The Curious Case of Bitcoin & Wall Street

[lorix]

Folks, we seem to be living under the ancient curse of "May you live in interesting times" with more to come. Just what a future with Bitcoin means is both a terrifying and exhilarating ride on the crest of a financial wave that will either crash early or build to tsunami-like proportions, economically sweeping aside everything in it's path.

I'm hoping for the latter.

All being said, as the revolution continues I've been considering Bitcoin place among other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the undisputed king, the gold standard of them all but with the recent rise of several secondary coins in value I am wondering if we one day see Bitcoin's value become so incredibly high (100K+) that it becomes wholly a store of value as some investors already see it as. BTC may come to be seen as so valuable that rather than adopting smaller units as currency it instead becomes "digital gold bullion" to be held and traded at the top end of the market for quantities of some secondary coin (or fiat if desired) that is the day-to-day cryptocurrency the general public uses?

Personally, I hold positions in both BTC and LTC and a few other minor coins but I have a feeling that if the future plays out as a mirror of the physical economic system we will see several distinct classes of cryptocurrency, with BTC and LTC (or whatever) as the Gold and Silver of the new world and other more plentiful coins becoming the world unit currencies.

Perhaps one day I will give my grandchildren a still loaded 1 BTC Casascius coin to hold and they will thrill at how rare and valuable the small thing they are holding in their hands is worth.

Am I daydreaming here or does this sound possible and plausible? 

[pa]

Given Bitcoin's divisibility, lower-priced alt-coins would offer no compelling marginal benefit and would be far riskier (owing to 51% attack vulnerability and far less vetting by security experts). So far I have not heard of any alt-coin except for zerocoin (if it ever materializes) and namecoin (as a censor-proof DNS enabler) that I would find desireable.

[evoked22]

Given Bitcoin's divisibility, lower-priced alt-coins would offer no compelling marginal benefit and would be far riskier (owing to 51% attack vulnerability and far less vetting by security experts). So far I have not heard of any alt-coin except for zerocoin (if it ever materializes) and namecoin (as a censor-proof DNS enabler) that I would find desireable.

Look into timekoin, orbit coin and datacoin. They might interest you

[lorix]

I'd agree - there is a place for utility coins whose proof-of-work involves solving some real world problem.

Whether or not this will lead to a protein folding "FoldCoin" or drug testing "CancerCoin" is another matter, but I could imagine in the future perhaps the underlying value of utility coins could be set based on a per-proof bounty that is honored by eg a major drug company or research foundation once a "solution" is derived.

Food for thought.

[jdbtracker]

Given Bitcoin's divisibility, lower-priced alt-coins would offer no compelling marginal benefit and would be far riskier (owing to 51% attack vulnerability and far less vetting by security experts). So far I have not heard of any alt-coin except for zerocoin (if it ever materializes) and namecoin (as a censor-proof DNS enabler) that I would find desireable.

I had a great experience today; I setup Namecoin with the nmcsocks and started roaming the web... man is it ever faster to have my own dns server off the blockchain; You come to appreciate that kind of stuff, it gives it value.

What an Irony though, that we seem to have simply emulated the stock markets... we somehow broke the mold that was cast around them, all those regulations and controls.
Seeing all the alt-coins out there and even what I would call micro-coins finding their niche markets, possibly creating prediction markets organically from the grass roots; That is one more service that the regular financial system cannot provide... I wonder what is next.

The whole concept of DACs really brings this into perspective; Every financial service available to the regular system is available to implement with a blockchain, It's only a matter of time before they dive in, We are going to become the new 1%;How about that for the curious case for Bitcoin & Wall st.

[titulng]

I really not blieve.

[Desensitizer]

Although I think that bitcoins will definitely rise I think that 100k is a huge over-estimate. Given the fact there will be so many bitcoins that is an incredible sum of money. It also far surpasses the value of any other form of currency by far that is currently comparable to the dollar. I'd say 5-10k is a more realistic final value but I could be wrong.

[Sephera]

Although I think that bitcoins will definitely rise I think that 100k is a huge over-estimate. Given the fact there will be so many bitcoins that is an incredible sum of money. It also far surpasses the value of any other form of currency by far that is currently comparable to the dollar. I'd say 5-10k is a more realistic final value but I could be wrong.

What is the total amount of US dollar in circulation including electronic. Divide that by the no. of bitcoin, well I think that will be the case years from now.

[Francky85]

Although I think that bitcoins will definitely rise I think that 100k is a huge over-estimate. Given the fact there will be so many bitcoins that is an incredible sum of money. It also far surpasses the value of any other form of currency by far that is currently comparable to the dollar. I'd say 5-10k is a more realistic final value but I could be wrong.

What is the total amount of US dollar in circulation including electronic. Divide that by the no. of bitcoin, well I think that will be the case years from now.

1.23 Trillion USD in circulation, divide that by the 12.5 Million Bitcoins currently and you get $98,000 per bitcoin.

[zimmah]

Exactly the opposite. Bitcoin is a commodity now, and once it stabiles it will be recognized as a currency. (Which will increase its value as well)

[LiteCoinGuy]

Given Bitcoin's divisibility, lower-priced alt-coins would offer no compelling marginal benefit and would be far riskier (owing to 51% attack vulnerability and far less vetting by security experts). So far I have not heard of any alt-coin except for zerocoin (if it ever materializes) and namecoin (as a censor-proof DNS enabler) that I would find desireable.

would agree here. namecoins is a nice idea but the dev team is poor but Zerocoin is a very interesting project and will be launched in 2014. take a look:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=362468.msg3878992#msg3878992

[indiemax]

Although I think that bitcoins will definitely rise I think that 100k is a huge over-estimate. Given the fact there will be so many bitcoins that is an incredible sum of money. It also far surpasses the value of any other form of currency by far that is currently comparable to the dollar. I'd say 5-10k is a more realistic final value but I could be wrong.

What is the total amount of US dollar in circulation including electronic. Divide that by the no. of bitcoin, well I think that will be the case years from now.

1.23 Trillion USD in circulation, divide that by the 12.5 Million Bitcoins currently and you get $98,000 per bitcoin.

Yes, but that is only the US ,Bitcoin is global, your estimate would be way off if you include the gobal economy

[jdbtracker]

the global economy with all m0 -m4 monies around the world is 300 Trillion Dollars, of which the U.S circulation only makes up about 25 Trillion(guesstimate).

Yeah I know Bitcoin will not reach that... but all those wallstreet types? their going to come to the party late, all the alt-coins will be booked up, They have dedicated teams to make things happen but their employees have no incentive to innovate the way we do... so likely to copy and paste our model making them a second tier currency. It's their lack of originality, but they do have the home court advantage when it comes to gaining trust, too many scammers in this space, could hurt the cryptoeconomy for years before we can adapt to wall st.'s  might.