Bitcoin Forum

ok i have to ask: how long at current growth and trajectory until we hit those OMFG milestones?

Hope we are not crazy.

That depends on patience of old BTC owners. If their nerves will break at some point and they will start mass sell ... Than we should  talk in terms, of at least,   decades. If they will stay steady, and put BTC on market carefully, well 1000$ is matter of 2-3 years. That counts even in case of some "legal" interference.
 But you never should forget, that BTC can gone with the wind, at any moment, - that is experiment, nobody know for sure what can happen.

We had a 62% increase in the past week ($8.65 to $13.80).

62% growth in one week leads to some absurd numbers in a relatively short time frame:

6/10- $22.35 (1 week)
6/17- $36.21 (2 weeks)
7/1- $95.04 (4 weeks)
7/29- $654.63 (8 weeks)
8/26- $4,508.78 (12 weeks)
10/21- $213,884.53 (20 weeks)

So, a little more than 4 weeks to $100.  Around 9 weeks for $1000.

However, I don't think 62% growth will be sustained :P

I think large holders should sell to support themselves or the eco-system (by funding startups, campaigns or institutions.)

What do billionaires do with their money: invest or lend.. via a financial institution. I don't think it'd be hard or impossible to create a financial institution. And it certainly wouldn't be impossible to fund a few bitcoin startups.

No growth model ever is sustained, in the long run.  Reality prefers S curves.

Would it be safe to assume that value will grow at a rate slightly below difficulty? 

Value growth and difficulty are linked, to a degree.  If BTC value increases, it encourages more mining, which results in greater difficulty.  On the other hand, if value drops or stops growing, eventually mining profit will drop so much that some miners stop mining completely, because it costs more in electricity, resulting in a difficulty drop.

But this is a loose association, and it's entirely possibly that value could drop as difficulty increases in a short-term situation.

i'll stick with our most reliable prognosticator: vladimir.

so...

$20 by the end of july.

$100 by the end of the year.

$1,000 by the end of 2012.

i'm talking about reasonably stable exchange rates, with a clearly established floor within +/-10-15%.

at this point, i'd be expecting a correction of some weight by june 15-20.  not that i care.

You are right on the money, so to speak. If it does not burst in the meantime, that's the way a bubble inflates, exponentially on the upper slope.
If I were to have any bitcoins I would hold on to them and plot the daily/weekly view count of the "We use coins" video. Sell when the view rate levels, or, for the most adventurous, when it starts to decline.

that might have been valid a few weeks ago - but no longer.  Bitcoin has gotten so much attention, so much press, and so much word of mouth, that any one expository link is almost irrelevant.

i've gotten two other folks involved with Bitcoin - and sent neither of them to that video.  and - incidentally - neither of them are mining.  one is buying, and the other is putting together a business plan to sell goods for BTC.

By the way, is there some open code platform for bitcoin accepting sellers ?
 Is there any open soft that will help, even small, buisness owners to manage their wallets in that assets ?
(There is a lot of problems, if you check corresponding threads).
I am think there is a good use for old BTC moneys.
Is it time to declare BOUNTY for such a software right now  ?

That is a spectacular scenario, is this assuming btc wil be accepted for at least one county?

I think this prediction assumes that bitcoin stays a parallel economy and only fills niches like poker and online payments. If any one country makes it legal tender, you should add quite few zeros to that estimation

I have predicted $100 near the end of December.  (My miners will heat my house quite well).

I don't think that we will be in the $300-$700 range too long.  It will either fall to $100 or jump really high.  If we make it over $500 then I say $1000 by then end of 2012 or mid 2013.

Make sure you put half your net worth into bitcoins then!  A 1000% return by December and 10000% by 2013?  You could turn $10,000 into $1,000,000!

Sorry, but it just seems ridiculous to assume that returns like this will continue for a year or more to come, unless you are balancing that by saying there is a 99% chance it goes to 0 and and a 1% chance it goes to 1,000, which would be closer to my guess.  There is no reason to expect it to keep going up without a mitigating downside risk, and since the downside is $13 and the upside is hundreds, one has to assume that the chance of going to zero is much more likely.

Using mt gox price data rounded to the nearest dollar starting at 6 April, the best exponential (c + E^(b x)) fit to the data is:
  0.0195987 + E^(0.0399244 x)

Giving this --

https://i.imgur.com/0iumb.png

X axis is 1 for April 6, 2 for April 7, etc.  The dots are the rounded data points.

Exponential growth is unlikely to continue occurring forever, but that equation reaches $100 at about day 115 (July 30), and $1000 at about day 173 (September 26).  Unlikely though.  :)

A better question is how long until I can go to walmart and checkout using BTC?

Do any of the naysayers take into account the money being pumped into the economy because of bitcoin?  I just dropped $500 on mining gear.  Nothing compared to what others are doing.  But still, $500 going out into the economy that otherwise would not have been spent.  

But does that serve any real purpose?  If difficulty increases by 100x because of all the new miners does that help bitcoins as a unit of exchange?  All that equipment is basically wasting power to do arbitrary calculations that only have value because of an artificial currency.  I don't want to sound anti-bitcoin or anything, it's just that argument reminds me of when people saying government spending is good because it creates jobs without considering whether those jobs add anything of value to the economy.

Yes, it helps A LOT indeed. Right now it costs about 1$ to get 1BTC, and the $/BTC rate is about 13$. If difficulty increases by 100x it will mean that it will cost 100$ to get a BTC. And it's more or less established that difficulty follows price more than the other way around, so it will mean that, before difficulty increased 100x, $/BTC increased at least 100x.


In my way of thinking, you are creating bitcoins with electricity. Printing paper costs something. When difficulty and network total Thash/s rises, Bitcoin currency gets safer. You are spending more and more electricity in creating a more secure currency (in order to prevent double spending and all the like).

Consider this: If mining becomes insanely difficult and a newbie is looking for a way to acquire bitcoins, he/she will purchase the coins instead of mine for them. So, we'll be seeing a lot more people buying bitcoins instead of mining equipment. This will cause an increase in bitcoin value.

Also, all the mining power is going into verifying the block chain, which prevents hacking.

Yes, it does server a "real" purpose to the security of the bitcoin network.  This is valuable to the people who believe bitcoin is valuable.  If you don't believe bitcoin is valuable, then all that hashing will appear to be a waste.

If bitcoin adoption increases so will it's value to a point.  Up to 250,000 USD if it becomes universally adopted throughout the internet.  1,000,000 USD if it's adopted throughout the world.  What rate these points are achieved will be dependent on adoption rate :)

IMO has anybody ever heard of SILVER?!  Umm, talk about its growth potential compared to others as a commodity.

BTC is a "fun" play but I wont put my 401K into it.  Just enough to get an ulcer though.

According to my calculations silver and gold are both over valued right now.  If Bitcoin was as universally accepted as gold and overvalue to the same extent it would be worth around 1.5 to 2 million USD per coin.

why aim so low??? try $1 million per coin. then everyone here will most likely become millionaires

You are all refer to $ as to some steady and relible value.
I am do not want to hurt anybody, but that is fantom, especcialy if you will look on $ from outside US boundaries.
$ is absolutly fiat now. I am just do not know how much cost one penny.
I am suggest that 1 dollar coupeur is worse more than one dollar.

We need some external help from economist. Yes Economists are not just some " Idiots that spend their time in universites". The really know some good stuff , that they learned on second or third courses.

We need to determine BTC coefficient, that reflex buy/sell power of bitcoin in relation to GOODS.

On really important goods, that are important for surviving: Salt, matches, bread, meat, fish, beans, gas, black iron, steel, coal, and so on. Including some luxury goods in that index should be considered illegal.
No monkey brains should counts as meat. No fuga fish should considered as fish. No luxury bath should considered as black iron. That things should reffer in their prices to main BTC index.

Point is - we nead some index to relay on. We need some numbers that we can show in our groceries as solid price, that we did not must change every day. There is somne coeef that can  be changed 30 times in a day. And some steady value that can be shown in some number value - price of goods. Now BTC related to that value as 1 btc -  30 unints of that constant value, tomorrow it will reffer to it like 1 to 100.
Than its just easy calculation. we can have some STABLE VALUE OF THE GOODS. And we can easy relate to this value in BTC.

I am to drunk to post that idea clearly. But i am hope that somebody got it in their mind.
Feel freee to use it. - that idea  is  hopping in the air for long time - feel free to use it.

I am will post  that b-sht untill someone will interested in that and start some constructive dialog about that. From that point, my shady mind will not help that idea anymore.

Just screwing around with some numbers. It may have been done before, but why not update it a bit.

(Going off of bitcoincharts.com for these numbers.)

Bitcoins in Circulation: 6,422,000
BTC/USD Rate: 13.79
USD Value: $88,559,380

Absolute Bitcoin Limit: 21,000,000
Using the same rate as above:
USD Value: $289,590,000

The ratio of circulating-to-absolute limit amounts is ~ 3.27
If you multiply the current rate by this figure the result is: ~ 45.09 BTC/USD

That assumes quite a bit - that one, the rate will keep the same ratio with the issuance up to the limit. (It could easily exceed this.) And other factors that may weigh on the marketplace, either politically or otherwise.

Makes 100 and beyond not seem so fanciful, doesn't it? I agree that 100 is completely reachable and beyond almost trivially so.

We again saw that dangerous comparsion on USD.
Bitcoin is not USD, it never planned to be " like USD"

USD is one fiat currency and BTC is absolutely another.

I am understand why ppls are become so overexcited by BTC/USD value,
but that means nothing in terms of economics.

We need hard dependacy of BTC in real GOODS.
Than we can make some constant prices in our groceries , that will point to real BTC value by the solid (at least in terms of the year) terms, that can be  turned in BTC value  by easy calculation. BTC course is changed to other currencie, but its relatyvly solid on BTC to goods value.


Edit:
Looks like i am fool of that "hard bitcoin index sh*t".
Somebody needs to fight that idea-  at least to disscus it.

If the 13.7$/BTC stays stable when we reach 21m bitcoins, you'll still have the same number of bitcoins. For me those calculations make no sense.

More of that - USD is not all the value of the world. That is wrong and dangerous idea. There is to much peaple, who will stuck youor nose in that fact, and you should be prepared for this.

This is a rising currency. It's normal, in it's infancy, that $/BTC rate increases at a big pace. As long as day volume and difficulty increases too, it's not a problem for the long term sustainability.

Just an estimation:

Actual day volume is 700k$/day. Forex moves 1.8Trillion a day, the Indian rupee represents about 0.5% of that. When will we move 1% of the indian rupee? 1.8e12*0.005*0.01=90e6 = $90 million/day.

I think it will be by then that we will hit mainstream big time (if we ever do). If bitcoin is still legal and price rises at the same pace than volume, 1 BTC will be tantamount to $1600 and total BTC volume will be 12.8B.

If we survive that, man, that could actually lead to a real world banking revolution.

Your comparison is flawed, a lot of the movement on Forex is from bots/automated trading and is very high-frequency with tiny amounts, plus Forex has way more trade options. BTC is currently mostly real buyers and sellers trading big chunks, aka. miners and guys that want to invest and hold.

If "money is being pumped into the economy," does that not mean that "goods are being pumped out of the economy"?  How does this help anything? Spending money does not "stimulate" the real economy unless that spending went into something profitable, ie - successful investment. Spending money does stimulate GDP figures, but that's just cause GDP is a measure of spending ;)  Let's bury this silly Keynesian notion that spending is valuable for its own sake.

I'd be happy to rework that in the currency of your choosing. The bottom line is, we have to compare it to something. So, if that 'something' is Rubles, Marks, Kronor, Pounds, Euro... The same argument holds, you have to pick a yardstick somewhere before bitcoin takes over the entire world, which I think it will.

[quote author=darkwon link=topic=11602.msg165849#msg165849 d
Your comparison is flawed, a lot of the movement on Forex is from bots/automated trading and is very high-frequency with tiny amounts, plus Forex has way more trade options. BTC is currently mostly real buyers and sellers trading big chunks, aka. miners and guys that want to invest and hold.
[/quote]

 i am believe , that your comparsion is  started from the easly seeing fact, that course of BTC depends on difficulty. Am i  right ?

I am dont want to harm you, and you should forgive me that  creepy "english" language, that i  am using through decades. At least that lessions of english did not
 just the waste of the time in 1989, when i am become, somehow familiar with it.

 There is indeed corelation between diff and course of btc, but that correlation is not straight. Miners are forced to sell their BTC relativly quickly, to pay their investments in electricity and hardver upgrades. MINERS ARE MAIN SELLERS NOW.

We can just hope that "old BTC" will not ruined marked wright now, and will be putted on market carefully. But we cant depand on this. So any surprise is possible now.

are you guys crazy!? we are looking at 100 by the end of the week, 1,000 in 10 days and 1M in a fortnight. Easy.

figured as long as we're making stuff up, might as well go all the way..  ;)

Question:  Can anybody think of higher numbers?  Good Luck Guys!


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free youtube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMDdTpbAZmE (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UMDdTpbAZmE)

For BTC to "go big" round the world perhaps if a large player accepted a basket of commodities not equally tied to each other but loosely on an open market.  For example:   oil, gold, and BTC basket of goods. in exchange for whatever else the counter party is willing to accept in return as payment.  Military equipment, water purification, corn  etc...

A lot of people are ignoring the fact that QE2 just stopped and if QE3 doesn't start then jobs numbers are going to continue to fall. I get the idea that pretty soon people just won't have money, this will be a problem for three large reasons:
1) Bitcoin miners will sell their coins
2) Bitcoin "hoarders" will sell their coins
3) Bitcoin buyers won't buy coins

It's weird to see people fawning over Bitcoin while commodities lag, to be honest. While silver and gold certainly have their benefits, the traditional argument for why you'd buy Bitcoin over those is due to the higher taxes on commodities. That's enough to not purchase as much of them, but to hear some guys like the Pirate Party guy say they are putting their entire savings into Bitcoin? That just seems absurd. Diversification is ALWAYS a good idea.

Another thing that bothers me is no one at all is talking about MtGox being raided and having their coin and dollar assets confiscated. It would only take one "hoarding law" to do this, or a simple judicial injunction if there was a threat of fraud.

That'll be tested sooner or later. For bitcoins to be secured, MtGox just have to keep their wallets and other user data encripted and with backups. They could seize their bank accounts though.

this is fine first post, beats hands down "bitcoin is doomed because of deflation" kind  ;D Thank You.

For bitcoins to be at $1500 we'd need about 100x the demand. How many people could actually get interested in this until it is used as a legit currency and is accepted in most places.  The only way I see this curve continuing for more than a few more months is if big time companies like Ebay (unlikely for awhile since PP already does like bitcoin) and Amazon start accepting it.  Then it will go from exponential curve to a curve that tracks with the spread of use since all the speculators will have been satisfied.

My two cents..

Lets compare to paypal

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paypal

Paypal does 70 billion in transactions in a year.

If bitcoin gets the same size then


70,000,000,000 USD           3333.33 USD
-----------------------    =     --------------
  21,000,000 BTC                      1 BTC


$3333.33 USD / BTC

It is not quite valid  to compare maximum amount of bitcoins with annual turnover of paypal. Also considering that bitcoin is not only currency but also a store of value, arguably, your math gets even more irrelevant.

paypal does 70M transactions in this year.  but there aren't even 7M BTC minted.

so really, your equation works out to over $10,000/BTC.  now.

but once Bitcoin starts eating into paypal's business - soon now... very soon - it will tilt to an even higher exchange rate.

I don't see paypal getting much bigger  ;)

Also, my logic is if in my example, 21 million bitcoins were used to buy 70 billion dollars worth of stuff, then 1 bitcoin was used to buy 3333.33 dollars worth of stuff.

If my logic is in error please correct me if i'm wrong.

i guess the issue i see is that there aren't 21 M BTC.

you're comparing the current strength/numbers of paypal to the known numbers but unknown strength of Bitcoin - in the year 2040.

and by the time there are 21 M BTC, either paypal will be dramatically weakened - and possibly out of business - or BTC will mean nothing.

That doesn't mean each BTC is worth that much. Each coin could have been exchanged 3000 times for a $1. Your number is just a measure of turnover, not value.

so there is no equivalence between buying x dollars worth of transactions and x BTC worth of transactions in a year when trying to calculate a stable value for a BTC?

Let me take that question a step further. 

assume: i can buy 1 pound of dog shit for 1 dollar.  (this could be cars if you want)
assume: i transacted 70 billion dollars worth of dog shit last year
assume: the market cap for my dog shit was equal to the total market cap of BTC

is it a logical fallacy to assume that if i then converted all my dollars at that moment to BTC, and 21 million BTC represented 100% of the total dog shit transacted for that year, that my one BTC is worth $3333.33 worth of dog shit?

I'm not trying to beat a dead horse, I'm just trying to think about this logically.  If someone has some better math, my question is, what would the final value of a btc be if the market cap of btc were the same as paypal?  Does anyone here see btc getting significantly bigger then paypal is now?

And i'm only basing my math on 21million because I'm trying to assume an economy that has fully matured.

 i am believe , that your comparsion is  started from the easly seeing fact, that course of BTC depends on difficulty. Am i  right ?

I am dont want to harm you, and you should forgive me that  creepy "english" language, that i  am using through decades. At least that lessions of english did not
 just the waste of the time in 1989, when i am become, somehow familiar with it.

 There is indeed corelation between diff and course of btc, but that correlation is not straight. Miners are forced to sell their BTC relativly quickly, to pay their investments in electricity and hardver upgrades. MINERS ARE MAIN SELLERS NOW.

We can just hope that "old BTC" will not ruined marked wright now, and will be putted on market carefully. But we cant depand on this. So any surprise is possible now.

[/quote]

As I understand it, he would like the yardstick to be some sore of goods...like 1 liter of water costs x BTC, compare from that...

I find it interesting that his graph is under estimating the current price rise.  But his graph predicts a value of 24 million per bit coin by this time next year.  No way that's going to happen unless the speculators go nuts.  I calculated their maximum value to be 1 million per coin without speculators driving it up.  Then again if the economy crashes like a flying cow patty, people will want to move their money to safe places.  Since there will never be more than 21 million bit coins that makes it pretty safe in the long run.  That kind of demand could drive it up to ridicules values.

Has anyone actually started doing this yet?

My original chart from Jun 4 (daily price dots + fitted exponential curve), plus dots for new days since then:

https://i.imgur.com/UiH7z.png

Also consider (log scale):

https://i.imgur.com/9hE3D.png

We're actually slightly below that curve now ($14 as I write) but not significantly.  Very informative.  :)

This thread seems rather optimistic.  I doubt we'll see $30 again before the end of the year.  So many people were buying in the build up to $30 and then it sat at $30 for hours and hours with someone's darkpool's cashing out.  I'm sure many of those people that bought on the jump from $19 to $31 and the ones that bought at the flat $30 holding will be looking to sell once they can recoup their money back: selling at what they bought for.  For this reason I think the price will at most be $20 - $25 until the year is out, if we are lucky.  Might continue to drop back down to a few bucks.

We'll probably see it hit $30 in the next few days...

Good charts. I've been looking at the log scale myself, when everyone was screaming bloody murder and I didn't see the current bar close under 15, I knew we had a successful test of the longer-term trendline.

Newbies when trading make the same mistakes, succumb to emotion instead of sticking to a plan. I'm not at all surprised that we are shooting back to previous levels here. Just wait until monday...

So how cheaply would you write $35 call options? Would you put some on bitoption.org?