Can bitcoins break $5,000 in 20 years?

[btcnode]

http://www.shamoon.me/post/29347988378/bitcoins-to-break-5-000-btc-in-20-years - based on this post, it seems economically sound to predict that the price will break $5,000 in 20 years. What do you think?

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[unclescrooge]

You can't predict how much a currency like bitcoin will be used in the future.


You can only help make it more used

[Kupsi]

5 years 

[btcnode]

You can't predict how much a currencie like bitcoin will be used in the future.


You can only help make it more used

Agreed 

[Spekulatius]

5 years 

+1

[DeathAndTaxes]

We know that there are only 21,000,000 bitcoins that will ever be created and that’ll happen around 2032.

Um no but we will have close to 21 million in 2032.  The subsidy won't go to zero BTC for ~130 years.

[zhalox]

Unless the developers resolve the blockchain size issues by then, you'll need a hefty hard drive just to run it, and all the noobs will wait weeks just to download a several terabyte-sized blockchain.  Hopefully the open-source aspect will bring more devs who can contribute to help bitcoin evolve into the best cryptocurrency available

[silverbox]

I just bought a 1.5Tbyte drive for $75..

think its big enuf for the future blockchain??

[DeathAndTaxes]

Unless the developers resolve the blockchain size issues by then, you'll need a hefty hard drive just to run it, and all the noobs will wait weeks just to download a several terabyte-sized blockchain.  Hopefully the open-source aspect will bring more devs who can contribute to help bitcoin evolve into the best cryptocurrency available

noob (and probably 99% of users) will be running lite clients.  

Some optimization (multi-peer downloads, removing double validation, and pruning tx) will go a long way towards make the full nodes more efficient HOWEVER over the same period of time (especially under a $5,000 BTC scenario) transaction volume will explode to many magnitudes of current volume so net-net the requirements of full nodes are very likely to INCREASE.

TL/DR If developers make the client download the blockchain 10x faster but the blockchain is now 200x as large although more efficient the demands on a full node will have increased not decreased.

[notme]

I just bought a 1.5Tbyte drive for $75..

think its big enuf for the future blockchain??

Assuming the block size limit isn't raised, it will take 57 years before the blockchain overflows that drive.

[proudhon]

Not going to happen.  I doubt we'll ever see $100 BTCs much less BTCs selling regularly for thousands of USD per BTC.  Not in 20 years, not in 100 years.  Just think about how much bid depth you'd have to have to absorb even 1000BTCs at $5000 without slipping, say, 10%.  At just $100/BTC you'd have to have somebody with a single $100,000 bid at 100$/BTC not get any slippage.

The price might make another go at the previous all time high, but just like the pump and dump that induced that high last time, it won't hold there but momentarily because there simply is not, and probably will never be, the necessary depth to keep the price up.  I'm confident we haven't seen the last of single digits, and we'll probably still be seeing single digits years from now.

[DeathAndTaxes]

That is the silliest reason ever.  The nominal units don't matter market depth is market depth.  Slippage of pennies on a $100 coin is negligible.  What would matter if say the accumulated orders from $100.00 to $100.10 (0.1% slippage).

Are you saying $100 BTC w/ 21 million coins isn't possible but somehow $10 BTC w/ 210 million coins would be possible?

[silverbox]

I just bought a 1.5Tbyte drive for $75..

think its big enuf for the future blockchain??

Assuming the block size limit isn't raised, it will take 57 years before the blockchain overflows that drive.

Damn.. Better buy a bigger hard drive!!

[dree12]

I just bought a 1.5Tbyte drive for $75..

think its big enuf for the future blockchain??

Assuming the block size limit isn't raised, it will take 57 years before the blockchain overflows that drive.

I doubt this assumption is accurate. With projected Bitcoin growth, we'd see closer to a drive that big every seven blocks in 57 years.

Calculations:

In 57 years Bitcoin will be the only form of currency on Earth. The population of Earth is projected to be nine billion. The average person performs 100 transactions a month. That is around 0.0231 transactions per person per block. In total, that is 208 million transactions per block. The average transaction size is around 1 KB. Therefore, there will be 208 GB on average per block in 57 years.

[Atheros]

I doubt this assumption is accurate. With projected Bitcoin growth, we'd see closer to a drive that big every seven blocks in 57 years.

Calculations:

In 57 years Bitcoin will be the only form of currency on Earth. The population of Earth is projected to be nine billion. The average person performs 100 transactions a month. That is around 0.0231 transactions per person per block. In total, that is 208 million transactions per block. The average transaction size is around 1 KB. Therefore, there will be 208 GB on average per block in 57 years.

There is no way most transactions will be hitting the block chain 57 years from now. It probably won't even be 1%.

[notme]

I just bought a 1.5Tbyte drive for $75..

think its big enuf for the future blockchain??

Assuming the block size limit isn't raised, it will take 57 years before the blockchain overflows that drive.

I doubt this assumption is accurate. With projected Bitcoin growth, we'd see closer to a drive that big every seven blocks in 57 years.

Calculations:

In 57 years Bitcoin will be the only form of currency on Earth. The population of Earth is projected to be nine billion. The average person performs 100 transactions a month. That is around 0.0231 transactions per person per block. In total, that is 208 million transactions per block. The average transaction size is around 1 KB. Therefore, there will be 208 GB on average per block in 57 years.

Yes, but as you clearly demonstrated, if you reject that assumption you have to make even more assumptions that have no reliable basis and you end up with mere speculation.

[FreeMoney]

I doubt this assumption is accurate. With projected Bitcoin growth, we'd see closer to a drive that big every seven blocks in 57 years.

Calculations:

In 57 years Bitcoin will be the only form of currency on Earth. The population of Earth is projected to be nine billion. The average person performs 100 transactions a month. That is around 0.0231 transactions per person per block. In total, that is 208 million transactions per block. The average transaction size is around 1 KB. Therefore, there will be 208 GB on average per block in 57 years.

There is no way most transactions will be hitting the block chain 57 years from now. It probably won't even be 1%.

It won't be close to 1% in just a decade.

Already even with virtually free blockchain tx, Seals has done about 12000 blockchain transactions in a year, but we do almost 2000 multi-way balance updates each day.

[Melbustus]

http://www.shamoon.me/post/29347988378/bitcoins-to-break-5-000-btc-in-20-years - based on this post, it seems economically sound to predict that the price will break $5,000 in 20 years. What do you think?

Short answer is, yes, it's possible. But it could also be $0/btc in 20yrs. That's part of why this is all so interesting. That article uses some pretty simple-minded logic to derive $/BTC in the future based on the assumption that bitcoin actually becomes a major currency in everyday use for a lot of people. I think it's somewhat difficult to make a case for that realistically happening in 20yrs, given geopolitical dynamics, but who knows.

To me, the easier case to make is simply that bitcoin will increasingly be seen as a better substitute for gold, and people who like to hold gold will also start to hold bitcoin, and will eventually start to hold bitcoin instead of gold (this is discussed here: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=100065.0 ). If 1% of gold were swapped for BTC, that yields about $4000/BTC. If we're gonna get uber-speculative, I think that's one of the easier cases to make that supports bitcoin becoming super valuable.

[dree12]

I just bought a 1.5Tbyte drive for $75..

think its big enuf for the future blockchain??

Assuming the block size limit isn't raised, it will take 57 years before the blockchain overflows that drive.

I doubt this assumption is accurate. With projected Bitcoin growth, we'd see closer to a drive that big every seven blocks in 57 years.

Calculations:

In 57 years Bitcoin will be the only form of currency on Earth. The population of Earth is projected to be nine billion. The average person performs 100 transactions a month. That is around 0.0231 transactions per person per block. In total, that is 208 million transactions per block. The average transaction size is around 1 KB. Therefore, there will be 208 GB on average per block in 57 years.

Yes, but as you clearly demonstrated, if you reject that assumption you have to make even more assumptions that have no reliable basis and you end up with mere speculation.

The assumptions I made were mostly lower bounds. A block is probably going to be larger than 1 TB on average in 57 years, once considering coin splitting, larger transaction sizes, and whatever other stuff gets stored onto the blockchain. Buying a 1.5 TB disk isn't going to store two blocks in the future blockchain.

Luckily, Moore's Law tells us we'll have hard disks 200 ZB (zettabytes) in size by then.

[notme]

I just bought a 1.5Tbyte drive for $75..

think its big enuf for the future blockchain??

Assuming the block size limit isn't raised, it will take 57 years before the blockchain overflows that drive.

I doubt this assumption is accurate. With projected Bitcoin growth, we'd see closer to a drive that big every seven blocks in 57 years.

Calculations:

In 57 years Bitcoin will be the only form of currency on Earth. The population of Earth is projected to be nine billion. The average person performs 100 transactions a month. That is around 0.0231 transactions per person per block. In total, that is 208 million transactions per block. The average transaction size is around 1 KB. Therefore, there will be 208 GB on average per block in 57 years.

Yes, but as you clearly demonstrated, if you reject that assumption you have to make even more assumptions that have no reliable basis and you end up with mere speculation.

The assumptions I made were mostly lower bounds. A block is probably going to be larger than 1 TB on average in 57 years, once considering coin splitting, larger transaction sizes, and whatever other stuff gets stored onto the blockchain. Buying a 1.5 TB disk isn't going to store two blocks in the future blockchain.

Luckily, Moore's Law tells us we'll have hard disks 200 ZB (zettabytes) in size by then.

Emphasis added.  That's quite optimistic.  Most of my assets (other than my house) are currently in bitcoin or related businesses, but even I have a hard time accepting "only currency on earth" in only 57 years as a lower bound.