Bitcoin Forum

Hey all - newbie here,

As a first post I may as well ask a question that i've been thinking for a while. If bitcoin survives and lasts for years to come, does that automatically mean it's worth will increase as well? Assuming it survives means more and more people use it which will ultimately increase mining which increases difficulty which in effect drives up price. Is this a correct assumption or not? I know there are other factors that affect price, but i'm asking in general. I remember reading about bitcoin when it was worth around $5 for one...

No. Not necessarily. The price of gold fluctuates and it's been around way longer than Bitcoin may even survive to be

If it survives it will likely increase in value but its not definitive.  Long-term outlook either its worth a lot or nothing, but ultimately its just worth whatever people will pay.  There's certainly a chance its just never adopted for widespread use by the global community, unlike fiat currency, and never appreciates a whole lot more than a few billion in market cap.

I think you have this part backwards.  Difficulty doesn't drive price, price drives difficulty.

So your post might have said:

"Assuming it survives means more and more people use it which will ultimately increase price which will increase mining which increases difficulty."

As the price goes up, mining becomes more profitable.  As mining becomes more profitable more people are willing to mine.  As more people mine, the difficulty increases.

If the price drops (due to less interest in owning/using bitcoin), then mining becomes less profitable.  As mining becomes less profitable less people are willing to mine. As less people mine, the difficulty decreases.

exactly. without considering the lite coin

Interesting stuff- thanks for the info. I currently have a an nVidia GPU doing my mining when I can (don't have money to buy a AMD right now) - i have "free" electricity so i really have nothing to lose. I'm barely making a dollar a day at BTC's current price however I'm banking on BTC steadily rising in the future.

For the next year or two, survival will likely be accompanied by higher value IMO because it will catch the attention of more people.

The longer bitcoin survives the more value it will hold due to an increased/improved infrastructure for facilitating bitcoin payments. There are lots of people working on new and exciting companies, programs, and applications to make bitcoins easier to use/more accessible to the general public.

I have no doubt that Bitcoin will survive, however, it will become regulated in some shape or form dependent upon the country and transaction type which will alter how it functions.  Big banks aren't going to idly stand by and watch their strangleholds on global markets slip away.  We're going to be in for a bumpy ride.

Bitcoin WILL survive, after all, it's yours to keep or spend as you wish and everyone and every dealer, shop, bank, whatever will take it on board. Perhaps it will be how your wages are paid, sooner than you expect ;)

I believe some country, in particular China will ban bitcoins just because it is something they cannot truly control. That will have some impact and to what extent I am not sure but probably reduce the success of bitcoins dramatically because 1 Billion people not being able to use bitcoins is a big deal.

good thing :)

Ithink that China will deny their own people use of Bitcoin because that allows freedom. They will have to deal with the rest of the world using it though. If they don't then they'll lose an awful lot of trade.

Yeah, if it gets easier to buy bitcoins. That would help it a lot. Lol it took me like 10 days to set up a dwolla account and get a transaction and now campbx is holding my bitcoins hostage for 30 days. lol Fun.

In general, China hasn't been that successful at blocking the internet. Peer to peer is hard and I don't think they actually want to do anything that hurts their economy's growth in any way.

Bitcoin's either going to $10k+ each or zero so plan accordingly.

I think that the price will fluctuate a lot but I don't think it will continue to go up. As someone already said gold is a good example. You must also realize that soon BTC will reach 21 million and then their will be none to be mined and people can only get paid from transactions so that will also affect the price and I think on the day no more BTC are being generated, the price will go up a lot.