Ok, so this seems very unlikely, at least right now, but as an exercise in thought, what would happen if "the majority" decided to increase the bitcoin supply?  Everyone assumes that everyone else agrees that the bitcoin cap should remain at ~21M coins.  But given how centralized bitcoin mining has become, it wouldn't be too hard for a few large miners/mining pools to agree that the cap should be higher and then change it.

I think a lot more people know about bitcoin now, but I'm not sure how many people really understand it or know how to use it.  Anyone who has trouble with computers will likely have trouble with using bitcoin.

Another problem is that while there is a lot of demand for bitcoins, a lot of that is for investment purposes.  If you want more merchants to accept bitcoin, more customers will have to want to use it for purchases.

I won't say that $1M/bitcoin will never happen, but if it ever does, it's going to be a very long time from now.  I think bitcoin still has a lot of potential to rise a lot over the next few years, but at a certain point, it becomes harder and harder to keep bidding up the price because there's only so much money in the world.  $1M/bitcoin would mean a market cap of $1M/bitcoin x ~20M bitcoins = $20T.  That's a little more than the GDP of the entire United States.  The only two ways I can reasonably see that happening (other than waiting hundreds of years) is 1) a large enough country actually adopts bitcoin as its official currency, which I don't think is going to happen, or 2) the USA goes through a period of extreme hyperinflation, which results in a much weaker dollar and thus a much higher bitcoin-USD exchange rate.

Given how bitcoin has continued to increase in value, it seems like simply holding on to your bitcoin is a good investment.  If the long-term uptrend continues, nothing will pay nearly as well.  If you're looking for something more conservative/safer/reliable, then real estate/land is a good way to go.  Even if all of our technology blew up and we went back to the stone age, land would still be useful/valuable.

I'm going to have to disagree with this statement.  Money can only buy false versions of at least some of those things.  Money cannot buy love.  It can buy sex, but it cannot buy true, willing-to-sacrifice-for-someone-else love.  Money cannot buy real faith in someone/something/God.  And it certainly can't buy truth.  Objective truth exists, despite what some people seem to say.  People can try to change/hide/manipulate the truth, but in the end, the truth is what is, and that can't be changed.

Keep in mind that the bitcoin gold fork is not the same as the segwit2x fork.  The bitcoin gold fork is going to happen later this month, and it's supposed to use a different mining algorithm.  I haven't read a lot about it, but my impression is that bitcoin gold is being written off as another bitcoin cash-type fork...in other words, it's not going to amount to much, and it isn't expected to have a large impact on BTC.  The segwit2x fork is coming in November, and there's a lot more uncertainty about who's going to support which chain.

Yeah.  And actually that brings up an interesting question: what would happen if we end up with two coins that each receive about half of the mining power currently dedicated to bitcoin?  Would the price of each coin be about half of what bitcoin is now, so around $2100-$2200?  I guess price and hash rate are going to have to reach some kind of equilibrium after a little bit.  Low price and high hash rate are not sustainable, of course.

Obviously there's still the problem with lack of adoption.  In most places, bitcoin can't be used for everyday expenses.  Until that's fixed, cash will certainly be more convenient.  And then there's the volatility problem.  When prices are going up, that's great.  But when they're falling, that could cause a lot of headaches.  When I take money to the store, I want to know that when I check out an hour from now, the price is still going to be the same.  If I'm using bitcoin and it plunges a few percent in that time, that's a big problem.

Right now, I think bitcoin is a great investment, but it still has a long way to go before it can take the place of cash in all situations.

What do you mean by recognizing bitcoin as an official currency?  Are we talking about considering a legit form of payment, or are we talking about a country adopting it as its official currency?  As other have said, Japan seems to be the furthest along the road to using it as an actual currency.  Given how much they like cutting-edge tech, they will probably continue to lead the world.  If we're talking about bitcoin becoming a country's de facto currency, I doubt that will happen.  It may be recognized alongside another country's own currency, but I don't think it will replace it.  Governments need control over their own currencies or they will end up with economic problems.  Look at the issues that Europe has been having with the Euro over the past several years.

It’s hard to determine exactly how many people have how much bitcoin because it’s hard to know how many wallet addresses any given person owns, but I think something like the top few percent own like 80-90% of the bitcoins.

In the normal fiat world, rich people have better access to credit at better interest rates for borrowing money, they get better rates and thus more interest when they lend money, they tend to have better access to insider info that makes it easier to invest successfully, they have access to potentially more profitable investments, they have the ability to move smaller markets by themselves which can start rallies or crashes that they can use to their advantage, etc.  Rich bitcoin holders can’t do as many of these things, but they should have the ability to move the markets to their advantage, if they so choose.

Why do you think that the price will hit bottom in January?  At least in the US, stock markets have historically tended to drop in the summer months (on average), and some of the worst crashes have occurred in the September-October timeframe.  This has led to the “sell in May and go away” adage.  Besides, bitcoin marches to the beat of its own drum.  I don’t think there’s much correlation between bitcoin and the stock markets of the world.  If anything, significant stock drops may lead more people to invest in bitcoin and other cryptos.

I would not go by what a single analyst says.  What is his/her reasoning for such a precise prediction?  It's important to read what several analysts think, making sure that you pay attention to what both the bulls and the bears have to say.  It's important to find balance so you can come to your own logical conclusions that are hopefully as unbiased as possible (though of course there will always be some bias).

Basically, the author of that article is claiming that anytime bitcoin forks, the value of the forked coin will be subtracted from the value of the original bitcoin.  In other words, the author believes that the total price/value/market cap between the two coins is going to be conserved.  For example, if BTC was worth $4000 before the fork, then BTC + BCH would be worth $4000 after the fork.  So if BCH ends up at $1000, BTC would end up at $3000.

Additionally, the author claims that any value that appeared to be added around the time of the fork would have ended up in the original coin if the fork hadn't occurred.  Using the same example, if BCH ends up at $1000 and BTC remains at $4000, then BTC actually would have risen to $5000 if there had been no fork.

While I think there is a lot of logic and likely some truth to these assertions, I think that reality is much more complex than this.  For example, if everyone decided to invest extra fiat in BCH that they otherwise would not have invested in BTC, then BTC's price would be unaffected by the fork.

God, family/friends, job/money...that's how things need to be ordered if you want to be truly happy.  Money is a tool--a means to an end, not an end in itself.

I must say, I'm quite heartened by the responses I see here.  Considering that bitcointalk is a forum dedicated to the discussion of money, I honestly thought that more people would be putting too much emphasis on money and neglecting God and other people.  It's great to see that so many people have it right.

What's really sad is that this really has nothing to do with what kind of country you live in.  The status that money bestows is just as important in first world countries.  Even though a lot of the poor in richer countries may work just as hard or harder than some of the rich people (I'm blessed not to have had to do it, but I'm sure that working two jobs to make ends meet is quite exhausting), they're still looked down upon by many.  They don't get the same respect or priority that people in the middle and upper classes get.

It is extremely unlikely that the distribution of bitcoin will become more uniform with time.  That's not how capital markets work.  As a whole, the rich continue to get richer because they have a significant advantage if they want and know how to use it to manipulate markets, which is even easier in the crypto space because of the lack of regulation.  The more money/bitcoins you have, the easier it is to make more.

Yeah, there seems to be a lot more concern out there about which way the big players are going to go.  And it's not just about which way they initially choose to go, but also which way they ultimately choose to go, which may not be the same.  If a bunch of entities jump to the new fork, but a bunch refuse, we could end up with a very messy tug-of-war that cause a lot of chaos until things resolve one way or the other.  Hopefully the general direction that everyone is going to take will become clear as we approach the fork.  Otherwise, we may see a huge selloff prior the fork, if no one has a clue about what's going to happen.

I understand what the author in that article is saying, and it mostly makes sense, but it's not necessarily true.  That view is too simplistic and is only guaranteed to be true in a vacuum where people have to invest in something, and the only options are bitcoin and bitcoin cash.  The real markets are much more complicated than that.

Reading through a number of these posts, I find it very interesting that the vast majority of people here on the forum found out about bitcoin either from friends or family.  Not too many people seem to be saying that they heard about it on the news first.  I'm a little surprised, as bitcoin became quite widely publicized back in 2013.  But I guess that goes to show how powerful word-of-mouth can be.

My brother got me involved at the end of 2013.  It was a lot more fun back then--that was the beginning of the alt coin explosion, and it was worthwhile to mine most of them.  I found the mining part to be the most fun.  But that's not really feasible anymore unless you have ASICs or other specialized hardware.  That, I think, has made it harder for newcomers to get involved in the whole ecosystem.