I wouldn't bet against seeing $1000 by the end of the year, it's possible, but this doesn't exclude not reaching a new ATH in the next 12 months. Basically, I see the price swinging between $500 and previous ATH ($1000-$1200) for the next 12 months.

Ok, I see now where we differ.

I am confused, where do we disagree?
I say in the next 12 months no new ATH is possible, that is, the old ATH at around $1000-1200 will not be violated.
What's your take?

We'll find out soon enough if there is enough demand to take Bitcoin to the price of your dream. I don't see this kind of demand happening yet, not in the next 12 months.

$600->$1000 would perfectly fit the definition of a bull market. Bull market doesn't mean the price goes 5x-10x every time If it was that easy, everyone would be millionaires.

When it's an established commodity/stock, when its market cap is large enough, it takes much more capital than before to move the market, hence the gains of the previous bull markets can hardly be compared.

How do you say the impact on the market is minimal when the attacker is looking to acquire... how much, 20-50% of total PoS coin in circulation? These actions will generate huge volume across all exchanges, the attacker's own volume or counter parties' who hedge their bets. The markets of cryptos are very thin (even Bitcoin, not to mention less known coins), the price will jump and generate a lot of demand from speculators, many of whom withdraw. Soon the price on the actual crypto market will detach from paper market derivatives, the actual crypto will be traded at a premium to paper derivatives, this again noticeable to everyone. Paper derivatives will be losing their credibility, same as happening with some real commodities. The more they lose credibility, the more the premium the actual crypto/commodity trades at.

For an established PoS coin like NXT actions of a rogue trader are unlikely to cause chaos. There were a few million of NXTs dumped on the market by a hacker who stole from kLee, the price spiked down, but recovered very quickly to the level before the dump. The lower the price, the more value traders come out to buy an established valuable crypto and the more they can acquire for the same amount of fiat, so the attacker would be shooting themselves in the foot very quickly with short trading. And because the traded supply on exchanges is very thin relative to total supply of NXTs, the attacker or the attacker's counter parties would have to own too much of the coin to be able to constantly dump to break the market to the downside, because all those value traders would be out there collecting cheap coins dumped on to them. I fail to see where the counter parties of the attacker would have got that many coins from to sell at the actual market.

What you describe here is a theoretical risk that is two orders of magnitude more difficult to realize (in terms of cash you need) than the 51% attack on a PoW coin.

Miners are welcome!

Correct me if I am wrong, but CFDs is not the actual commodity being traded. There is no delivery of commodity if CFD is bought, everything is cash settled. CFD price is following price of commodity exchanges or crypto exchanges in the case of cryptos, not leading it.

So if an attacker buys actual crypto commodity in large amounts on one exchange with one hand and at the same time sells CFD with another hand at another broker/exchange, the price on the first exchange would start growing, everyone will rush to buy (people like to buy when the price grows), the price will be growing even more, arbitrageurs will quickly jump on board and make sure the price is about the same on all exchanges and with all brokers (now the attacker's short position is well under water).

If the attacker keeps persisting and demand from the attacker and other people keeps growing, the attacker will soon have to cover their short position in CFDs with a huge loss because the broker will send a margin call or would have to add cash to maintain it. In the end, because people take delivery of the crypto, the attacker would have to close short positions at a loss, no matter how much fiat the attacker has, because the crypto would be depleted at exchanges and price goes to infinity (remember: 95-99% of traders don't take delivery of wheat, copper or steel, but many take delivery of cryptos because it's very easy to do).

Yes, I know it's possible with BTC and LTC with some brokers, but BTC and LTC are not Proof-of-Stake, hence the exchange itself doesn't have to make sure the customer is not doing funky operations with those coins. In case of PoS, it will be in the exchange's own economic interests to make sure that is not happening, because it will jeopardize their reputation (see above for huge volume and price staying the same, this is a big red flag not to trade on that exchange and be sure it will be publicized very quickly).

Paper derivatives market in cryptos is not going to be anything large to worry about due to the fact that it's very easy to take delivery of crypto currencies, whereas it would be a major hassle if you tried that with commodities in real life (95% of commodity traders do not take delivery and brokers know that, hence they allow them to do highly leveraged trading - some allow 1:10, 1:25 leverage for commodities which is crazy). This incurs the risk of the exchange's reserves being depleted, immediately noticeable by everyone on the blockchain. So, yes, commodities, fiat currencies, stocks - paper derivatives on top of them are very easy to implement. As for crypto currencies - it's not going to work on any large scale.

If the price stays the same, it will be easy for others to buy and withdraw, soon there won't be enough for everyone. The price has to rise to satisfy demand, depleting people's fiat that they can buy with. If that doesn't happen, the available supply will soon be bought up and withdrawn from the exchange.

Please see my previous post about decentralized gateways also, that NXT is implementing making centralized exchanges irrelevant.

I am not so sure about a quick run-up to test the all-time high, the ATH will be tested, yeah, but I believe a gradual price rise to that level will be taking place. Because there will be many sellers all the way to ATH, it can't happen quickly. Miners have invested a lot in hardware in 2014 and they will be selling many bitcoins to get a ROI - this won't be easy with difficulty rising so much => new daily supply of 3600 Bitcoins has to be absorbed by the market, earlier hodlers will be selling to take profits. There is no fake Mt.Gox bot trading any more to keep the price artificially higher, there is no China (at least no easy way for the Chinese to participate).

All in all, I think the bulls will be moderately victorious over the next 12 months and will take the price to $1k but no higher, selling pressure will be huge too, all these large and small merchants (Overstock, Newegg, Tigedirect, etc) add to the selling pressure, because they sell 90% of Bitcoins for cash (which is equivalent to hodlers selling Bitcoins) and mainstream adoption is not happening on such a large scale as we would like to dream (common folks are still not quite sure why they need Bitcoin and many of them can't handle it securely losing to hackers, etc).

Impossible to look into longer than 12 months from now.

When it goes to $0.10, this 5 cents now will look cheap to you and $0.10 will look expensive. When it goes again to 50 cents, 10 cents will look cheap, and so on, you get the idea

Short answer: No.

Long answer: it's a quick way for that exchange to be out of business if the exchange doesn't limit the short position of that customer (it's not like naked short selling is present on many exchanges now, because exchanges understand the limited supply nature of crypto currencies and that they can quickly go bankrupt if they allow this naked short selling, or at least with something over 1:2 leverage).

If the attacker withdraws, this will be noticeable immediately, because blockchain is transparent, people will notice the exchange's reserves are depleting and will do mass withdrawals too.

There is no economic incentive for an exchange to allow customers to have large short positions, because if the price stays the same, they lose on: a) fees (the larger the fiat price of a crypto, the larger the fee they can collect, because the fee is usually set in crypto); b) bad reputation for the exchange, people will notice that volume of trading is huge, but the price stays the same, meaning something funky is going on on that exchange, and will go to other exchanges. This funky business may have worked with Mt.Gox, because the willybot kept the price to the upside, so people were ok with that, but won't work, if volume is going up significantly, but price stays the same, it's not natural and means someone is doing something criminal.

Besides, in NXT, for example, there are plans to go to decentralized gateways and multigateways to deposit/withdraw, multigateway is already developed and functioning on live net, centralized exchanges don't fit the decentralized concept of NXT, they are a single point of failure, an entity you have to trust, hence they will not be relevant in the future.

I am sure, there are other nuances why this attack is not possible in practise, at least for an established crypto like NXT, but those above should be enough for now.

Trees don't grow to the sky, you know. My sentiment is justified. Anyway, Bitcoin is still good for prudent investment in the next 12 months.

I didn't say 'price will never go above $1k in the next months/years', I said, in the next 12 months it's not likely, can you spot the difference? I have a moderately bullish view on Bitcoin in the next 12 months ($600->$1000 is a very good ROI). I know it's not an overly optimistic view that some people have who hope to see $5k in 2014, wouldn't you agree that kind of optimism is a stretch? What is your prediction on the price?

Interest should pick up for various reasons, however, price is unlikely to go above $1000 in the next 12 months, sideways price action is most probable.

Hashrate/difficulty doesn't necessarily mean the coin is useful, ASICs got added to the network recently, miners hoping to get a ROI. Not useful = dead. It paused falling for now, nothing falls in a straight line, but it'll resume its fall soon. Miners hoping to get a ROI doesn't necessarily mean they will get it.

Actual amount of units in supply doesn't matter as long as it's predictable.

Try to log out and log back in. This is being worked on in the 1.3 release and should be resolved in August.

Most people are not tech savvy to set up a cold storage securely or keep their computer secure from trojans and viruses and will be losing their Bitcoins to hackers. That's why either: a) no mainstream adoption will happen or b) Bitcoin banks will be organized more and more who will store bitcoins for a fee. And of course, these banks will engage in fractional reserve activities, it's just human nature to exploit these profit opportunities. People will only withdraw a small portion of bitcoins for spending, the rest can be loaned out for banks to make profits on top of them.

Encouraging spending by raising your Importance if you spend is an artificial measure. Will it work? We'll see, some time in a few months when NEM has been released to live network and most nasty bugs have been worked out. Artificial measures have to fight free market natural forces, usually free market wins in the long run, but maybe this time it's different.

As for the price of NEM, my take on it is those who wanted to buy it already did, those who buy value and seek to buy under market will wait till many of those initial stakeholders dump (and they will dump, there will be a lot of impatient ones among them just like in any investment).

You missed the boat? What are you talking about? The price was great in April-May, before AE launched, that's true, but it's still low. It can't go to April-May valuation, because NXT added a great feature. It will add more new features in the next week and we'll never see this 7k-8k satoshi price again.

One thing is for certain: you will miss the boat if you keep thinking the way you think about missing the boat. It's more constructive to think of it as several boats departing, and you just need to pick one and get on board. The boat departs when the price hits the bottom, it did hit the new bottom in the past 2 weeks, the next bottom will be after the next all time high, so hurry up or you'll have to wait for the next boat.