Bitcoin Forum

It seems most probably to my finger's bone that Bitcoin may break its all time high of $31 in 2013, but don't know in which quarter. Any input and vote shall be greatly appreciated.  ;D

- Goldlyre in Shanghai, China

why not in December 2012?

in December 2012 is most unlikely. My vote is in 4th quarter.

I don't think so.  2015 or maybe 2014.  The surges in prices are less extreme now.  I don't think we will see any +100% years.  $20 maybe.

Nobody knows!

But the answer is 3rd quarter.

I bet we see slightly more stable price action as more money enters the arena and the pump and dump becomes more capitally demanding.

My guess is we see a climb to $15 before the end of 2012, a correction to the $12's and maybe rise to a solid $16-$20 base by the end of 2013.

I hope you guys with the $20 guesses are correct.

4th quarter - 2$/month

Even though there has been some set back, The trend is still on a rise, The set limit of $31 was when bitcoin was much more new and volatile than now, And it's still very volatile, If we see another $30+ it will only be a spike, and fall back down, But to a level still above before it shoot up. so I will say 4th quarter, But I beleive a spike will hit before then.

In conclusion, When we look back in a few years we will see a slowly rising price, But is it BTC rising or fiat currency's devaluing?

This.  There are simply too many holders of large collections of bitcoins and as the price increases it's easier and easier for less and less bitcoins to push it back down.  There'd need to be a lot more money on MtGox to get back to $31 and that's just to get there.  There'd need to be even more money to keep it there.  We're probably years away from that.

Hmmmm and what about the return of me.ga? If Kim decides to accept bit coin/litecoin? What would happen?

May/June is a great time for a spike  ;D

Agreed, The same time BFL send their first shipment!  ;D

I think he meant May/June 2013, not 2015  ;D

Correct 2013, but I still hope for 2012 shipping  ::)

Probably the same thing that happened when Wordpress accepted bitcoin - a small rise in price.  The fact is that bitcoin is still far too obscure and difficult to use for the vast majority of people.

IMO me.ga (if accepting bitcoins) will have a much greater impact on bitcoin. compared to me.ga wordpress is tiny, also lots of people, whether they read blogs or not, don't know what wordpress is.
just imagine the impact on bitcoin when every kiddy who wants to watch a movie online gets confronted with a (potentally) anonymous way to pay for me.ga.

The price will drop back down under $4 when people cash out to buy Christmas presents like last year.

price went up like crazy last Christmas....

It's both. Faith is growing in bitcoin. Faith is declining in fiat, as it very well should. All fiat currencies eventually and inevitably return to their intrinsic value, zero.

$31 is really just a fake price imo. It was up there for a split second on an exchange that would crash at a moments notice and that was subsequently hacked a few days after this "all time high". The real high imo, is about $20, and even then that was short lived. The actual price point where we had any side-ways action was about $14....

If the Iranian people or some other oppressed population with a financial crisis adopt it as a defacto currency then it could hit critical mass where wide spread adoption begins.

Barring that the growth will be slow. I don't think bitcoins have seen there last major increase in value.

Barring extraneous events, (major adoption by service provider/foreign nation/panics/etc...), at a conservative rise of $1 per month, that would be 18 months from now. So, worst case is by the end of May 2014.

However as we know, linear extrapolation has its own flaws.

http://img204.imageshack.us/img204/9285/fb0a7d7f4269459089911d1.png

I guess a lot of people bought bitcoin as present :P

There are 3 likely possibilities for Bitcoin. The first option is that Bitcoin continues to be a currency of the niche. Most of you are thinking along those lines. That is the route of slowing growth rate. Even in that case Bitcoin can break the all-time-high quite easily but it will take some time. The second option is that Bitcoin gets destroyed or fails somehow during the next couple of years.

There is a third option you're not really considering, which I find strange. There is the possibility that Bitcoin really finds some uses that make it lift off and enter mainstream. I believe the possibility of this is not insignificant. If that happens, we will see a growth rate far beyond of 2012. The price would go through $100 like a knife through butter. Instead of 100's of millions, the market cap would be in the billions.

Remember that the spike in 2011 was basically Bitcoin becoming known at all. Mainly in the technology & libertarian circles. If Bitcoin hits mainstream in usage, the spike in 2011 is a blip that will look like a straight horizontal line in the graph of the future. We don't know if this will happen or when it will happen but I think that 2013-2015 is the time it will likely happen if it is to happen.

So in conclusion I'd say that if Bitcoin starts to really show its potential in 2013 we will break through $31. Like it's nothing. However that might not happen or it might happen in later years. In that case there will be a slowing growth rate that is fairly linear, for a while longer at least.

I think Technomage more or less has it right, speculatively. Bitcoin is worth investing in, because either it's a total flop and one loses a bit of money, or it's a major success, even in a niche market, and value explodes, thus making holders rich - although, of course, Bitcoin is no get-rich-quick scheme at all.

+1

For me the next interesting price milestone is $17.

At that point, we can well and truly put that awful Wired article "The Rise and Fall of Bitcoin" behind us.
The one that stated:
"... but the damage had been done; the bitcoin never got back above $17."

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/11/mf_bitcoin/all/

False premise. Everyone knows the world will end in a little over 2 weeks. ;)

Personally, if it happens in 2013, it will be late in the year. I'm hoping for a slow, steady rise. Of course, the collapse of the dollar may change that. We'll see.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39btKqMiqiQ

Why do people keep asking me if I have found Jesus?

A better question would be Why do you fuckers keep losing him?

;) No offense intended, but I really don't like proselytizing.

I never had Jesus in the first place.

I guess I'm fucked... Oh well.

You're absolutely right. For bitcoin's unique properties and obvious potentials to be possibly adopted in the future (as a ideal money universally acceptable, easily stored and transported, and highly divisible ), it's market cap up-to-date is only $140 million that is astoundingly small. 40 days ago when I heard and joined it, I felt that the market depth was so thin (I buy bitcoin on a Chinese exchange named BtcChina which is ranking as the 10th biggest in the world in term of daily trading volumn and in the local currency RMB), so those monies bigger-than-I (I'm really a very small shrimp in comparison with those huge sharks!) shall surely have ever bigger difficulties than me to find a way sneaking into in. So my conclusion is that if ever the Bitcoin goes mainstream in any extent the price shall go to da moon!

Oh, 1/3 voted never !

I'm surprised, many of those may be disapointed :)

Let's bet about it on BetsOfBitco.in (http://BetsOfBitco.in) :)

I've bet on few statement like this one, around 1st and 2nd quater imo !

Ok, stop right there.  Will you please show me how Wordpress is tiny compared to me.ga?  What data do you have on this?  Did you know that Wordpress is Alexa ranked 22nd among all websites on the internet?  Megaupload was never even close to that before it was taken down.  Why would me.ga, a site based on the same premise as Megaupload, suddenly be much more popular and highly trafficked than Wordpress?

Bitcoin development is going pretty fast even though it will probably be a few years before it is ready for mass adoption. At that point Bitcoin will be worth several orders of magnitude beyond current value. All it will take for speculators to kick it up a notch is a killer app. These will be plethora when m-of-n transactions become available.

m-of-n transactions are available, we just need the apps to be built

Yeah, I'm starting to think that will be a couple more years away. Well, more time for me to buy cheap bitcoins!

Bitcoin won't scale to very high prices (adoption) yet, the blockchain size will explode and transaction fees will be very high if BTC adoption (and thus price) is going to grow tenfold. Adoption growing hundredfold would break the network.

Bitcoin is not a mature technology yet.

By the way, I predict all time high spot price in 2014 and around $25 by the end of 2013.

What are the m-of-n transactions?  ???

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=What+are+the+m-of-n+transactions%3F&l=1

Actually, I think the intention of the mainline developers is to lower the transaction fee over time as the value of bitcoin rises relative to other currencies.

Yes, but developers do not ultimately decide the transaction fee, miners do. And as miners' storage and network traffic costs grow, transaction fee revenue must grow to accommodate that rise in costs.

As of current implementation, between 10x and 100x current transaction volume, the traffic and (especially) storage costs will start to limit the usability of the currency.

I think we all could expect this, but it's not for certain. What I like is to compare this to existing technologies.
E.g. look at the searches for "qr code" vs bitcoin. If you remove the spike, we are now where QR codes were in 2009. For me this feels ok. Hence, it takes 2-3 years, not 6 months.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=%22qr%20code%22%2C%20bitcoin&cmpt=q

I don't think it'll go beyond $20 again, at least until the next reward halving. It hit $31 because of a whole lot of hype and attention out of nowhere, then it quickly went back down as the difficulty did. I actually expect its price to go down because of how affordable and efficient ASICs are in comparison to GPUs.

Do I assume correctly that your underlying premise is therefore that that price follows cost of production - or more indirectly that price follows difficulty which follows cost of production?  Many would argue with you that it works the other way round.  I get the impression it is more generally believed that price is determined by the balance between supply and demand and that when the price goes up difficulty goes up as more hashing power comes on line until cost of production is near BTC price.  You'll also find some technical analysis on this I have found to be persuasive.

This is the general belief.

The efficiency of miners determining the prices makes no sense to me whatsoever.  "Oh, they just invented a superefficient miner, now I don't want my bitcoins anymore" .... wut? 
If mining is profitable because of increased efficiency, then the result will be that more people will start mining, not that people will sell off their btcs...

for me exchange rate parity with Facebook or Silver  :D

When there is an established exchange, there will be hedge funds enter to push the price up, price X4 is a typical campaign

No. If price followed cost of production then the price would be at least $20 right now. However, people won't be willing to sell their Bitcoins for less than what they spent to generate them, so it's partially true.

True, but there are over 10 million of bitcoins on the market so the next that are mined now are even less part than before.

Pulling up this post from the first page as it was the gem of the thread for me, (specifically, it was the bolded part that caught my attention)

While I agree (kind of) with Bitcopia's view, I would add to that bolded statement as follows: "All previous fiat currencies eventually and inevitably return to their intrinsic value, zero."

The reason I add the previous modifier to his statement is that while most people consider fiat to be tied to government - because all previous fiat moneys have been government backed - it should be noted that a fiat money system need not be backed by government, but that a fiat money backed by a global population (i.e. Bitcoin) would be just as legitimate. (very easily argued to be more legitimate)

Add in the fact that Bitcoin (so far) can not be inflated beyond the built-in inflation designed into the system, and you can see that Bitcoin (or something much like it) has the potential to be vastly superior to the current basket of fiat moneys that are flooding the globe. (In most cases, perhaps all, it is the runaway inflation that ultimately kills such government backed fiat currencies throughout recorded history)

(* NOTE: I'm not sure that the declining rate of inflation is the best way to do a fiat money system. It has many benefits, such as promoting adoption, but has some harsh drawbacks as well... A system which tied inflation to population might be preferable, but I do not see an easy (or fair) way to boot-strap that kind of monetary system. *)

In conclusion, I consider bitcoin to be a fiat money system, backed by the fact that it is easily transferable across great distances, possibly infinitely fungible, and, (as yet) impossible to counterfeit. And yet I do not see the price rising above $31 in 2013. I have the feeling that the collapse of the current system may take longer than most of us would like.

I personally wouldn't identify Bitcoin as fiat currency, at least not in the sense of "by legislative fiat". There are no legal-tender laws granting special privilege to bitcoin. However, calling it fiat isn't strictly wrong, since fiat is Latin for "let it be done", thus the interpretation of the word can be flexible.

0.2-0.6% daily increase where does that put us?

Ask your calculator or a spreadsheet.

Isn't a fiat currency by definition issued by or at least backed by government?

That's how I think of it, yes, but the world fiat is a bit more flexible than that in its true meaning. Personally, I do not consider bitcoin to be a fiat currency at all, even though it isn't gold or silver.

Where do you get that idea from?  For current generation hardware difficulty would need to at least quadruple before cost of production would be $20.00 and all signs indicate a slow decline in difficulty until ASICs are released.

A well built GPU rig can achieve 3 MH/J and $2 per MH/s in capital costs.  Lets amortize that over 12 months (assume zero residual value) and a moderately low power cost of $0.07 per kWh.

Hashes per BTC = (nonces per diff 1 * difficulty) / (BTC per block)
Hashes per BTC =  (2^32 * 3.4E6)/ ( 25 )
Hashes per BTC =  5.84E14
MH per BTC =  5.84E8


Power costs per BTC (@ $0.07 per kWh):
Power per BTC = (5.84E8 / ( 3 * 60 * 60 * 1000)
Power per BTC = 1351 kWh
Power cost per BTC = 1351kWh * $0.07 per kWh = $3.785


Capital cost per BTC (@ $2 per MH/s & 12 month amortization):
Lifetime MH per dollar of capital cost = (1 MH/s / $2.00) * (60s * 60s/h * 24h/d * 365d)
Lifetime MH per dollar of capital cost = 1.58E7 MH/$
Capital cost per BTC = (1.58E7 MH/$) / (5.84E8 MH / BTC)
Capital cost per BTC = $0.27 per BTC


Total Amortized Cost = $4.06 per BTC*

*Note this isn't to say one should be building new rigs today given the future difficulty may be magnitudes higher due to ASICs however I didn't want to include only the power component of an existing rig.

Yeah I don't think most would consider it fiat currency either. I see what you mean about the definition of fiat, but I think the word takes on a different meaning when you throw the word currency behind it.

Guys I just want to say... I did some back of the envelope calculations... and I also had some bourbon... if we break $31...

... I'll be rich. *raises glass*

So, those 22BTCs are yours then?

http://i47.tinypic.com/2pop1lx.png

I think we can do it... by we I mean you guys. Just spend another $2 million on bitcoins, and I'll have my $682 :)

Sweet you could buy... some more, umm.... GPUs?

So, where's the $4? I wanna buy some coins.  ;D

I'll reply to this thread both periodically (at end of each quarter) and aperiodically (as now).

Now it's first quarter of 2013, let's ride the bull and see in the mean time...

Anyway, let's kindle some fireworks now to celebrate both the bull run and the Lunar New Year (the Year of Snake).

Happy New Year!!!

And the answer is... today!

Just out of curiosity: what are you gonna do with your $682 now?

The correct answer is First Quarter. It means that the up-trend of Bitcoin is way too strong than the average expactation of its participators.

It's funny to read (not so) old prediction threads.  ;D

Let's call this rally the Kutcher Effect. It may be short lived, but if the devs (and the wannabes like me) keep the innovations going, the hype cycle will continue.

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#igDailyztgSza1gSMAzm1g200zm2g25zxzi1gRSIzv

Bitcoin actually defies technical common sense, the exponential curve and red forest the RSI painted on the right sides of the charts are just glaring.

Gets funnier every year! :)

nailed it!

great find. good to see that the same crap was written all along.

$ 31

Wow.

Can't wait to bump threads like this next year.. threads saying when will BTC break $10k? With 90% of people saying never or in 2-3 years... hopefully we'll look back and laugh at $10k/btc and move on to speculating $100k/btc

How high is it going to get this year? I need to know how much to invest.

Safe/expected: ~$2000-$4000

Possible and not too unlikely: ~$5000-$10,000

Bullish: $10,000+

Amazing (2014 = year of bitcoin): $20-$40K

Or we crash and burn... almost as likely as all the other scenarios.

I see plenty of sad old bears in this thread...

If you want to win the Bitcoin game you need to buy and forget. Check back in a year...

Unless you miss out on something catastrophic happening to bitcoin that plunges the value back to single digits or 0

Depends on when we get to the situation where mining difficulty is decreasing.  History shows that every time the difficulty decreases for more than 30%, Bitcoin loses about 90% of its value. 

Ok, it happened once, from June 2011 to December 2011. But still, you can see it here http://blockchained.com/ (http://blockchained.com/), 7th chart from the top, titled Bitcoin difficulty vs market price logaritmic, all data. 

It's quite logical.  Decreasing difficulty means that miners are operating at the edge of zero profitability, and must sell almost all their new coins to cover the cost of electricity.  Also, decreasing difficulty dampens the speculators' spirits.  No new speculating cash coming in, and miners must sell.

Expect this phase to begin in 3 to 7 months, that is when a long slide down will start.  If it loses 90%, it means going down to $100, but since we are at much higher levels now, it could be a bigger slide, it could easily go down to $10 to $50 range.

Ha, thx for Bumping this.

I voted "Never" back then  ::)

I think that's a chance you need to be willing to accept if you trade in BTC. I think the chances of that are slim to none...

You stand a greater chance to lose money by day trading on a market which nobody truly understands yet.

People were expecting BTC to go to the moon in Jul-Aug 2011. It did, but it took two years instead of a few months, and it dropped significantly lower than anyone (except the most hardcore bears) predicted in the meantime. I'm expecting a similar pattern at the moment.

pure insanity, hard to comment

Yep that helps me answer a question I've been asking myself recently - why the hell didn't we all buy more when it was at single digits? Because brave minds fought over the question "will we ever see $31 again", everyone thought there will be plenty of time to buy cheap. Imagine somebody from the future replying here that in 2013 the price would go to triple digits ;) He'd be considered crazy. But it actually went to four digits; puts things in perspective.

The difficulty decreased because the speculation shot itself in the foot, not the other way around.

The other way around, would that be "The foot shot itself in the speculation"?

The problem with this prediction(s) is you can't be wrong!  You basically said its either going up, going way up, or going way way up.  Or going way down.  I think the only way you "lose" is if Bitcoin stays at $800-1000.  Not a bad Nostradamus we have on our hands here. ;)  Lol.

can you imagine how quickly the price would be bought back up to $700-$800 if the price of BTC was all the sudden $31/btc?   I bet it would happen in under an hour...

Seeing threads like this get bumped are always awesome. If only we could all go back to the $31 days just for a little bit  ;)