Bitcoin Forum

The price of bitcoins is all about supply and demand, right? Miners are providing a steady supply of bitcoins, but nobody is removing bitcoins. What we need is hoarders who will buy up the used bitcoins. We just need to know how low the price will go (so we can plan accordingly, of course). Now, if you are a hoarder, we want to know at what price you are buying up all the bitcoins?

For example, I could put in a nice offer of 10000000 at .0001 US cent per bitcoin, that would be a significant chunk, I just need a couple more people to join with me here, any takers?

Not quite sure what you are implying here... Are you talking about "Cornering the Market?"

There are plenty of Hoarders of BTC. Most are not flowing freely in transactions.

There are two (2) little dirty secrets with BTC that have not yet been addressed in practice but only theory.

The first is Block Chain Growth and the space needed to hold it.

The second is Attrition (loss of BTC via varying losses... damaged HD, forgotten, etc...) Since there is a predetermined amount of BTC that will be produced i.e. 21 Million which in base units of "Satoshi's" is 21 Quadrillion base units, we will run out of BTC in about 108 years if the percentage of Attrition follows fiat currencies. However, I am thinking the percentage will be slightly higher due to other unusually forms of loss.

as my signature suggests: i am a poor student. not really poor or something, but i can hardly buy 100 bitcoin if i wanted to without eating at least less that month ;)

I'd buy the rest of the currently available BTC, if they were at the same price.
But, I would spend them, and they wouldn't go very far. 

I'm not entirely sure what you're trying to get at.  Bottom price?

I'm similar to you, I'd throw $1,000 at them if they were worth $.0001 a piece, but it's so theoretical if they really became that low.  I don't htink they would.

I'm gonn throw $300 in at $1 already, so .... don't understand what we're getting at...

No! They wouldn't make it there. There are too many people with the same intentions. I think <$1 is pushing it. But, we'll see!

I'm pretty sure the collective community of all hoarders / long-term bulls could buy up pretty much all excess coins even at current prices. It doesn't however make much sense to do so if they think the price will go lower.

For example: somebody might be willing and able to buy up all available coins at 1 USD / BTC - if he believes the price will drop further and he doesn't need the coins badly then he won't buy.

If I knew the price would never go lower than it is now then I'd be buying BTC like crazy of course - everybody would do that. So the question is not about how much money all the hoarders could amass, but what's the price point where the majority of them believes the prices would not drop any further.

I personally believe we won't go much below 2 USD, but who knows...

If I could choose any price I would get 4582.57569 BTC for ~44 USD, the price I have to pay for an ounce of silver.

So that would be around 0.01 USD.
Why 4582? It's the square root of the total supply so I'd have a reasonable part of the overall bitcoin economic power while at the same time archiving maximum divisibility.

Interesting....

 Not sure 0.02 % would be controlling but it would have some influence... Most accept 3% as controlling.

I don't think any bitcoin enthusiasts could hold up the price..  because when they think it's already at a ridiculously low price they'll spend all their available money leaving nothing to stop it dropping further as the newly mined coins continue to flood in and the disillusioned/fatigued jump out.

That depends on just how ridiculously low it goes. :D

If we keep current exp trend of 1/7 every 4 months, it takes us one year to 0.006 USD/BTC. Yes, enthusiast can hold up the price there, lol

I think that's why he was using a number of bitcoins like 10,000,000 to include future coins that would need to be gobbled up as well.

Definitely think there are enough of "us" out there to keep the price above some levels.  Let's just illustrate how much market cap it takes for various prices (for 10 million coins):
 
$0.01 - Requires $100,000, so we would need 500 people to throw $200 at bitcoins.  I think 500 peeps is very reasonable

$0.05 - Requires $500,000, so we would need 2,500 people to throw $200 at bitcoins.  There's a decent chance that 2,500 people exist in the world with $200 ready to throw at bitcoins.

$0.50 - Requires $5,000,000, so we would need 25,000 people to throw $200 at bitcoins.  I don't think there are 25,000 people waiting with $200 for the bottom.  Maybe if we approach this level of price, more people will become interested for the "second/third wave."

I've assumed the average person will throw $200 at a price they believe is "the lowest it will go."

$1-$2 - These levels require 50,000 - 100,000 people with $200.  Even if we think the average amount people are willing to throw at bitcoins is $1,000, that still requires 20,000 people, which seems a bit high for the number of people involved with this project.

Hopefully, we can discuss a couple of these assumptions

- number of people interested in buying bitcoins - 500 or 100,000?
- amount of money the average person is willing to put into bitcoins for their "rock bottom price" - $200 or $1,000?
- Is it mostly college students, high school students, 10 year olds, or 30-40 year olds interested in bitcoins?

Your making good points...

There are some unknown knowns... as for the people that use btc and their psychological reasoning...

But lets assume we are using only mtgox...

Lets start with the average daily volume, as this would have to be a dynamic system of valuing and not a static number....

The next assumption would be that the vast majority of btc that are not in "play" stay out. However, the act of putting your finger in the water will cause ripples but predictable ones..

We will now need to know the number of users on mtgox, then the average number of sells to buys .....

But before we go ahead an do all the calculations necessary....

Miners sell their coins into the system....

So until the mining of BTC stops for Coins (not fees), you will loose all your cash.... but you will hold the price at a value... which makes no sense to do if you really want to own BTC....

Then we bring in arbitrage... as you hold the price on mtgox... your rate of funds needed will increase as people take advantage of the price difference...


But IMO, you wouldn't control the "price" that way. I have been an advocate of Options on BTC for a long time now. It seems to have worked. Options... level out the playing fields and introduces price stability. Although, I still have a problem with mtgox being the standard, mtgox is important don't get me wrong. But I am now advocating for options trading, a Harmonic Mean between all "listed" exchanges and prices...



BUT

The real answer to the original question IS: Undefined

There isn't really a price to support.

The speculator who buys a bitcoin at 10c/btc may think 30c/btc is a fantastic price and sell.  Who wouldn't want to triple their money almost overnight?  Difficulty will auto adjust as miners leave due to the flagging bitcoin price.  At current difficulty levels it only makes sense to mine with 'free' power, stolen power, or if the miner doesn't care about economics at all.

I second this. Im 23 and am work with a bunch of developers in the financial industry. I talk about bitcoins a lot. Nobody seems to grasp the possabilitys of this technology. The age range is 20-26. I very much doubt anyone younger than that will have an interest in bitcoins (unless he is a serious gamer with 2 x 6990;s in his computer, there are a few) unless its got an association with a tech savy teen wanting to buy meth from SR.

There's a decent amount of younger people here. They play videogames, and play around with bitcoin, and get familiar with it. This will help a generation to convert, if bitcoin grows in the next decade.
There's also a decent amount of older people. Some are just interested, some run businesses supporting bitcoin.

There's also zhoutong. He's 17 and accounts for about a third of the MtGox trading volume.

Damn Zhoutong is only 17 years old? Thats one rich 17 year old. All the more power too him then.

(Technically, he was 17 when he started bitcoinica, and might be 18 now or something, I'm not sure. But yeah.)
Yeah, it's pretty amazing :) Also, I'm a little jealous :P

I guess that makes him the zuckerburg of the bitcoin world. If only I had the foresight and abilities, not to mention the opportunity to do that at his age. I guess I am a little jealous too lol.

exception rather the rule. Then again, these are some prodigy people involved with all this.

Prodigies are simply people who work hard at what they're good at. Zhou is also a very friendly guy, and I'm sure that his honest approach to dealing with people has played a big part in his rapid ascent.

-Jonathan

According to alexa statistics:
http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/bitcoin.org
Bitcoin is a sausage fest:

Young sprouts and young people:


Many are obviously still in eduction:
 

The forum is even worse off. But doesn't have high confidence statistics.