great technical system, a great community and great leadership have contributed to something very special.  ie the de facto currency of the Internet.

Back when bitcoin was around 2 cents, I was the first person to predict that it would go parity with the dollar, and people thought that was crazy.  Within a year that milestone was reached and surpassed.


Prediction

So my next prediction may sound equally shocking.  Bitcoin can go to over $1000.

I know not everyone is focused on price, but I believe there is a strong reason, a metric and a strategy to achieve this


Rationale

The reason I think this is the case is one simple idea.  Brand Value.

Looking at the largest brands on the net we see valuations of 50bn to 100bn USD.  If you consider google, a search engine, can have a brand value of over 100 bn.  Why should bitcoin the brand not aim for the same value, usefulness, mystique and mind share?

100bn / 20m coins = would give a unit price of $5000 per bitcoin.  Perhaps growing the btc brand to a google is ambitious, so I'll go for a conservative $1000 per.

Can we make a universal currency for humanity better than a search engine?  Yes we can!


Strategy

Keep growing the brand.  Above all be good bitcoin citizens and generate trust.  Make bitcoin an honest currency and an exciting currency.  

Innovate, fascinate, grow and support the community.  Market.  In short, keep doing everything you're doing now.

People will try and knock and disrupt BTC, but dont become bound to the negative energy.

Importantly, Keep growing the original bitcoin brand rather than become divided and conquered.  When the time is right, more bitcoin variants will spring up, but it must be part of a big trust eco system.  Bitcoin is the Galactica, other currencies can be the Colonial Fleet.

Master the regulatory hurdles that occur in individual geographical constituencies.  Be understanding to century old laws, and social structure, yet show the path to modernization.  Show how bitcoin can also be a force for social good.  


Conclusion

Firstly, I'd like to thank an awesome community for doing something very special.

Bitcoin has had an explosive start.  I think it's in an awesome position to keep consolodating.  Whether you're in it for profit or to be part of it, be a good community citizen and your own success will follow.  

Bitcoin is on a trajectory to reach $1000 if we keep doing the things we do well.  And more importantly, well positioned to make a more exciting, and better world!  KUTGW!

This makes me afraid of spending my coins. If in some years I look back and see that I've paid e.g. 0.5 BTC for a few ad impressions, and each coin is then worth $1000... :-\

That should only be true if you can never acquire more coins.  Spend some coins and then next week buy some more.  Spend & Buy.

Now if you have coins and no way to acquire more then maybe you should fear spending them but as long as you can acquire more coins in the near future.  I think to encourage spending it would be awesome if an exchange could offer periodic deposits.  i.e. you setup $100 in billpay for your online bank and $100 goes to your favorite exchange and gets converted into coins.

The best thing is for people to keep innovating and building great solutions using bitcoin.

Just like the world wide web spawned all kinds of innovation, from Amazon to Ebay to AOL to Yahoo and many more startups, bitcoin can do the same. 

Bitcoin doesn't necessarily need a corporate branding, just like the world wide web didn't need it.  What bitcoin needs is for people to develop innovative solutions to solve problems, and spread the word!

I was little disappointed after reading the strategy, basically just saying "keep promoting and developing bitcoin". Thread starter must be a genius :D

If you want them to go up, you should spend some and in that way support the growth.

How can you guys be so optimistic when alternatives that remove or strongly reduce the cost of energy to maintain the security of the network are around the corner?

While I identify with the OP's positive attitude, I too expect a little more from a strategy than a series of platitudes.

My strategy has been to inform others like myself about the Bitcoin project. I'm met with varying responses, and that's all well and good; the 95%-male computer-savy community of ~100K is a great foundation.

But now it's time to branch out. We need to start selling bitcoin (small b) to average joe's as an investment, similar to gold.  Here's the pitch: Bonds are inflation-prone. Stocks and RE are risky. Gold has high storage and transfer costs. Here's an alternative: bitcoin. Cheap to buy. Free to store. Likely to appreciate over time. Private. Can never be confiscated. Recommend ~25% of your portfolio.

How's that for a strategy?

like bit-pay!

I was thinking the same thing. If BTC could be bought like a mutual fund it could be pitched as a unique, risky but futuristic option for automatic monthly IRA contributions. We'd just need some fund manager to set up the automatic purchase at market price and storage of BTC is some sort of insured bitcoin bank. They take a percentage and report fund value daily just like a mutual fund. With the flood of new money the price would skyrocket, then word of mouth takes over and everybody else wants in.

We early adopters get rich, the fund manager gets mega-rich, and suddenly Joe the Plumber knows about bitcoin.

Sadly, I don't think that fund managers could touch bitcoin with a 10 foot pole.

Ah, the wet dreams of every pump-and-dump strategizer. Quoted for posterity.

Are you talking about ASIC mining, which basically increases security by an order of magnitude for any given level of energy consumed? :)

I suspect the reference is to the latest bitcoin-killing solid coin...

-MarkM-

Comparing Bitcoin's value to a company like Google is probably not going to be very useful or informative. However, the price of Bitcoins can very easily surpass $1,000. All it takes for that to happen is for Bitcoin to become widely used in any major niche for which it is useful. If it becomes commonplace for gambling sites to accept BTC, or porn sites, or money remittance markets, or forex sites, etc. Any of these segments, if they utilize Bitcoin in a widespread manner, would justify coins in the $200-$2000 range.

Silk Road itself, if it continues to grow, could justify a Bitcoin price around $100 quite easily.

I think long term there is no way Bitcoin can exist under a price of $500. It might all crash and burn and go to zero (and everyone who hold bitcoins needs to acknowledge this possibility and risk), but if it doesn't, then it'll grow to fill some segment on commerce and will require a price over $500.

M * V = P * Q

Q is what's ultimately important.

Bitcoin's value is dependent on its usefulness.  Therefore, to increase its value, people have to start either offering their own goods and services in exchange for Bitcoin and/or encouraging others to accept Bitcoin.  Right now, the value of Bitcoin is supported primarily by drugs and gambling.  That's great and all, but for Bitcoin to really explode it needs to go mainstream.

^^this

That happens when you pay your friend back lunchmoney with Bitcoins.

I'm talking about wroking proof-of-stake alternatives.

Apologies, I could have expanded a lot more but I think the community already has the magic formula.

"Just keep swimming..."
"Just keep swimming..."
"Just keep swimming..."

:)

http://vanessaleighsblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/dory.jpg

If there's one thing that stands out it's generate trust.

Bitcoin has to become the most trusted currency it can be, or even, in the world.  

In most currencies it is the job of centralized authorities to reduce fraud.  But all too often, fraud becomes institutionalized.  As legacy currencies start to lose trust, new ones will gain trust.  I call this "The Law of Conservation of Trust".  The total amount of trust in a monetary system remains roughly a constant.  Bitcoin is well placed to gain brand value as other poorly managed currencies falter.

Here is the gap a decentralized currency can fill.  Decentralization leads to a fault tolerant and self healing network, where it's very hard for one body to disrupt everything.

Every transaction in good faith strengthens the trust, and therefore, the network

- Increase the volume of good transactions
- Increase the success stories
- Increase the outlets
- Scale out the OTC web of trust
- Increase users
- Inspire people, by generating a culture of good ethics

Every time one of these things happens, bitcoin becomes one step closer to being the next great world currency.  Network economics dictates that each new increment in the system takes bitcoin to a new level and makes it almost exponentially harder for any competition to challenge it.  

Hoarding, speculation and fraud are part of any currency.  But we should aim for a culture that encourages good behaviour, discourages bad behaviour and perhaps provides metrics.  (These are the classic 3 properties of an effective trust network (http://groups.csail.mit.edu/medg/people/lmui/docs/phddissertation.pdf)).

Quality, integrity and trust are key.  Try not to split energies too much until it's felt a critical mass has been achieved.  

Just as in the rise of google or any other great share.  Price increase should be a side effect of continuing (as a community) to do things well, rather than, the result of any one action.  

Dont focus on the valuation.  Participate in strategies to generate trust, and everyone wins. :)

The mistake of spending a coin would be dwarfed by the mistake of not converting everything you can into them. As long as you are worrying about spending one you haven't taken your exposure to where it should be which is the point at which you are equally concerned with one bitcoins worth of dollars as you are with one bitcoins worth of bitcoins. My dollars are relatively precious only because I hold so freaking few compared to bitcoins.

Also that .5BTC ad impression ought make you .51BTC back or you really should hesitate

Fund managers do all kinds of shit, like outright steal. I'm pretty sure they will find ways to get BTC exposure when they want it.

I've been hoping people with the right connections would start reaching out more then they have. There are lot of places I would like to see accept bitcoins. If someone could get Cydia (apple jailbreak store) to start accepting bitcoins that would be a great start.

http://www.saurik.com (http://www.saurik.com)

I can appreciate the optimistic naturue and faith of the op.  Its good to know there are many other trying to push forward and help bitcoin to grow.  Not that anything shocking is here, but some consistent devotion which bitcoin greatly needs.

"If you need to get a hold of me, I at least vaguely recommend connecting to irc.saurik.com and joining #iphone or #saurik. I tend to check it most of the time, but if not at least once a day (so stay connected and be patient if I'm not there right then). If you only have a webbrowser, you can use my web IRC client."

From his blog.

http://www.bitcoindance.com/

Cautious / sane people are not going to convert a large % (or even a small one) of their wealth without confidence.

Most people will never understand how bitcoin works, nor have to.

But building the confidence will take time.  It's not going to happen in 6 months, or even 6 years.  But 6 years is enough to build a reasonable base of confidence.

To see the kind of usage some people think of as inevitable is at least going to take 15 years or more.  But that's fine and the way it should be.

Your comments on building confidence make sense.  I would like to think we are on the right track when the market still stays above $10 when pirate announces his defaulting.  It shows an improvement in stability.

This is why I want OUYA to get first-party bitcoin support.

Note: bitcoin has gone up 1000% since I posted this in August 2012

We just need to do the same thing again...

KUTGW!

Love reading old posts. Kudos OP!