Bitcoin Forum

In your opinion how many Bitcoins would someone need today in order to retire by August 03 2019 or Aug 03 2020?

Assume average North American, requiring $30,000 per year of today's purchasing power, no other debt.

short answer: enough.....

after all whats the point in having 100btc at $10k each (today $10mill sounds alot), if in 5 years time it costs $1000 for a loaf of bread (do i need to quote the Zimbabwe dollar?)

today $30k sounds enough for a healthy lifestyle per year, but soon it may only buy you bread for 7 months

I believe it's really to hard to tell to be honest as you never know how much bitcoins will be worth within 5 - 6 years and whether it would be worth retiring or not on what you have invested in.

How old are you? Male/female? Any congenital diseases? Smoker/non-smoker?

Any children? Plan to have children? Have any fiat savings?

Anyway, assume 500,000 $usd per BTC by 2020 and do the math yourself. Less than 0.1 BTC per year * number of years you expect to live.

200 BTC.

my reasoning. By that time, Bitcoin could be worth $5000.  so that gives you 1 million dollars, or 33 years.
Bitcoin should continue to appreciate though, so you'll actually get more.

100 btc will be enough for retirement in 4-5 years but if you wait 2020, after the second btc halving from now, maybe with 50 btc you will live peacefuly untill heaven/hell.

Yes, 200BTC plus ~$500K-1mil in fiat accounts (stocks, bonds) plus paid off RE (0.5-1mil) plus soc sec-all this together should be enough, I hope.

Well then it's not 200 BTC, its a shit ton more.

meh. soc. security alone already gives 30k doesn't it?

5 BTC I think would make you a weathy person if it continues to be in use by then.

I'd say 20-30 BTC today is enough, if you can live those years without digging into them.

I damn sure want more than $30K in annual purchasing power.  Not sure how many years y'all plan to live past 2020, but I ain't tryin' to run outta money.  Not seeing too many retirement plans in here that I'd be willing to live with, unless y'all think BTC is going to be many orders of magnitude higher than I'd be comfortable predicting.

No poll?

I would have to say 2.1 btc would be enough to retire in 5 years. I'm going to revisit this thread in 5 years and laugh as maybe .21 btc will be enough.

Maybe bitcoin will be worthless and 1 million of em won't get you jack. Unlikely, but it could happen. :)

Real answer: 300-400. Because it takes a good 1.5-2 million for a good retirement these days....

What about Taxation?

At least 100 btc to retire... but make sure you put them in cold wallet...

Prediction is very difficult, especially about the future. And as we can see here people have very diverse expectations regarding the future price of bitcoin.

The correct answer is: As many as you can possible get your hands on. But that might not even be enough since the price can be anywhere between $0 to $1,000,000. So if you have collected 200BTC and the price is $10 in 5 years, you clearly haven't got enough to retire. However, often the truth is to be found somewhere in the middle of the extremes, so a price point of $50,000 to $100,000 in about 6 years time, is what I am personally using when trying to figure out how much to put aside for a rainy future.

I of course presume that you have other investments as well, if not, diversify now!

Yes its best thing because price is not big problem safety is biggest problem right now so put them in cold wallet its good idea

And be sure to have paper backups of your wallet in multiple locations, USB-sticks doesn't do the trick for long time storage.

Excuse me but why the .1, just curiosity, couldn't it be 2 btc? :D

Sorry but according to my calcylations you need at least 2.102254 Btc

10 millionth part of all BTC ever available.

5 BTC is all you need for a decent retire life.

Are you talking about the USD right now? There may be more financial trouble incoming or even a few housing bubbles but I seriously highly doubt that the US Dollar is going to go bust or enter a phase of such an incredible hyperinflation!

By 2020, I'm thinking 30-40 will put an individual in the comfort range of retirement listed by OP

in 5 years 1BTC = 6,000 - 60,000$ and 20 years 1BTC = 600,000 - 6,000,000$

if you HOLD for 5 year, and then sell only what you need when you need it, somewhere between 1-25BTC is all anyone will ever really need.

but it doesn't hurt to have more!  ;)

In 5-6 years (at the rate we are going now), the average age of retirement is probably going to be much higher.   Wages are not keeping up with the massive increases in prices on almost everything.   Seriously in many jobs in the United States, you are basically breaking even once you pay for the gas to get there and pay for your lunch.

Depending on the lifestyle you want to live when you are retired, you will probably need quite a few BTC if you plan on doing more than spend your social security check on lotto scratchers (that is IF Social Security is even around by then)

Hard to say. Totally depends on the price - obviously. And the rate of inflation regular good you buy at the grocery store experience. I'd say 500 BTC should be enough for a decent life!

Yes, it could be 500 BTC
From my perspective, the best move right now that someone would have made is to sell a second house/vacation house/inherited house or apartment for BTC.
This way, you'll get a significant chunk of money into BTC without affecting your life or other savings much; maybe keep it in 90:10 or 95:5 BTC/alts, though.
Unfortunately, I don't have a second house, so this plan is moot for me personally.

So only 21,000,000 / 500 = 42,000 people will be able to store their wealth into bitcoin ?

good point.  thats quite a meager outlook for growth in the next 5 years.  surely we can do better.

only 15K have more than 100BTC now
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=316297.0

If BTC is at 5K-6K in 5-6 years and then converted to cash, the resulting $2.5-3mil (from 500BTC) would provide $62.5-75K in yearly interest income in currently stable US treasuries (10 year)

i would say 100 bitcoins to have a good retirement but who knows, maybe by that time bitcoin can have astronomical values and evrybody holding around 5 are millionaries.

>200 BTC if we see another bull run to >10000 USD.

Interesting question, but quite redundant as 95% of the users here are under 35 years old!

BTC will be $5-6k in less than 2 years. Who the hell will exchange 500 BTC for toilet paper ? :-)

But is this question really that important ? Isn't it much more important to get as much as you can right now ? (as an early adopter)

I would invest as much as i can in bitcoin, well that is what i am doing right now. But at the same time i am not rich. I am just a student and i try to spend as little money as possible to cover my monthly costs and with the leftovers of my income i buy(and mine) between 0.3-0.7 btc per month.

I really think, that +10 bitcoin should be enough. 5 years are a hell of a long time in the digital era.

We are in the middle of a monetary revolution, don't miss this opportunity to enhance your life.

(I might be totally wrong, but at least i tried with maximum effort to make the best out of my situation - and i truly believe in this digital future :) )

I am not advocating doing so, just show some numbers. Most of the economic activity is still being transacted in fiat and you can pay taxes ONLY in fiat.

It will be lower year by year. => Bitcoin trasactions will increase exponentially.

Much more than you have now. The price is stuck and the exponential increase last year's end was a bubble that ha snot replicated itself recently and the consequent banning  of exchanges in various countries and the subsequent loss of interest and mass-selling that came with it obviously didn't help.

Price growth goes in hand with the exponential growth of the usefullness of the network, i.e. increasing number of people using it. There is a clear trend showing that the adoption is taking place.

You can sure argue that BTC will no grow exponentionally or even fail, but if the fundamentals look right, then the price is only the result of the underlying function!

I'm not at all implying that bitcoin will fail,rather I'm merely informing about the current trend that has been on for that past few months. You can't simply quit your day job at this juncture because you assume it will be enough to last you into the future.

Oh, know I get it.

The thread is really implying that in 5-6 years you just sell your BTC and live of that. (That is how I interpreted it).

Well,that is what I have assumed as well. But as of now,that is not possible so don't even think for a moment of quitting the cash ecosystem. Bitcoin acceptance is rather low among the general populace and more so among establishments where you buy all of your household needs and the like.

To retire comfortable, honestly, I would say 1,000BTC.

Every investment will collapse. Your gold will be confiscated. Your land will be heavily taxed. Hyper-inflation will make your fiat worthless. Nothing is safe, until Bitcoin. Save what you can, never spend more than you need. Retire now and live as cheaply as you can and enjoy life.

Problem for most is, that they can't retire with the amount they have now.

instead of retiring, people are downshifting these days, and I think that this is healthier and better for most people on non-physical jobs. Studies on college professors had shown that those who got part time positions in the same school after semi-retirement were much happier (happier even than before down-shifting).

Yes, I have to agree with that.

My life goal is to not HAVE to work, but be ABLE to work and not needing the income of it.

Dependency on anything is a B I T C H

There are 12 million $Millionaires. ( not enough Bitcoins for everyone to hold 2.1 BTC )

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

The World Wealth Report 2013 found the World’s High Net Worth (HNW) population growing to 12 million with their assets expected to rise to $55.8 trillion by 2015.[16]

I am surprised everybody here thinks BTC will be worth $5,000 in 5 years?

My prediction is that it might be worth around $1,000 IF IT survives and $0 if it crashes due to some hack or theft. Its a very risky commodity.

That's what they said about BRK.A

The thing is, if it survives the price is bound to rise. And i say that with an "IF"

2014 + 6 = 2020. If 10x/year trend continues, by that time the bitcoin will complete it's exponential phase. It'll reach or almost reach it's limit and it's total purchasing parity will slowly grow with the growth of world GDP (which is about 7% annually, on average). The number of bitcoins will grow with rate about of 4%, and after the halving of 2021, - 2% per year.

So, your bitcoin's capital purchasing parity will grow, on average, 7%-2% = 5% per year. For this 5% worth 30K$, your whole bitcoin capital must be worth (in today's purchasing parity) 600K$.

How much will bitcoin cost in 6 years? Optimistic scenarios vary from 100K$ to 1M$ (pessimistic - zero  ;)). Therefore to retire in 6 years time with equvalent of today's 30K$ annuall income you will need capital of  0.6 - 6 btc.

Lol. Its not a commodity. And its going to be worth much more than $1000 in 5 years. Thats almost laughable.

Such estimates are signs of capitulations, i.e. bullish  ;D

Your nickname is awesome ;)

Most people can only see black or white. If there is no place for something in their worldview, then they will completely ANTI. Sad but true.

Those guys are mostly religeous too... figuers ;)

To retire in 5 years I'd have at least 25BTC tucked away in cold storage.

Thanks  :)

1000BTC is enough even for now, 5% withdrawal rate give you 30k yearly expense. 5% yearly appreciation rate for Bitcoin is very conservative. In 5-6 years, I think we only need 100BTC.

Implying a 6k USD BTC price, which seems incredibly low in 5 years' time.  In one year's time, I could see that, after a single bubble crash.  I think 2 more bubbles in 5 years is a minimum, with a 15k BTC being the least result which can be reasonably envisioned, so 30 BTC should do the trick, if you don't need to travel, and your medicall is socialized.  4 bubbles is more likely, so 10 BTC is probably going to be adequate to that scenario.

Another GWP reference in the same thread?  BTC is not a measure of productivity or even economic activity.  It correlates far more closely with money supply, specifically M2. 

If GWP increases 7% and velocity increases 7% (and all BTC are mined), you should only see minor fluctuations.  If mining continues, you'd see mild degradation in value.

Most people think that you need 2 million to retire. I say you only need 500k-1m if you invest it right and get between 5 and 10 percent, (and if soc. security is still around) and you've paid off your house, you should be okay. Bitcoin could be worth 500k or it could be worth nothing, my money is on in the low 6 figure range at its peak.

This is by no means average. $30k is well under the average income that most people in the US have. Unfortunately most people also have debt so this would also not be "average"

You need to add how old you are. It would take a lot more money to retire if you are 30 then if you are 70 as your money would need to last a lot longer. If you want your money to last forever then you would need enough to purchase an immediate annuity that pays "forever"; I would say that the long term expected rate of return for conservative investments would be no more then 5% so you would need $6 million to get $30k every year forever, however this would not be in today's dollars but rather a fixed amount.

You would need to say what you expect the long term inflation rate would be in order to accurately calculate how much you would need to keep your draws indexed to inflation. 

FTFY

The median per capita income in the US ist actually $28k. (source: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/00000.html). That includes children, though. On the other hand you can substract opportunity costs of having a job, like commuting and business clothing etc. So $30k should be quite fine.

Older people need more health care, is that included in those calculations?

No idea (not from the US). Usually income in a census is gross income, though.

Was just wondering, because usually the older people have higher average incomes but also higher costs, especially health related.

What if gene therapy & nanotechnology allows you to live for hundreds of years or infinite? how much btc then? ;)

This is called perpetuity and a common concept in finance. Basically depending on the interest rate perpetuity isn't much higher than paying an amount for 30-50 years.

e.g.: If you want to pay 1000€ forever @ 5% market interest rate ---> 1000/0.05 = 20000€

So you see, you don't need much capital to pay out a rate for ever!

Here's the answer to all these "what if?" questions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AY-2einPmd4

Thanks for that correction Wary......   I do think that if a person wants to protect for lower purchasing power of the dollar in the coming years, then will need to add an extra amount upon the withdrawal amount - such as 3-5% per year (let's say 4% for the purpose of argument).  Therefore, in 6 years, would have needed 4% extra per year, just to maintain $30k purchasing power in today's dollars. 

Assuming a 4% inflation rate:

Savings year 1 (2015) = $30k = $31,200
Savings year 2 (2016) = $30k = $32,448
Savings year 3 (2017)  = $30k = $33,746
Savings year 4 (2018) = $30k = $35,906
Savings year 5 (2019) = $30k = $36,500
Savings year 6 (2020) = $30k = $37,959

Continuing to assume a 4% inflation rate:

Withdrawal year 1 (2021) = $30k = $39,478
Withdrawal year 2 (2022) = $30k = $41,057
Withdrawal year 3 (2023) = $30k = $42,699
Withdrawal year 4 (2024) = $30k = $44,407
Withdrawal year 5 (2025) = $30k = $46,184
Withdrawal year 6 (2026) = $30k = $48,031

Maybe we can assume that BTC will appreciate in value, greater than the amount that the dollar depreciates in value; however, by 2021, we would need $39,478 per year just to start out... which would imply that in 2020, we would need approximately a $789,560 dollar equivalent value in our BTC portfolio (assuming a 5% withdrawal rate) to accomplish an adequate $30k in today's dollars withdrawal rate per annual.   

Of course, if we have a known or anticipated period of time that we know that we are going to live or that we are going to be withdrawing from those funds (such as 10 years or 20 years), then we can draw into the principle during that period which would reduce the amount that we would need to have accumulated in order to sustain the same level of income off of the accumulated funds.   

Difficult, but NOT impossible, to project these kinds of things... We may be wrong about how many years we actually live, but we could still project a number of years that we would like to be able to anticipate drawing upon the accumulated funds.... and in this regard, in my thinking it is frequently better to overproject rather than to underproject... so we would have a bit of a cushion, just in case all the variables to NOT play out, as we had projected.

To OP question, 800-1000BTC and learn a few tricks from Jacob of ERE(http://earlyretirementextreme.com/) then you can retire ;D

Only need like 50BTC if you don't mine cooking yourself and don't overspend..

And those treatments and methods will cost more money as well!

But really, the chances of that actually happening anytime soon are very slim.

True, if you believe Bitcoin can appreciate 10x in near term. I assume Bitcoin appreciate 10% yearly, 5% withdrawal rate and 5% inflation rate

I think the problem with the OP's question is that it is unlikely that the price of bitcoin will be stable over the next 6 years, although probably will be more stable then it is now. The same applies with adoption of bitcoin.

Even if you could calculate the future inflation rate, and how long you will live, you can likely not calculate the bitcoin price.

There is also the question of is the OP going to convert his bitoin into fiat when he retires, or will he convert it as he needs the fiat, or will he spend his bitcoin on goods and services?

Ouch, it's so depressing trying to decide how many years you expect to live.  Terrible.

If they happen, then you devise a plan that provides an income off of the principle, without eating into the principle.  Accordingly, the $30,000 per year would account for the annual cost of living increase (about 4%), the appreciation in the asset (at least 5%) and the withdrawal rate (5%).  Thus the accounting that I made above, that starts with the equivalent value of a principle of about $790K value....

The next question would be how many BTC would it take to achieve that approximately $790k level of value?  If we estimate that BTC values will be anywhere between $2k and $50k per BTC in 2020, then that would mean anywhere between 15.8 BTC and 395 BTC would be sufficient to achieve the desired outcome.   There remain quite a few unknowns and estimates; however, and if you are really unsure, then strive towards accumulating up to 395BTC would be helpful.. but if you are only able to accumulate 15.8BTC, you may get lucky and have enough BTC to serve your purposes.. I would aim towards the high end rather than the low end.. and then just see what happens in 5-6 years...  

This kind of planning should all go without saying that any such investor should continue to monitor BTC values and the market and world events other possible options (including crypto-currencies) and if it appears other options are appearing to be better than BTC or some other diversification of assets seems to be more likely to achieve the objective, then the money should be invested into those assets, rather than BTC... However, at this time, BTC seems to be among the best games in town in order to realistically aspire to such above-described goals:)

I think that those numbers are fairly reasonable...   Yet, you may get lucky (as has happened in the past) and achieve a higher than 10% appreciation rate.

I doubt that any of the questions that you raise are very complicated or insurrmountable, and each of us need to come to our own calculations regarding probabilities and also to make adjustments along the way, if it appears that there are better storage of value vehicles.  Even in retirement, you are NOT necessarily locked into a storage of value vehicle, unless you choose to lock yourself into such a vehicle (which may or may NOT be to your advantage).  

I will retire yes, but only when i reach 100 btc then i will retire and sell it all my asset.

Meaning i will sell all 100 btc and the rest of coins that i have.

For each thread of this kind that pops up on this forum, 1 coin more than before.

In few years there will be more 21,000,000 of this threads :-(

Just 10 Bitcoin.

When will you arrive at 100BTC, and what will the price be?

At this time, 100BTC is worth about $58,000.  That does NOT seem to be enough to live a very comfortable retirement in most parts of the world... unless you assume that BTC prices are going to considerably appreciate and that you are keeping your money in BTC (or that you have some other asset that you expect to appreciate)..

However, you already stated that you are selling all of your crypto, once you get to 100BTC...  There seems to be some missing assumptions and/or logic in what you are saying.  Can you explain your plan a little better?

10? Phew... okay, I mean it's as good a bet as all the others. If you asked people a couple of years ago if they could imagine a $580 Bitcoin, they'd have you institutionalized. But in order to really retire, I think we're more in the 50 BTC realms, at least...

With logarithmic growth everything is possible, but in 5 years 10 bitcoins maybe way too little, yes. This also depends hugely on the amount of money needed to retire!

Couldn't agree more with you guys... :/

I will need at least 20-30 million to retire, otherwise it will not be a fun enough retirement. Considering the number I hold, Bitcoin has to go through massive bubbles to achieve this ;D

Right now just look it as disposable extra money which is a bonus to my normal income.

OP already set forth his parameters.... and there has been discussion of various other possible amounts throughout this thread.

Either you must be a kid - who has NO real idea or experience(s) regarding the life-draining aspects of working (of course there will be some variation in the degree to which work is life-draining), or on the other hand, currently, you may just be a work-a-holic who thinks that a person gets meaning through work?  On the other hand (am I running out of hands?), you have a real high standard of living (and you believe that you need to continue to maintain such).  There are a lot of ways to retire on much less than some abstract $20-30 million - just consider that $1 million can generate about $4k per month gross in interest (or appreciation), and $10 million can generate 10X that.  Most people can figure out a way to live fairly comfortable between $1 and $10 million, and certainly, there may be reasons that a person has preferences to have a monthly income higher than $40k - but to me, as I already explained, it seems a bit pie in the sky or maybe motivated by other unstated reasons to feel that you need to acquire more than $10million.

I dont have 100BTC yet. But yes i will sell them all when i reach this amount. I will probably hold them for a while untill price goes to my side of story.

Also this wont happen soon so price can be much higher then now also it can be backfire down.

Never the less i will retire when i have 100 btc how much other coin i will have that is not mater my goal is 100 BTC then am out.

This plan makes LITTLE to NO sense; however, even a plan that makes little to NO sense could work out b/c your plan seems to indicate that you are prioritizing the acquisition of BTC rather than other assets - and if the price of BTC appreciates considerably, then your plan may work out just fine.

Let's say, for the sake of argument, that BTC prices goes up in value by 30% for each year for the next 6 years:

Year 1 (2015)  = $780
Year 2 (2016)  = $1,014
Year 3 (2017)  = $1,318.20
Year 4 (2018)  = $1,713.66
Year 5 (2019)  = $2,227.76
Year 6 (2020)  = $2,896.09

Then your 100 BTC would be worth $289,608.54, and in my thinking that would NOT be a decent retirement amount but you could live probably live off of it for more than 20 years, if you continue to let it grow and drew it down by $30k per year. 


On the other hand, if BTC prices go up in value by 50% for each year for the next 6 years:

Year 1 (2015)  = $900
Year 2 (2016)  = $1,350
Year 3 (2017)  = $2,025
Year 4 (2018)  = $3,037.50
Year 5 (2019)  = $4,556.25
Year 6 (2020)  = $6,834.38

Then your 100 BTC would be worth $683,437.50, and in my thinking that would NOT be a decent retirement amount but you could live probably live off of it for more than 30 years, if you continue to let it grow and drew it down by $50k per year.   

Anyhow, my point is that your ability to live off of 100BTC will depend on a few factors, including how much and how quickly the price of BTC appreciates, if at all.
 

I hope 1BTC will be enough.

Man this is cool and with that amount of money in ether case is more then ok i can buy several real estates and live on rents.
Think that this idea is good not greedy but ok live on rent and that ok.

Well, if you are satisfied with either one of those scenarios, then you would just need to plan to continue to acquire your 100BTC, and thereafter hope and pray that BTC prices appreciate to those levels, which I believe a lot of people in this forum would consider either scenario to be very conservative estimates.  On the other hand, if BTC prices appreciate greater than the amounts described above, then you will need to accumulate your BTC earlier b/c you may NOT be able to afford to buy enough to accumulate to 100BTC.  On the other hand (I am running out of hands), if BTC depreciates in value, then you can accumulate a lot, but they will NOT be worth much... hehehehe  :D

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_GegPtSQsCU0/TPfxBWoKzvI/AAAAAAAAGFc/-nuy7yECRAA/s1600/plane.jpg
In 5-6 years one BTC will buy you this.

Accordingly, you are suggesting some major transfer of wealth to us BTC "early" adopters.  Additionally, you are suggesting that there are going to be another at least 50K millionaires who will have come through the ranks of bitcoin investments... and probably at least 1,000 billionaires (those holding more than 1k coins).... .  Seems a bit pie in the sky in my thinking, especially to be achieved within a 5-6 year time-frame - but may be more reasonably achievable in the 20 to 30 year time frame...

I am not really an workaholic, but I do somewhat like the work. I know once I give up work there is no turning back. The point is if I take the step it has to be really worthwhile, and enough reserves so that I don't have to think about working again.

Well technically in 5-6 years it might look a little different
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01240/plane-crash-620_1240044c.jpg

I hope 1 bitcoin will be valued 1 million dollars so I would retire in few years...

I don't necessarily believe that BTC will achieve such prices, either. But just for the sake of the argument: Why shouldn't this be possible? We've seen incredible rises before. Don't confuse the market capitalization with the price of a single Bitcoin. The price is and always will be determined by supply and demand, and therefore higher than the amount of FIAT that's been 'invested' in Bitcoin!

there are anywhere between 12 mil and 30 mil millionares depending of the source of info.
50K would be 1/600 or 0.16%.
I don't think that anybody would notice.
Billionaires, on the other hand, would be noticeable  ;).

I don't get people who say things like this. If BTC goes through enough growth for 100 coins to be enough for retiring early in luxurious style, the bitcoin economy will be a pretty solid store of value by that point, have enough users to be a real economy in its own right and no longer so based on speculation, and you'd probably later regret your decision to transfer back to fiat. Just buy what you need with your coins.

But really, $20-30 million?  Even $5-10 million of assets generating passive income of $20 to 40K per month and then you can do whatever you like, pretty much... Beyond $10million, just seems to be overkill, unless you have a specific reason for such.

OK>.. NOW you are getting a little wishy washy.  Which scenario are you predicting the BIG grand one or the CRASH one?  Can't we have some kind of middle-ground and reasonable prediction?  It is the uneasy feeling that i get when I hear people predicting that BTC is all or nothing... that is ridiculous in my thinking b/c there is quite a bit in the middle that seems just as probable as the all or nothing predictions.

20-30$ mil is way too much. Most people wouldn't be able to handle that!

I would NOT bank on that within the next 30 years... You need a better back-up plan b/c that seems to be a 1 in a million chance, which is NOT a healthy way to live, IMHBO.

Maybe you are a little more optimistic than me?   but I still understand the difference between price of a bitcoin and market cap, and I totally agree that it is possible that BTC could reach $10 million per BTC at some point... BTW, that plane in the picture is priced at somewhere between $10 and $20 million, and that is a fricking lot of money... $1million per bitcoin would be about a $16 trillion market cap, and $10 million per bitcoin would be a $160 trillion market cap...   and that is a big-ass market cap.. .NOT impossible to achieve, but quite an aspiration.

Either $1 million or $10 million per bitcoin would signify that bitcoin has taken over a fairly large portion of the store of value and/or money transmittal mechanisms.... NOT impossible to achieve, but pretty dreamy vision of the destiny of BTC in the 5-6 year time-frame that we have been using in this thread...

Now, in 20 to 30 years, more likely that BTC could achieve $1million or $10million per BTC, but still quite dreamy in my opinion - even though more likely than the 5-6 year time frame.  I would be quite amazed if BTC reaches $50K per BTC by 2020... that would be an $800 billion market cap...   $800 billion is much more in the realm of possibilities, and may even be possible in the next couple of years... but I have my doubts that BTC is going to move to an $800 billion or higher market cap without some considerable volatility and fight back from the various "powers that be."

That's a good point!!!   I was pulling the number out of my ass somewhat regarding how many new millionaires and billionaires would result by giving a rough estimate. 

Of course we are going to have gradations of such wealth transfer(s), and maybe in the end, no one would really notice too much b/c some of the wealth would be transferred to new groups; however, some of the wealth would be kept with the wealthy and by the wealthy to move from one kind of wealth to another kind of wealth. 

At this time, it seems that quite a few of the already wealthy are beginning to get into bitcoin in order to prevent too much wealth being transferred to a bunch of snot-nosed tech geeks.... and some of this occurs during the consolidation periods and the pushing the price down and the spreading of the FUD in order to discourage some weaker hands and to buy up some of the BTC at lower prices.

I agree that Azguard seems to NOT have thought through his plan very well, but he still has time to adjust, hopefully (unless he is nearing his 100BTC holdings amount). 

We better save this post, just in case.  Cbeast is going to want to receive his fleet of 10 leer jets.. .whatever is that model?

not in the Bitcoin world it won't.  No one will pay you interest on Bitcoins.  And you'd be stupid to
give control of your coins to others regardless.

I think that there is a chance that Bitcoin could be worth $1 million in 30 years - and that is about a $20 trillion market cap.  Actually, the odds may be greater than one in a million... it could be as great as 1 in 10..... I really don't know, but I would put the odds at close to 1 in a million that BTC could reach $1million in 5-6 years.. that seems way too dreamy for me, and I am NOT going to take those kinds of chances...   Others may NOT mind betting differently, and some of that may have to do with age or with other factors including already acquired assets and risk tolerance.

Generally, I am talking about traditional investment vehicles that are used for retirement.  With traditional investment vehicles, in which people are planning for retirement and to preserve the principle of their investment, investment planners tend to calculate a 3-5% withdrawal rate - 3% being conservative and 5% being more ambitious.

The withdrawal rate assumes that the fund can on average generate that level of interest from a variety of investment assets - of course some years will achieve better returns than other years and some years will lose value..

Since we were talking in the bitcoin sphere, I used the higher rate of 5%.  I was NOT strictly assuming that BTC would earn interest and I was NOT necessarily crossing any kind of bridge to talk about whether or how to secure the funds by diversifying them.  But, since we are in the bitcoin sphere, I was using the higher rate of 5% in part based on higher expectations of BTC appreciation.

In a traditional retirement investment portfolio, interest from such could be achieved through a diversified investment portfolio combined with a variety of stocks, bonds, index funds and precious metals (and even property investments or funds) - usually very little would be put into any kind of savings account b/c the anticipated returns are so low.

In this case, the interest from such principle amount ($5 to 10 million) could ALSO come by assuming a 5% per year appreciation in the value of bitcoins - of course if a person was wanting to rely on a steady 5% withdrawal rate without eating into the principle, then that person may want to diversify the fund in order that all the eggs are NOT in one basket (the bitcoin basket).  On the other hand, sometimes people become fairly bullish and optimistic about a certain asset class and fail to hedge their bets accordingly.. which may or may NOT be o.k. with bitcoin (each of us will likely have differing risk tolerances).

Hopefully, that explains a little better some of my assumptions and presumptions.. .  :)

Look. If fiat survives and I absolutely positively believe it will,
bitcoin will never have the purchasing power of today's $1 million. And purchasing power, not exchange rate is all that ever matters. $40k is a possibility in next 5-20 years IMO.

What kind of data do you look at to come to this conclusion? I can't imagine $40k, let alone $1 million (that's not to say they aren't possible, just that I can't wrap my head around it). They all just seem like wild guesses to me.

These are NOT wild guesses, if we are considering the market cap and how much storage of wealth could be contained within the bitcoin and also used for value transmission, plus additional public ledger features.

For what it's worth, here are two quotes from Satoshi that explain the all or nothing mindset:

Feb. 14, 2010: "I’m sure that in 20 years there will either be very large (bitcoin) transaction volume or no volume."

Feb. 18, 2009: "As the number of users grows, the value per coin increases. It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value.

It just seems hard to imagine any 'success' scenario where said success doesn't then cause even more users to jump on board and thus pump up the value to ultimately massive highs. This should hold true as long as bitcoin remains strong in network effects and technological superiority over fiat. I would say the public would have to become apathetic to bitcoin for it to top out at a 'good but sort of moderate' value, which is unlikely given the disruptive nature of it.

Citing to authority regarding the ludicrous nature of the all or nothing concept does NOT bring it greater legitimacy. 

I agree and I have NO problem with the disruptive technology of bitcoin, and I have NO problem with the concept of exponential growth caused by adoption and networking - however, for the most part, the world does NOT work in all or nothing .. there are transition periods... and even if bitcoin is revolutionary and takes over a large segment of the financial world, money transmission and the storage of value, it is going to take a bit of time to arrive at that point - the btc infrastructure is JUST NOT ready at this time to go to $1million per BTC and I doubt it can handle $20k per BTC, at this time.  Accordingly, there is going to be some transition and there is going to be some up and down in the BTC market prices.

ON the other hand, there could be a technological glitch that causes BTC to go to zero; however, there are other potential outcomes, including governmental and bank hostility to attempt to cause BTC to go underground, which could cause lower prices (but NOT zero).

But how to you assign a number value to that? I'm not saying that these things don't provide immense value, and I'm not dismissing the targets. I just don't see how one can make those sorts of projections.

Depends on the future price of bitcoins obviously, but I think that everything bigger than 100 btc should be fine.

$40k is only around 65x times current value. So I believe bitcoins utility can grow 65x it's current rate over next 5-20 years. That's not wild and crazy.

i think i should got 500kusd . i should life free.
bitcoin its super strong,

O.k.  I agree with WindJC's above explanation.

 Marbit, if you read through various above discussions in this thread including a bunch of my speculations regarding how market cap relates to price, we can envision a large number of scenarios in which BTC's market cap has to go up in order to accommodate the increasing use, network effect and all of that.  You can look at the growth of any budding technology or innovation and you will see gianormous increases in value as these new innovations are developing and from the early adoption stages into their later stages... Bitcoin brings a lot of innovations to the table, and if you have studies BTC the network (rather than merely BTC the currency), you can  come to appreciate the multiple innovations that BTC brings to the table.. and appreciate that BTC is far and beyond (at the moment) the king of cryptos. 

Surely bitcoin may NOT accomplish as much growth as it is hyped up to achieve and it may be surplanted, but that does NOT mean that the potential is NOT there or that we are engaging in wild and crazy speculations in order to achieve these kinds of numbers, especially numbers in the $10k to $50k range within the coming years. 

I personally think it is wild and crazy (but not impossible) to expect $1 million value in 5 years, but $10K to $50K is totally within realistic and doable parameters.

The answer to your question about putting numbers on each BTC seems to have already been answered, no?  We are NOT merely talking about the price of 1 BTC b/c that is a fairly random unit, and maybe the BTC space should adopt a different unit of value, but we need to think about the BTC space as a whole and as a network and its market cap.  I think you put numbers on this price per BTC by considering the systems that BTC would be replacing, competing with and/or supplanting as it gains in popularity (that is gold, western union, pay pal, credit cards, banks, various currencies, etc).  There is value in getting into that currency, value transmittal and storage of value space.

I will say 80 BTC. But i dont need that much of a luxury. Make sure to have double of this for yourself.

So you guess I may be fine? I sometimes worry I can't continue my lifestyle when I retire. You know, that I don't have enough money for the relaxing years of my life!

Everything is fine ass long ass the price goes up dont you all think.

Maybe it will be 1BTC for price of 100K maybe not anyway every one have his own mind on this.

I think you will need more than 100 btc to retire, maybe more than 1000.
In 5-6 years bitcoin could peak at 50,000$ and then drop to 100$ if an altcoin will became the new numer one.

BitcoinMillionaire:  You did NOT say how many coins you have.  I would presume that if you are proclaiming to be a bitcoin millionnaire then currently you have at least 2,000 BTC..... which should be enough in the coming years, and it should be enough to begin to live off of them now. .and to withdraw NO more than 5% per year.

Something tells me that BitcoinMillionaire doesn't have at least 2,000 BTC. Just a little hunch. ;D

I got 10 to my name -- hoping that's enough to retire someday, LOL.

But there can be unforseen risks. Some of my investments might tank, there might be a big crisis. 10m is fine, except that I want to be doubly sure. Once I get addicted to that lifestyle there is no coming back.

Of course there is (coming back). In 2000, as internet bubble started bursting, I remember reading an interview of some B2B CEO who did not sell any of his shares, apparently believing his own verbiage about his stock. He had more than a billion in it (it was when B2B IPos were going up 900% on the first day). the stock eventually went to nothing. Going from a billion to nothing is harsh, but from 20 mil to 10, meh.

HELLO?????   That is why you live within your means (live within the means of the passive income of the investment), and diversify the principle and possibly even continue to reinvest a portion of your income (meaning do NOT withdraw it). 

The extent to which you draw into your principle depends in part on your expectations and calculations regarding how long you expect to live or how many years you will be needing to draw income off of the principle.   

You should be able to easily live within your means between $5 and $10 million (that is between $20k and $40k per month).... If we are talking about amounts below $2million (b/c that would be less than $8k per month), then it may become a little more difficult, but it should be considerably manageable to figure out a way to live within your means and to allow the principle to continue to increase in value - especially when we are getting into the $5million and above arenas.

In any event with $5 to $10 million in principle, you should be able to figure out a way to live off of half of the interest (that is between $20k/2 and $40k/2 = $10K and $20k per month).  therefore, the principle will continue to increase in value, and you can continue to increase the amount of your withdrawal as your principle continues to grow.  Then you will have more money later in life and also a cushion and also the principle to fall back upon for your final years.

I repeat that if you need more than $10million as principle, then you should specify a reason for such need for more b/c merely stating that there could be unforeseen risks means that you have failed to adequately plan and/or to diversity and/or to live within your means.

The real topic of this thread is too vague for anyone to answer for anyone but him/herself.  I mean, if you have a huge vegetable garden and you have some goats then maybe you make cheese from you goats' milk and maybe you eat the vegetables from your garden and maybe you don't have to pay for food so that might be a huge expenditure for others that you don't pay.  Alternatively, maybe you have a mortgage on your home or maybe you don't.  There are too many factors in order to say generally how much money someone needs to "retire" much less how much money one needs in btc.

It's vague only if one reads the thread title, but doesn't read the opening post. OP exactly specifies the required amount: annual income of 30K USD in today's purchasing power.

Depends whether or not you want to cash them all out upon quitting your job or sell them off over a period of time.

I think $40k is certainly achievable, but I'm just not sure on the time frame. 5-6 years, maybe not, but I'm planning on setting aside a retirement fund of ~25 BTC. :)

Funny that we are ON page 8, of this thread, and OP has NOT chimed in to clarify his intent and/or to state whether we are getting close to helping him to answer his question.  Surely, there were some individual factors that were left out of the OP - but he did give us quite a bit to work with and to extrapolate upon.. and yes, some of us have deviated to some extent from some of the parameters of the OP.

Even though the various tangents in this thread could be helpful to other readers of the thread, sometimes it is also nice, and helpful, if OP could chime in to let us know if our various responses are helping him/her.

Ok.... so that would be $1 million if the 25BTC achieves your target price of $40k per BTC. 

a) Are you planning to buy the 25 BTC now?
or
b)  have you already bought some of the 25 BTC?
or
c) will you to just continue to buy them over the coming years?   
or
d) do you continue to buy and trade BTC, but you will just keep 25BTC in a form of cold storage?   

Right now 25 BTC would cost about $15K.

Why are his holdings relevant to make a price prediction?

Disclaimer: Holder of >25 coins ;)

Details remain important in any financial planning, including questions regarding whether the investor continues to invest and/or monitor over the investment over years, or if the investor just sets aside the investment and hold. 

Setting aside and holding could work, except what does a person do with the ongoing flow of fiat (invest in BTC or some other asset or just blow it)?

And, usually, income goes up through the years, and a person is able to buy more of asset X or Y or Z or to dedicate a higher portion of income to investing... but it is NOT a given that a person will plan to invest over the coming years if the person sets aside and consumes nearly all of his/her paycheck.

True, I think I missread the messege of CEG5952.

Best would be to gradually increase holding to get to 25 BTC. The risk with this is that the BTC price could explode before you reach any near 25 BTC.

Disclaimer---- Currently, I hold more than 25 BTC, too.    ;)

Danny:  I think that you and I are on more  or less the same page in our attempts to figure out an investment strategy that an investor who is attempting to achieve 25 BTC in 5-6 years could employ, yet there still do remain some devil in the details regarding current holdings.. and the fact that it will likely take a lot more fiat in the future to buy the same amount of BTC.

For example, if I had ONLY just heard about BTC, yet I was attempting to figure out what to do, I would likely read up upon it quickly in order to figure out my investment strategy, and if I came to the conclusion that BTC seemed to be a good investment avenue, I would likely attempt to front load my investment and then dollar cost average the remaining of the term.  

Also, I would probably end up over achieving the 25 BTC, just to have a cushion.  

Also, it is likely that I would also notice that BTC prices have been in a downward trend for 9 months but that BTC has had history of magnificent exponential growth--- and there is NO real evidence to establish that some similar exponential growth could NOT occur.. and in fact it appears that there could be exponential growth any time in the very near future, which would cause me to invest a lot more early on.

Therefore, I would frontload as much as I could and then just hedge future price downswings by continuing to invest fiat into BTC on a dollar cost basis.... all of this with money that I feel that I could afford to lose... in the event that the whole thing comes crashing down.

also 100 btc at 10k each, faster i think, 10k is not that hard to get, especially in 5-6 years, one should aim at 1M dollar

Actually, this seems more realistic.... to achieve $1 million in 5-6 years...  Yet, there are quite a few people  (probably including a large number of those reading this thread) who are going to have trouble accumulating 100BTC within manageable reasonableness and to feel o.k. losing their investment (in the event that the whole BTC thing crashes)..   Currently, 100BTC is a $60k investment, which would be tough to manage for people just starting out... .unless they have accumulated assets in other categories that they are ready, willing and able to diversify into BTC holdings.

the question is-will it be bitcoin or an alt? I say that mostly likely bitcoin (at least ~80% chance), unless it is inhibited by untimely/inappropriate regulation.
However, it tech you never know: witness Google vs Yahoo. Yahoo should have been the most prominent player because it was highly entrenched first mover, but it failed to hold its advantage (most likely because of inept management). They tried to buy Google at one point for a measly 1b. They should have bid until page/brin agreed, maybe 5bil or so. As a result of NOT buying GOOG, yahoo lost  more than 2/3 of its market cap at some point (>100 bil).

The above in bold is NOT the question at the moment.  At the moment, the investment question pertains to BTC, and investing into BTC with your fiat. 

If you want to invest into an alt crypto-currency, then you need to ask different questions and consider those questions within a different framework... OP did NOT ask that question, and that question is only tangentially related to the subject of this thread..... However, to play along a little bit with your question, if you invest in BTC, NOW, then you can still continue to monitor the overall BTC situation, standing, adoption, network, long-term security and to switch as needed or if needed if that momentum seems to be changing.. and accordingly, switch, if needed, your investment over to google.. if google ends up taking over yahoo...

We are going around in circles. I do not mind my work, actually somewhat like it too though I keep complaining about it the whole day, and try to sneak in as many breaks as possible. If I have to retire it will be to live large, not within my means.

You are correct that it seems that we are going in circles, yet I must clarify my understanding that "living with in your means" and "living large" are NOT mutually exclusive concepts.

In fact, it is my sense that "living within your means" can ensure that you are ABLE TO "live large" for a very long, long time.. b/c you did NOT blow all your wadd in blind exuberance.

You won't be thinking about retiring on your bitcoins until you go through one of the big jumps and sell enough to live on for awhile. A good rule of thumb to planning a Bitcoin retirement: work and dollar cost average buy your bitcoins until you cant stand working anymore. You'll know it when you get there because you'll be calculating in your head what your bitcoins will be worth in a year.

You can't compare those two. Users of Yahoo do not have that kind of network effects like they do with BTC. Network effects in currency is the most important thing basically.

You can compare it to social networks though, and yes the myspace-facebook situation was remarkable and failure to evolve could kill bitcoin too.

Haha, I remember back in november, where I calculated how long BTC needs to keep rising until I'd never have to work again. Next bubble I guess^^

yes, what exactly NEW happened in bitcoin space in the last 9-10 mo, except squabbling about regulation and dealing with China, then MTGox?
Bitcoin usage is also basically flat during the same time frame.

I am hoping no more then 8 or 9 as that is how many I have now ;)

I agree with your points here, except the points relating know when you get there and calculating what bitcoins will be worth in a year... you do NOT know when you get there by calculating worth in a year, but by calculating worth in the present and knowing that you can easily live off of the worth in the presence with plenty cushion to ensure current wealth preservation... future appreciation should be another story as compared to the situation regarding knowing that you are already adequately there.

There are still 6 year to buy more of those juicy coins :)

If you see the bitcoin space as flat in the last 10 months, except for the negatives that you listed, then you are quite blind and/or biased. 

I am questioning whether it is even worth any time to list, describe and or characterize positive developments in the BTC space in the past 10 months - b/c a lot of them should be obvious for anyone paying attention to bitcoin developments (beyond potentially dwelling upon price and/or market cap) during this period.

In other words, in the next 6 years, you are going to put your 8.5 BTC in storage, and come back to the situation in 6 years? 

Are you planning to be making other investments during this time?  if so, what would those be?

I don't think 8 or 9 gona do much, I'm gona say 60+ could be more but who knows where btc gona be in 6 years.

Maybe we can invest in some other innovative system or coin that comes up, im not talking of bitcoin clones and scam coins, only if someone really fills my expectations.

I would like to have 10 btc and bury them for 6 years... I think they should be enough to retire.

This is part of the reason why posters need to give some particulars about what they expect to do with 8.5BTC or 60+ BTC.  If you say that you expect the price to be X and you expect to have Y quantity of BTC, then providing some further details can be helpful, too, such as are you front loading or buying them in the next 6 years.

There is NOTHING wrong with being of the belief to buy a set number of coins, and then to let them sit for 6 years, and then to look for other investments during that time.  Personally, at the moment, I think BTC is one of the better places to put extra Fiat... but in the next 1 month or 2 years or 4 years, I may NOT believe the same thing, and that it why we need to pay some attention to our investment.  BTC seems to be especially important in the monitoring necessity b/c it is a unique kind of asset with considerable volatility and a lot of politics and paradigm changing, in several regards.  Accordingly, in order to be a pragmatic BTC investor, BTC requires more attention than most regular investments (such as an index fund or gold or even stock in a particular company). 

That seems to be a completely doable goal, b/c at the moment 10BTC would only cost about $6K.  How many BTC do you have right now, and if you do NOT have 10BTC are you able to acquire 10BTC in the near future?

but waiting until 100k value is a very long waiting, given the possibility that bitcoin may crash, 10 btc are too little to hope for a retirement, you need an amount between 50-100 to be more safe

Woah, difficult. I think you'll need about 73 BTC on August 3 2019 and approximately 82.9 BTC a year later. I may be off by a few %, though. This isn't exact science, to be honest. And I'm kinda confused at the moment ;)

Good luck on getting to your 5m target, and good luck to me on my 20m retirement fund. Lets meet in 10 years on an island somewhere ;D

Bitcoin might not make us rich. May be something else, like crypto google or crypto facebook.

Actually, I agree with you Ayers.  My comment regarding "doable" was directed mostly at Mravagejoe's plan to accumulate 10BTC.  I agree that 10 BTC may NOT be enough to retire - depending upon how all these price matters unravel and also depending upon how much dollar equivalent mravagejoe believes he needs in 6 years.  Nonetheless, 10 BTC could be a good supplement of income, but safer to attempt to accumulate more... yet if mravagejoe only has the means (or the risk aversion) to acquire 10BTC... , then he will need to have some back up plans in the event that BTC does NOT appreciate sufficiently to meet the particulars of his future goals.

Wow!!!!  You are predicting a 13.5% crash between August 2019 and August 2020.  Woah Zaaaah!!!

I appreciate your well-wishing, and thanks even your invitation for a 10 year follow-up; however, I did NOT state anything about any goals that I have regarding quantity of fiat equivalent that I would like to accumulate..  My main point was to raise questions to anybody's bare assertion that the ONLY way that they would retire and feel happy was with a $20million principle package.   Additionaly, I concede that I did I talked about various principle sufficiency considerations that would vary from person to person.. and even sufficiency considerations that are within modern day decent standards of living... such as little as $5million in principle and I even implied that amounts lower than that could be sufficient for NOT working while maintaining decent standards of living.

What assumptions are you using to make these statements? Most people would likely argue that the later in time, the less BTC you would need to retire as BTC will likely increase in value over time and your savings will need to last a shorter amount of time the later you start drawing on it.

I have read every type of predictions here, so here is mine, worthless like most of the others:
we will need 100 bitcoins to retire because the value will be about 200.000$.

Because less than $20,000,000 just isn't enough to get by? 20 BTC ought to be enough for most of us if it ever gets to $200,000 :)

Seriously, what is wrong with you guys ? :D Why do you need such crazy amounts to retire ? I d be totally happy with 10k $ per coin.

With that price it would push everyones life(who is involved in bitcoins) in a better direction. I am going all-in with my bitcoin investment strategy, i just hope it is worth it in the long run.

My friends and family already tread me like a crazy one and laugh at me because bitcoin is just not moving in neither direction. Anyway, i am hodling strong no matter what comes for the next years. I will only sell if there is absolutely no other way to survive while growing my small stash of bitcoins over time.

Back to topic: My dream price would be 40k / coin and ~1 million to retire. But i don't have high life standards, an own apartment with Internet is practically enough to make me happy for the rest of my life.  :)

+1  - Exactamente!!!

Are you going to be able to accumulate more than 25 BTC before BTC prices become a lot more expensive?   I say 25 BTC, b/c that is how many coins you would need to have in order to make $1million out of $40k coins.

 $10k per coin is only going to get you $250K in principle with those same 25BTC... but surely we shouldn't be complaining about $10k per coin if we are buying now... that is nearly 17x appreciation from today's prices.... Maybe it would be good to invest at or near $15k today for the 25 BTC.. and then just wait it out....

I am really NOT sure, though.    My advice, to the extent that I attempt to dish out such would be if a person wanted to get to 25 BTC... but had difficult finances and was NOT sure about being able to invest a whole $15k... would be to invest as much as possible, hopefully, near $7.5k or more and then attempt to keep buying while the money comes in... to attempt to get to 25 BTC within a reasonably accelerated time-frame... then slow down investing in BTC on a dollar cost average basis thereafter.

That is a good question Jay. I am really not sure if i can accumulate 25 bitcoins before the value accelerates. But i think that is not the point, as long as you try as hard as possible to get as many as possible. Right now i increase my bitcoin stash at a speed of ~0.4 btc per month.
With my optimistic(realistic? :)) point of view i will not be able to collect 25 bitcoins, because the process will be so much harder to collect more coins when they are worth over 10k$/each. That means 1 million are out of reach for me and remain as a dream. But if i manage to collect >15 bitcoins till then, i will still be happy.

Goddammit, i am such a fucked up superbull. xD

I just talked to a economics Phd and we analyzed some stats surrounding BTC. We made some good/worst case scenarios and took the average of those scenarios.

Our price prediction for 2020 = 10,750 USD ;)

It's a really good economist if s/he can predict price in 6 years time up to 5th decimal sign.  ;)

As I said, we made some assumptions for worst /best turnouts and averaged those. This practise is called educated guessing and the finance world doesn't do much more than that ;)

and 10750$ no 10$75 cents

It's just a common practice to give as much digits as you sure of. That is 10,750 would mean something between 10,740 and 10,760. While you probably meant to say something like "in range of 10K". Sorry for nitpicking.

Now I get your angle.

Yes, the average was around 10750.

Best cases ranged from 15000-25000 USD
Worst cases from 225 USD - 900 USD

Care to show your work?

I do NOT necessarily disagree with your reasoning, here.  That is NOT a bad amount - let's say $250 set aside towards BTC per month.  ONLY you are in the position to assess the totality of your financial circumstances.

Actually, I remember in the 80s, I used to buy $100 to $200 per month in US Savings bonds, as a potentially secure means to set aside extra money.. however, I was in NO way as bullish as you about my savings/investment b/c I already knew what the rate of my return was going to be and that my money was going to be locked up for at least 5 years (something like that).  I did NOT have access to such potential investments like bitcoin... so I am NOT sure what I would have done had I known about such a thing like bitcoin when I had that quantity of money to invest... I may have attempted to figure out a way to set aside more money b/c of the upside potential. 

We each have to come to our own resolution regarding how to proceed towards our investment(s), and if $250 per month is all that you feel that you can reasonably do, then so be it.

Yes, I might upload it tomorrow after formating it.

Your best case scenarios seem fairly bearish (b/c BTC has possibilities to go into the $100K range in the next 6 years), and your worst case scenarios do NOT seem to take into account the possibility of BTC going to zero, which is a real possibility, sorry to speak the truth...   So ultimately, if you are NOT accounting for all of the scenarios, then your prediction is likely off, even if you are receiving the assistance and input of an economist phd.

Those were the averages of different best/worst case approaches. Not the range of the absolute amounts.

Ok... thanks... I look forward to seeing your work.. if you decide to let us see it....

$10750 in 2020 sounds possible, although it is 63% per year on average, which is much higher than any asset class.
Could happen if we hit another bubble or super bubble. In the latter case, $10750 would be a trough after $35000-50000 super bubble.

10750 sounds low to me

The known price history of Bitcoin is roughly 4 years. You're attempting to predict 16 years ahead?

I still like the prediction though but would expect something halvings to have happened and the price could easily go above 10k. :)

"Are you kidding me? I have to wait 6 years for 10k? No way, we're going to the moon this year!" -the average HODLer around here. ;D

so 225-25000 then :P

Wilhelm:   It is good that we are NOT relying upon your math....  :o      I calculate 2020 to be 6 years from NOW, not 16 years from now.   :D 

By the way, the $10,750 estimate seems a little bearish to me, too... given BTC's history and totality of circumstances, including slipperyslope's theory of exponential growth during the adoption phase.. and NO reason to believe that we are NOT currently in the midst of adoption.... even in early adoption regarding BTC.

Ummm I think in 5 years, you'll be good with about 11 BTC or so... We'll see 3-7 bubbles by then and should be headed to $150000 USD by then... Which would be enough to retire. Maybe not with a mansion, but you'll be fine. But don't take my word for it, only speculation ;)

I'm bullish on BTC, but more than 3 (maaaaaybe 4) bubbles in the next 5 years seems unlikely, given current awareness and such a short timeline.   

Yeah, you could be right. But I tend to be uber-bullish at times. The whole Bitcoin scene just has something exciting about it. It's like back in the good old 80s man, everything's in motion and about to explode upwards on the charts!

Totally agree with you there - I've been surprised by BTC constantly, and it's consistently exceeded "realistic" expectations of mine on quite a few occasions.  I hope I'm wrong again haha!

it is never enough with bitcoin

That seems on the slightly high side of reasonable to me.  My last number-crunching was for 2019.  I came in around $2340.  If I had shot for 2020-2022, I could have easily come up with $5000 to $10,000.  Just a couple of simple changes would put us pretty close, especially given the extra year in your calculation.

I could show my work, but maybe the easier thing to do would be to use this as a basis: http://honestnode.com/bitcoin-fair-value-a-first-assessment/

My number is significantly different, because:
--He used each of the possible value centers as an additive element.  But he included a random, unsupported M2 calculation, which I think, accounts for all the other stuff.  It shouldn't have been additive.
--I believe the M2 calculations really hit the essence of BTC value.
--I'd say the author massively overstated BTC in the remittance market
--In my view, his velocity calculations on BTC were incorrect, likely because he used mining transactions in his velocity calculations..

I'm not sure why I am posting something semi-serious in this thread, though, because it has devolved into a ridiculous parody of bitcoiners.  If anybody REALLY thinks they can buy $14,500 worth of bitcoins today at $580 and retire on JUST that in 5-6 years (even with a paltry $30K annual income, which, by the way, is preposterous retirement "planning"), they are delusional. 

Yes, you can quote me.  Feel free to refer to this post in 2020. 

Maybe if bitcoin will drop after 2016 you will need 5000 btc to retire, everthing can happen...

21 bitcoins, 1 millionth. Is my magic number. :D

Or any 10x of that :P

it can also skyrocket to 100k after the first block reward, and you will only need 10, but that is a bit pretentious, from both sides

I'd bet that 1 BTC could be worth $25,000 - $100,000 in 5-6 years (At todays USD value of course). So, do the math from there.
Those numbers will be MUCH higher if the banking system goes as it looks like it might. (If it goes, start multiplying those number by 10 for a start.)
A big IF is if these criminals don't start another big war. Sure looks like they are trying...

Anything more than I need to live relatively simply, is going to be given away (for helping /and/ further distruption),
After all,
Its about sharing

And????? explain yourself.     ???   

You may be correct that we need to be more realistic and less bullish; however, to characterize various more bullish scenarios as a ridiculous parody seems to aim at insulting us rather than attempting to accept that other people have differing perspectives and calculations... In the end, you may be correct, but that does NOT really mean that you have any more realistic and meaningful perspective than the large majority of other posters in this thread.  And, that "art are holier than thou" seems to be the overall tone that you are projecting in your above post.

+1    I appreciate your sense of civic responsibility..

JayJuanGee, I apologize for my post.  I certainly did not mean to project myself as being holier than anybody.  Buddha knows that my own inventory is pretty far from perfect. 

I was certainly offering a different perspective...and maybe busting balls a little too much.  But I would never intentionally hold myself out on an anonymous forum (or hopefully anywhere) as being better than anybody.

I'm sorry to JJG and to anybody who took offense.  If I ever offend you again, please just read the post in the voice of a slightly drunken pirate, staggering around a little bit and with no inhibitions due to the rum.

Thanks for the response... and NO problem...    I otherwise appreciate your post and your providing reasoning for your conclusion(s)..   

Definitely it is a good thing to hear differing perspectives. 

From time to time, I have described more conservative scenarios of modest 15% or less BTC appreciation per year; however, those kinds of scenarios seem way too bearish in light of the totality of BTC's fundamentals and history.  In this regard, I tend to believe that if BTC appreciates less than 15% per year, then there is likely going to be a turning away from BTC and a conclusion that BTC has failed.


I mean really, think about a 15% per year scenario over the next 6 years of savings (starting with today's $570 price), and then think of another 15% per year projection of appreciation of BTC value as you attempt to live off of your coins.   

Year 1 (2015)  = $655.50
Year 2 (2016)  = $753.83
Year 3 (2017)  = $866.90
Year 4 (2018)  = $996.93
Year 5 (2019)  = $1,146.47
Year 6 (2020)  = $1,318.44

Don't get me wrong, this 15% is NOT a bad rate of return (compared to other traditional investments); however, you would probably need around 354 BTC (valued at $467,141 in 2020 to maintain a $30k per year withdrawal rate in today's dollars - given a continued 15% per year BTC appreciation rate.   

As I posted above (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=723219.msg8205979#msg8205979):  Continuing to assume a 4% per year inflation rate, a 15% per year BTC appreciation rate and a withdrawal rate of about 8% per year.  I think that you would mostly be able to maintain and build your BTC principle holdings (in dollar value), while beginning to withdraw BTC in 2021.

Withdrawal year 1 (2021) = BTC price $1,516.21 =   withdrawal amount = $39,478  =  BTC withdrawal 26.04 =   BTC in portfolio = 328.27

Withdrawal year 2 (2022) = BTC price $1,743.64 =   withdrawal amount = $41,057 =  BTC withdrawal 23.55 =   BTC in portfolio = 304.73

Withdrawal year 3 (2023) = BTC price $2,005.19 =   withdrawal amount  = $42,699=  BTC withdrawal 21.29 =   BTC in portfolio = 283.43

Withdrawal year 4 (2024) = BTC price $2,305.97 =   withdrawal amount = $44,407=  BTC withdrawal 19.26 =   BTC in portfolio = 264.18

Withdrawal year 5 (2025) = BTC price $2,651.86=   withdrawal amount = $46,184=  BTC withdrawal 17.42=   BTC in portfolio = 246.76

Withdrawal year 6 (2026) = BTC price $3,049.64=   withdrawal amount = $48,031=  BTC withdrawal 15.75 =   BTC in portfolio = 231.01

I think all of this is doable, reasonable and decent b/c in 2020, the dollar value of your portfolio would be $467,141, and in 2026, even after withdrawing for 6 years, the dollar value of your BTC portfolio would be $704,501.

However, I believe that BTC is much more bullish than a 15% per year appreciation rate, but it is possible to plan with such a conservative BTC appreciation rate and to merely take advantage of a greater BTC appreciation if one gets lucky to experience a few bubbles that are much greater than 15%.

i would say till 2020, you would need 66.6666 BTC. But what you plan to do then with them? If you keep them well invested you need much less.

Just a wild guess here, but to retire in 5-6 years you should have the following amount of BTC:

enough, so instead of asking these silly questions, you should go buy some, so that you will have enough.

I've just bought half bitcoin, I'll hold it long term but I don't think it will ever reach millions of $ in value...

This sub forum's predictions have become a manic-depressive joke.  When bitcoin was flying high back in Nov 2013, everyone was convinced the price would hit 10K by the end of 2014.  All the TA, trendline charts, predictions, and polls were all screaming the same mantra.  Now that we've been in a bear market for some time, everyone has turned a complete 180 degree bear/pessimist, and now is pushing out their 10K prediction to at least 2020 or later, at least 6-10 years from now.  Fkn hilarious.

I'm sure when bitcoin starts flying high again, possibly end of this year or early 2015, everyone will be utterly convinced AGAIN that it'll hit 10K by mid or end of 2015.  And they'll all be saying "I told you so!" but it will be the SAME people here today making their pessimistic 2020+ predictions.   ::)  

Now THAT is a well done analysis!  Nice work!

So if I had $201,780, I could go buy 354 BTC today.  If BTC were to rise 15% per year, then starting in 2020, I could take the prescribed withdrawals and, you're right, I could have a growing fiat amount in perpetuity...or at least, as long as BTC continued to rise 15% per year.

Very well done.

For what it's worth, I actually could buy 354 BTC right now (well, it might take me a week to move around some money).  And it is worth considering!  The only pesky problem is that the 15% would have to continue pretty much forever, or for at least 30+ years.  I'm 46.  If I stop working at 52 with $466K and change, I'd need that 15% to continue pretty predictably.  If BTC is inconsistent...what happens in 2022 if BTC isn't $1743 on the date I need to withdraw, but instead, it's $871?  Then I need to withdraw 200% more, which reduces my stash.  I could survive that once, but it's a risky proposition!  I'm also pretty much banking on a BTC rise to about $37,740 in the next 30 years.  I need it to be that when I'm 25 years into retirement AND I'm also banking on the fact that that will have enough purchasing power, either in BTC or fiat, to buy me a loaf of bread.  I've got a 2 year old (yeah, had my only kid at the age of 44) that I need to think about, as well.  

It's a solid analysis and it definitely meets the original criteria, though.  And it's actually, in theory, possible for me to do!  But I think I'll just be thankful that I actually like my job for now!

In 5-6 years the value of bitcoin could be 1 million or 1 dollar, in my opinion is totally unpredictable.

If you are referring to any of my posts in this thread as being among the pessimistic ones, I am just "playing along" with fairly conservative posts to show the numbers for such conservative but steady BTC increases within the posts - even though I tend to be much more bullish regarding my thoughts about the potential for exponential BTC price appreciation. 

NONETHELESS, I remain of the belief that we cannot necessarily bank on the more bullish and exponential price scenario taking place - even though we can put ourselves in a position to profit considerably from a more bullish scenario were it to occur.

I came to my above numbers by plugging the various assumptions into an Excel spreadsheet.  If you know about Excel spreadsheets, you could input these kinds of various assumptions into your own Excel spreadsheet and then play around with the variables (and the assumptions), including the timeline and including tweaking the year by year growth.. and maybe even convert into a quarter by quarter monitoring or month by month monitoring.

I would NOT necessarily suggest purchasing 354BTC at the moment, unless you feel that your other liquid investment assets are sufficiently diversified in order to tolerate such a weighting of your allocations towards BTC...

In other words, it is likely that you would NOT want to place all (or most) of your eggs into the one basket that has a number of assumptions that may NOT play out...

Yet, on the other hand, if BTC experiences exponential growth in any of the earlier years (or quarters) within the next 6 years, for example, you may be able to withdraw early a portion of your BTC holdings in order to diversify and to better protect against downside risk and maybe even reinvest at a later date (on the dips) a portions of your withdrawn fiat back into BTC.


By the way, from my own personal investment into BTC, I have a little different plan than the one that I outlined above.  I have a pretty good chunk of BTC (well over 100BTC); however, BTC occupies less than 10% of my total quasi-liquid financial holdings... but currently, I am investing a large quantity of new money into BTC.  I am anticipating some BTC bubbles in the future, which will cause me to reconsider the percentages allocation towards BTC.  Though currently, I am NOT really opposed to allowing my percentage allocation towards BTC to increase to a considerable quantity so long as the growth in the weighting of the investment towards BTC prices has been caused by the appreciation of BTC prices, rather than caused by my putting more fiat into it..... and so long as I consider the BTC fundamentals to remain strong in the present and into the future projection of what seems to be happening in the BTC space (such as adoption rate increasing and investment rate increasing and liquidation opportunities increasing).

In the end, with BTC, it seems like we likely need to tailor our plan to our own circumstances and risk tolerance and assumptions and then to continue to monitor our plan as the space presumably continues to grow and develop.

I think 100 btc would be great
obviously it depends on the age and the properties of each person

I still think it will be 100 to retire in comfort and be very well off
Any more and you start looking at far more than retirement but owning multiple properties around the world.
Although 7 years is still a ways away so the path to that price estimate will be interesting.

Totally agree with this.  So if you have 100 BTC and that is less than 10% of your total liquid, you must have at least $500K to $600K liquid, which, in my opinion, calls for a much different strategy than somebody who is 22 years old, just starting in the workforce, and doesn't have a ton of assets.  If I were in that place, I'd swing for the fences.  I'm in mid-career and working towards an early-ish retirement.  BTC is part of that strategy, if nothing else, as an inflation hedge, but as a small part of my total portfolio.  I've got a bunch of dry powder right now, though, so I bought this morning at $528 and change and I'll buy again on dips.  I guess if we get another hard dip (which will cause me to buy) and a run to a new high, my allocation might change!

I'm in a similar age range as you mid-to-late 40s, and I have been building various classes and quantities of assets (including some assets that are more liquid than others) for 25 years-ish....

So, yes for sure age and acquisition of assets do affect strategies, and from time to time, I reconsider my investment portfolio and my risks and my redistribute within the portfolio.

Actually, I have been considering increasing my ability to travel and to maintain my income with location independence living, and there continues to be concern about the extent to which I need to work to preserve my assets or to build my assets and whether I have enough assets and income stream to maintain my lifestyle reasonably living within my means.. and the more passive the income the better.

Last fall I was considering potential ways to hedge against the dollar b/c a lot of my assets have been very tied to the success or failure of the dollar.  In November 2013, I began reading about bitcoin in this context to want to hedge against the dollar.  Not a great time to start reading about BTC, but better later than never, and surely, i am mostly inclined towards thinking that we are still amongst the "early adopters" in the BTC space.   

After doing a quick and preliminary assessment of the bitcoin situation, I started investing in BTC at the end of November 2013, at the peak of BTC prices... However, I realized that BTC prices had just experienced about a 9x appreciation within the previous few months, so accordingly, I began to invest slowly into BTC with my first purchase at just 1.24BTC.  I was cautious b/c I felt pretty confident that BTC prices could NOT keep going up at that rate, but I still wanted to get some skin in the game, just in case the exponential growth continued (I wanted to be onboard for such). 

At that point in late November 2013, I dedicated $30k to be invested over the next approximately 6 months (until May 2014), and I thought that maybe I would end up acquiring about 30 BTC-ish during that period, while front loading my investment to some extent, in order to get some skin in the BTC game.  During that time that I was making some initial investments into BTC, I continued to read up on BTC during that time and more or less stuck with my initial BTC investment plan until about mid-February 2014.   By that point (mid-2/14), I had acquired about 26BTC for less than $20K and an average buy in price of about $750.., but BTC prices continued to be in the $600 range, which was below my then $750 buy-in average.  Accordingly, I decided to UP the amount that I was allocating towards my BTC investments b/c I had been learning more about BTC in the preceding months and I had been gaining increased confidence in its various fundamentals (including adoption, regulations, liquidity, investments,  news coverage and other factors).  

As we may recall that in late February 2014 and in mid-April 2014, BTC had two price crashes (to the $400s and into the mid-$300s respectively).   By one point in May 2014, I was able to bring down my average BTC buy-in price to $595 (including transaction fees); however, my current average BTC buy-in price is about $610.  

I do continue to buy on dips to the extent that I can attempt to figure out the dips, and I have fiat available and dedicated to buying BTC.  I try to keep some on reserve fiat on hand to be able to continue to buy on dips, but it becomes easy for me to run out of fiat when BTC prices are crashing and if I had already bought some BTC at a higher level during the crash (that I thought may have been the bottom).  

Of course, we attempt to buy on the price dips.. but who knows for sure the extent and duration to which the BTC price dips are gonna be, yet in the long run, it seems that it will NOT matter too much b/c BTC seems pretty likely and posed to have another exponential increase in price.. which will likely make up for the much sloppiness in attempting to accumulate more of it.  So, instead of acquiring 354 BTC, a person may ONLY have acquired 320 BTC, but in the end, it may NOT matter too much.. whether it was the higher or the lower amount of BTC in the portfolio.. especially if BTC happens to have one or two more exponential growth periods.