There should be a "Meh" option in that poll.

"Re: BULL RUN has begun!! BITCOIN to EXPLODE."

Get a grip. The price has gone from $320 to $336. Big deal. A week ago it was around $350. A month ago, around $375. A year ago, around $700. For the last several months, it's been around $350 ± 50. Anything within that range is just noise.

Over half the potential Bitcoins have already been mined. 64%, actually.  That gives a sense of the real time scale involved.

Ancient pre-bubble history.

The price has been wandering around in the $300 - $400 range for months. Once in a while there's a brief excursion outside that range, then it comes back.

The current price is below an hour ago, a day ago, a week ago, a month ago, and a year ago. What bull market?

GAW seems to have planted a rumor that they will "support" the price at $20. But it's around $6 now based on the price at CoinSwap.

This thing has terminology like a pyramid scheme, with "prime controllers" and "3 month hash stakers". The 3-month lock-in just screams "Ponzi scheme".

Bitcoin needs an endless supply of new money to keep the price up.

Interestingly, merchant adoption is now viewed as a negative for the price of Bitcoin. It discourages "HODLing". Yet without Bitcoin being used as a medium of exchange, what's the point? Bitcoin doesn't generate any income.

The real drivers for the use of Bitcoin turned out to be uses that got around some governmental restriction. Silk Road drove the first bubble, and  China's exchange controls drove the second. Crackdowns on both of those were successful, and those bubbles popped.

That's where we are now. Where's the upside potential? (And none of that "civilization is going to collapse and only Bitcoin will be valuable" crap. Not helping.)

It's amusing to see speculators complaining about merchant adoption. If Bitcoin isn't used for transactions, it's not good for anything.

The median of the guesses is in the $2K-$3K range. 

With the current price at $317, 2014 will end in the $100 - $500 range. That's a big target. Next year, please provide poll options no more than 2x apart. 

Usage on those services is tiny. Overstock did $3M in Bitcoin business in 2014. Paypal and Microsoft accept Bitcoin only for some very limited purposes. TigerDirect accepts Bitcoin mostly as an old promotion; their Bitcoin page is trying to sell obsolete Radeon GPUs for Bitcoin mining. (They're out of stock on their sale of old Butterfly Labs units.)

Overstock isn't paying anything like 5% on credit card transactions. People running a business out of their parents' basement pay 5%. Big companies pay around 1%.

Well, at 1.8 days to go, the estimate is -0.95%. Mining activity has stopped growing for now.

There's another approach, which is to register as a broker/dealer with the SEC, and become an exchange listed with the SEC. That bypasses state regulation. But you have to pass the exams every broker passes, meet capital requirements, undergo a background check, have audits, pay for insurance, and be regulated. This interferes with the "take the money and run" business model used by most Bitcoin exchanges.

Microsoft won't sell you an XBox, or any other Microsoft product, for Bitcoins. All they'll take Bitcoins for are the junk items you used to have to use "Microsoft Point" for. In-game items, cheap apps, that kind of thing. Stuff that doesn't cost Microsoft anything.

At 3 days to go, it's going to be close to 0 again.

That depends on your banking arrangements. If you have an account with a US stockbroker that's also a bank, they know you, and you have a reasonable balance there, wire transfers happen very fast.

The Winkelvoss ETF is a dump. They bought Bitcoins a long time ago, and have too many to sell without crashing the market. Their ETF scheme cashes them out of Bitcoins.

Microsoft: "You can’t use Bitcoin to purchase Microsoft products and services directly at this time." Microsoft is using Bitcoin for the things that used to be sold for Microsoft Points - in-app purchases, game items, and other junk. Those are low-risk items for Microsoft - they cost little or nothing to make, and have no resale value.

Microsoft isn't accepting Bitcoin for Microsoft product or services. Their announcement says "You can’t use Bitcoin to purchase Microsoft products and services directly at this time." They're accepting it only for the low-value things you used to have to buy "Microsoft points" for - various in-app purchases, in-game items, and such. Stuff that doesn't cost Microsoft anything, basically.

Microsoft is not accepting Bitcoin for Microsoft products. Microsoft is only accepting Bitcoin for Microsoft partners who sell through Microsoft's online store system. From the Microsoft page:  "You can only use Bitcoin to add money to your Microsoft account and then purchase digital goods at select Microsoft online stores. You can’t use Bitcoin to purchase Microsoft products and services directly at this time."