Bitcoin will never again be priced over $300.

[Razick]

The only real value still built in is that of the electricity and hardware costs.

As global mining operations continue to consolidate, mining efficiency increases. This trend is predictable and irreversible. Therefore that intrinsic "cost of creation" declines at a rate that's also predictable.

Any speculative value that's currently built in is also fated to decline as trading efficiency increases and arbitrage opportunity disappears -- not to mention that the classic early-stage hype bubble has come and gone.

Finally, any commerce/transactional-discount value that's currently built in will decrease as the user marketplace approaches ubiquity and merchant competition dilutes potential margin plays.

... I look forward to intelligent, reasoned arguments for how Bitcoin will again find a value north of $300.

Ben

My only comment is that cost of production has very little to do with Bitcoin's value.

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[bassclef]

The only real value still built in is that of the electricity and hardware costs.

As global mining operations continue to consolidate, mining efficiency increases. This trend is predictable and irreversible. Therefore that intrinsic "cost of creation" declines at a rate that's also predictable.

Any speculative value that's currently built in is also fated to decline as trading efficiency increases and arbitrage opportunity disappears -- not to mention that the classic early-stage hype bubble has come and gone.

Finally, any commerce/transactional-discount value that's currently built in will decrease as the user marketplace approaches ubiquity and merchant competition dilutes potential margin plays.

... I look forward to intelligent, reasoned arguments for how Bitcoin will again find a value north of $300.

Ben

All these reasons, if applicable, have been priced in already. The market price for any commodity is based on speculative value, that is supply and demand on the exchanges. Add in human psychology and you get the reason for trends and bubbles.

It's amazing how super smart guys can think of a dozen fundamental reasons why such and such will happen, yet fail to do even the slightest research on how markets work. In light of that, Bitcoin's current low price is no great mystery.

[dropt]

Your points smell like all the other people hoping to get rich quick off of Bitcoin.

Implying that I didn't get "rich quick" off of Bitcoin.

Yes, the other methods are a multi billion dollar industry, what does that have to do with anything? They are much more efficient and scalable than Bitcoin. Did you know that Visa alone (forget other credit card companies) handles as many transactions in 3 minutes as all the Bitcoin transactions in a day? The blockchain would collapse if it were put to any real use.

You said people need to start comparing it to other payment methods, which is a multi-billion dollar industry.  If it can compete, and it does, you can ascertain that it has the potential to be a player in said multi-billion dollar industry.

VISA was founded in 1958.  Do you really think they were processing 2,000 transactions per second in 1964?  Give your head a shake.  Let's see how the two compare taking a snapshot of Visa today, and Bitcoin in the year 2057.

Yes, several hours for 6 confirmations. I use MultiBit as my wallet, and it takes ages to pay for anything. People will not want to wait even 5 minutes to pay for anything in a physical location.

Several means >2.  Considering that there should be ~6 blocks per hour, yet for the better part of the last year the difficulty has been rising means you're wrong.  We know you're wrong because we have the empirical evidence that says so.

So you chose to use a client that doesn't work worth a shit and somehow that's indicative of the market as a whole?  SMH.   And surely you've never actually tried to use BTC to pay for anything, because if you had you'd know that it happens near instantaneously.  In the physical world I can pay for something with BTC just as fast as I can with a card.  At least with BTC with merchant knows with a reasonable margin of certainty that they aren't going to be ripped off within 10 minutes instead of finding out 30 days later someone charged back that purchase.  But IMO Bitcoin was never really intended to fulfill the role of in person purchases, and in the online world I can pay with BTC much faster than I can with a CC, and that is fact.

Chargebacks is a huge con for consumers. This is actually one of the reasons Bitcoin will never get even 5% of the worlds population to use it.

Maybe, maybe not.  How many times have you actually had to charge back something?  People like to make it out as if this is some sort of deal breaker, but in my entire life, I've only had to initiate a chargeback once, and I probably didn't even have to do that if I was patient enough for the merchant in my case to take care of their business.  I'll concede that having the option of chargeback is nice, but for what I'd consider most cases, it's a non-issue.

Illegal goods is a billion dollar industry. It just happens to be Bitcoins main use, whereas its not the dollars.

And what's your point?  If it can't buy drugs, porn, and facilitate gambling, it's not money.  You might as well just claim that all Bitcoin users are criminals just because Roger Ver is a felon and is a well known pro-bitcoin spokesman.

[nachoig]

The issue is we have a different reason here. The 300 USD was reached without the normal conditions due to fraudulent activity on an exchange. If we go back to 300 USD, it will be because of Bitcoin's growing, not because of a fraud.

This is why I think the crash in the last January was the best Bitcoin price crash. It bringed the price to the pre-Willy days after one year. Now the market can do its own work.

Bitcoin won't break $500 a coin, likely will sit around the ~$250 range with occasional jumps over $300 and below $200.

I don't know about $ 500, the issue in this moment is about going to $ 300 or sub-200. But we're still at $ 200 people, deal with it!!!!!!  

People need to start comparing Bitcoin to other payment methods, and they will clearly see why Bitcoin will never have enough demand to "go to the moon," most of Bitcoin's current users are speculators that have no clue what they are talking about.

Well, this section is full of nonsense about the price. But I think it doesn't represent most of Bitcoin users.

Bitcoin's biggest issue is that is not consumer friendly: Buying Bitcoin is time consuming (and costly when you figure in fees associated with acquiring Bitcoin + risk of volatility), very slow (to reach 6 confirmations takes several hours... lately its been taking ~1 hour to get even a single confirmation), no ability to chargeback (this is NOT a plus), and other hassles (security issues, learning curve etc).

Bitcoin is much more transparent about these issues than the other means of payment. Other means of payment have problems about confirmation times, fees, chargebacks and security issues too. You just don't see, but the issues are here.

The only thing Bitcoin is better than using the dollar for is to purchase illegal goods

Psysical dollar or eletronic dollar?

Chargebacks is a huge con for consumers. This is actually one of the reasons Bitcoin will never get even 5% of the worlds population to use it.

People used physical cash during milleniuns and didn't see the lack of chargeback as a issue.

[Chef Ramsay]

Lot's of educated, intelligent posters chiming in in the latter parts of this thread which I figured would happen sooner as this one became a nuisance and an insult to visionaries of sound and like minds. It's great when the knowledgeable come back into an environment and lend a hand to the education aspect. Bullish times of sorts ahead and perhaps more, indeed.