This makes no sense. If you invest $100 in BTC ( regardless of the BTC/USD rate) and BTC/USD goes up 5%, you've made 5%. Doesn't matter if 1 BTC costs $1 or $10000 - you've still made 5%.

BTC is subdivided into 100 000 000 "satoshi". If necessary, these could be further subdivided. No one's particularly talking about doing that because the cost of one satoshi is negligible. No matter how little money you have - you can buy BTC. No matter how little BTC you buy - you'll make the same profit (or loss) as everyone else buying at the same price as you.

This "Bitcoin is too expensive" nonsense is silly.

Last year the price ranged between ~$200 and ~$300 - I was buying around $220 and selling (derivatives) around $300. In November that period of trading within a range ended - price crashed through $300, and hasn't returned since (except briefly, once, in intraday trading in mid-November).

When were you buying at $300?

@1Referee:

I'm not seeing the problem there, to be honest. At the final analysis, the miners get to decide which is the "best version" - the same as it's always been. The only thing different now compared to the past is that there are choices besides Core.

Oh, and one of them has to win - same as it's always been!

@talks_cheep:

Much as it pains me to be the voice of doom to your voice of restraint - I think if we hit $410 we're probably going a good way further down. However, I think there's a better chance of breaking through ~$425 and going a good way further up. I think the likelihood of sitting around $410 is pretty remote.

No matter how high the price rises, people with less money will always have the chance to buy BTC. They will get less for their money, but that applies to people with more money as well.

1 BTC is subdivided into 100 000 000 satoshis, and even these could be further subdivided in the future.

Saying that people with less money don't have the chance to buy BTC is like saying people with less money can't buy land because the cost of 1 acre is too high. Obviously people can - and do - buy less than 1 acre. Obviously people can - and do - buy much less than 1 BTC. If the price of 1 BTC rises by 5% everyone holding any BTC makes a profit (on paper) of 5% - regardless of how much BTC they hold.

But we've never been able to know what will happen with the value later. Predicting the future isn't possible. Not with BTC price, not with stock prices, not with sports events, not with anything. You knew that, right, before you started investing in BTC?

The price not even rising now isn't "very bad". It's simply the price not rising.

That seems quite a stretch. Even assuming you're correct, and there's an inverse correlation between BTC and ETH, it wouldn't automatically mean that BTC depends on ETH - it could be the reverse (and, given that until very recently the only option for ETH traders was to go via BTC, ETH depending on BTC does seem much more likely).

Maybe you're right, but pretty much every central bank disagrees with you. There are a few fixed exchange rates - CNY was fixed until 2005, but that was the last large currency to be fixed.

I tend to think the more volatile currency pairs are most interesting, so I guess the currencies within the pairs are quite interesting in their own right.

The (30-day) volatility of BTC/USD (1.19%) isn't that far from EUR/USD's volatility (0.76%). I don't have data to hand (I grabbed the raw data from Bitcoincharts and fed it into a spreadsheet) but the average weekly change in price for BTC/USD is about 2.75%.

I see last year's rise - after an extended period at $200-$300 - as part of the second halving being "priced in".

Will do for what? The OP asked "Can all of you bitcoin and market gurus please explain for a dumb kid like me WHY bitcoin will and can be worth 1000-3000 USD?" They did not ask for respondents to pull new numbers out of their backsides. Being in the speculation section doesn't mean "ignore the OP and answer whatever you fancy".

How has BTC volatility affected your business? (And why didn't you investigate the existence of tools to hedge against volatility, the same type of tools people use when transacting with multiple fiat currencies?)

There's this - not sure if there's anything more officicial, but this was published right after the February roundtable, by the participants.

You're just substituting the question "why $1000?" for the new question "why $900?"

Why $900?

We know the block reward reduction will occur, we even know (roughly) when it will occur. But how does this tell us that $900 (and not more) will be the post-halfing price? If people buy lots of BTC - why $900? Why not $1000-$3000? Or why not $650?

What does "TA doesn't really work that much on bitcoin" mean?

It's analysis - someone either analyses something, or they don't. It's not something that "works" - it's a process by which people develop a better understanding of what price has done. If you've tried TA and you failed to understand historic price movements better, well, you have my sympathies but it's hardly proof that "TA doesn't really work".

Back in the day it also sometimes took hours just to get one confirmation. That's the nature of a random distribution - most of the time you're near the mean, some of the time there's a deviation from that.

Anyway, here's a graph of confirmation times. It looks to me like most confirmations take less than 9 minutes, a good minute under the 10 minute target. (Though this only includes transactions including a fee - but that goes without saying, right?)

Agreed - here's four weeks in 2013 (leading up to and including the most recent all-time high). Starting at $200 it doubled in two weeks, then the next two weeks saw it reach $1000.

That was then, obviously, and this is now, but given the dramatic rises in the past a doubling in price over a two week period seems almost restrained - and certainly possible, given the November 2015 increase you mentioned.

Is Bitcoin more convenient?

Genuine question - I hate Paypal with a passion, haven't used it in a decade or so, I avoid sites that force me to use Paypal, etc. But I'm a consumer, not a retailer. If I was a retailer I'd be wanting to consider things like multiple currencies, and hedging against exchange rate shifts. Is there a service comparable to Paypal that lets me take BTC and other (fiat) currencies, while ensuring that the payments I receive are in my preferred currency?

It seems to me that Paypal got where it is by offering a whole load of added value on top of its core product. I believe the same services could be provided within the Bitcoin ecosystem, but are they, and by one convenient provider?

And is the price dropping?

...because it's easier to conflate an entire culture with miners from many countries, united only by their shared involvement in mining pools that are based in China?

I have this crazy idea that miners base their actions on rational self-interest. Pools, too. I can't see how this would change, even if pools were primarily based in - say - the Czech Republic (nods head towards Slush and the BCT historians).