Bitcoin Forum

where owning 1 BTC will mean that you're rich?

Rich: Having a great deal of money or assets; wealthy.

With only 21 million BTC, it's not hard to predict that owning 1 BTC would be extremely hard and the decimal places will start to matter more and more.

How far are we of days where 1BTC will mean you are rich? I don't want to translate into $$$ amounts because maybe in 50 years one million dollars is what 50,000 dollars is today so. I just use the word "rich"

I am very doubtful.  I think BTC could eventually be worth several hundred or even $1,000, but I don't think it will ever be as widely used as a government-issued currency.

Haha, as always. Bitcoin Jumps a few dollars and this kind of threads are showing up.

Can't wait for the this is the End threads when it goes down a bit.

No, I really doubt it. I think a 1000 (nowadays value) is possible, but not in the next 10 Years.

Bitcoin will IMHO always be "border case" currency, used mainly by those that suffer restrictions from payment providers / governments.

It's about free money, not about creating a new financial elite. And IMO that's a good thing.

i guess Bitcoin will create it's own financial elite. When mining was in the reach of the many and prices low, everyone could get in with the hardware they had and get some.

ASICS will be for the few. The rest of us has to buy so normal market dynamics apply!

Grandpa, Is it true that you own a whole bitcoin?!?  :D

Look at the potensial in comparison to other data points in this brilliant article:

http://www.runtogold.com/2012/12/during-2012-fiat-currencies-and-gold-collapse-against-bitcoin/

Not any more, I traded it for an oil tanker.

no.

1, possibly
10, probably
100, definitely

I'm definitely going to be rich!

 ;D ;D ;D

that is if smoking doesn't kill me b4...  :-\

If the global bitcoin economy is roughly the size of Salt Lake City, there is a fair chance the exchange price will be well above $1000 per BTC in today's fiat terms. Mt Gox (if it's still going!) may quote prices per mBTC/BTM instead of per BTC.

Notice how all the online games have already standardised the BTM? Very forward-thinking. Bitcoin does not have to get anywhere close to critical mass to justify an exchange price above $1000. But we are a long way away yet, and as that guy at the '11 Bitcoin Conference pointed out, there are lots of serious payment systems used on smartphones and Bitcoin can only really go big when it penetrates that market. But Bitcoin does not necessarily have to get that big to justify a price of $1k/BTC. In five years, I'll hazard a guess that BTC1 will either be worth >>$1000 or pretty much nothing. But what do I know? It's pure speculation, by any of us. Look how Bitcoin has developed over the past four years, though...

If we are still using an exchange named after magic the gathering when the price is 1000usd to 1 btc

https://i.imgur.com/R6qrD.gif

LOL!

bitcointip lebing +BTC0,01

I think that depends on how old you are now.  ;D

But seriously, I think it's possible within the next 20 years. The alterantive would imply IMO, that the fiat-system has been "fixed" (if that's even possible) or replaced by something else, which is regarded as more "fair".

USD, EUR, CAD etc etc...


1 USD = 1 USD, doesnt matter if it is pennies, nickels, a dollar bill or a debit card swipe.

That is why the method used to exchange USD is mostly irrelevant (except for security and convenience).

BTC1 = BTC1, no matter if it's two half-BTC inputs, a thousand mBTC inputs or 100 million one-satoshi inputs. Or even a CASASCIUS coin. Or a brainwallet.

That is why the method used to exchange BTC is mostly irrelevant (except for security and convenience).

:)

I'm not sure 100 million inputs would fit in a block.  It would certainly require a very large fee.

New self-challenge: Create a transaction larger than 1MB.  See if Bitcoin network esplodes itself.

+1

If it does I'm going to be sad for the role I played in its destruction.

If it keeps going as planned, I don't believe 1 would necessarily make you "rich," but at the same time not entirely poor.  I think I saw a infographic somewhere stating for BTC to be 1% of the world economy, it would have to be priced around $10,000 for 1 bitcoin.  I'll try to find it again real quick.

The problem is, as of now the bitcoin network won't scale up to 50 times the current transaction rate.

It is very debatable if it will ever scale up 1000-fold.

Theoretically, the free-market transaction fee model will help relieve saturation in the blockchain. I don't believe Satoshi specifically intended Bitcoin would always be conducive to microtransactions.

Does that mean we must follow Satoshi's footsteps?  Can Bitcoin not be expanded to include support for microtransactions indefinitely?

I would argue that within 20-30 years, 1000-fold scaling will be completely possible and practical.

If most users agree to the "upgrade" then sure, why not?

I think so too, from a bandwidth standpoint it would already be possible for the network to handle the same amount of transactions that visa does (2000 per sec.) the limiting factor is the max. of the Block size.

Although increasing it to the max. needed would make it impossible for the average user to run a full node. So increasing it would only be feasible as soon as a significant amount of Web-servers are running full nodes.

For more see: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

But with Block-Pruning implemented the requirements to run a full node are reduced. So I think it will be still possible for the average user to run a full node even with a 1000-fold increase in transactions/unspent outputs. The pruned size of unspent transactions is currently at about 150 MB, so with a 1000-fold increase (and asuming a linear dependency between transactions per second and size of unspent transactions) this would be 150 GB, perfectly acceptable for the average home user. (Well maybe not with a mobile phone or tablet...)

If Bitcoin grows to the point at which it is handling that many transactions per second the "average users" will be businesses. Currently these businesses are collectively spending hundreds of billions of dollars to move money around, so if they switch to bitcoin and spend just 1/10 of their previous costs on mining there will be plenty of resources available to solve the problem.

I concur, I only wanted to lay out, why we have to go this way in little steps. Right now the Network is still depending on Users to be Full Nodes, so it is necessary to ensure there are no more transactions in a block, than a normal internet connection can handle.

This may change in due time and than the blocksize restrictions can be lifted.


Currently the Blocksize limit allows for about 7tps.