Speculating on future prices

[42kang]

What do you think the bitcoin price will do, short, medium and long term future?
Is bigger and more well known exposure of bitcoin going to be the main factor for driving up the price?
Would a bubble type event happen for any reason?
Things like this..

[1715402636]

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[ocharry]

If some people knew that then they would be rich wouldn't they? I'm pretty sure we're all hoping for Bitcoin to succeed but it has to overcome quite a few things first.

[giszmo]

i expect an abrupt end at some point.
some countries will fight BTC with legal threats to the users and miners but at some point they will realize that they can stop BTC with as little as some million $ to crack the 50% network barrier. If this happens over night, there is no way to recover. The block chain will be finished. This rogue subnet will be kept at 50% and BTC is history. Maintenance will quickly go down as running a miner with 0 output will not pay off for most of the other users. This person behind such an attack would not even have to justify his action and could well be some rich guy protecting his hard earned dollars from becoming obsolete.

[42kang]

i expect an abrupt end at some point.
some countries will fight BTC with legal threats to the users and miners but at some point they will realize that they can stop BTC with as little as some million $ to crack the 50% network barrier. If this happens over night, there is no way to recover. The block chain will be finished. This rogue subnet will be kept at 50% and BTC is history. Maintenance will quickly go down as running a miner with 0 output will not pay off for most of the other users. This person behind such an attack would not even have to justify his action and could well be some rich guy protecting his hard earned dollars from becoming obsolete.

You seem pessimistic, does this 50% barrier really spell disaster? I was of the understanding that it was 50% of the computing power was not even reachable by google.
How does the optimist respond to your claim?

[ocharry]

i expect an abrupt end at some point.
some countries will fight BTC with legal threats to the users and miners but at some point they will realize that they can stop BTC with as little as some million $ to crack the 50% network barrier. If this happens over night, there is no way to recover. The block chain will be finished. This rogue subnet will be kept at 50% and BTC is history. Maintenance will quickly go down as running a miner with 0 output will not pay off for most of the other users. This person behind such an attack would not even have to justify his action and could well be some rich guy protecting his hard earned dollars from becoming obsolete.

It's not that easy. By the time we get to that point it will be almost impossible for one entity to reach 50% with the amount of miners the network will have.

[Terpie]

Not to mention, all the attack can do is allow for double spending, it won't allow the person to create new coins. It's also possible to easily recognize this fork and reset the blockchain to that point. Although the logistics of this would no doubt be difficult.

[giszmo]

pardon me? 50% of the network can effectively stop all further transactions of the other nodes.

We are now at 7Th/s. That is "only" 20,000 HD6970. I confess the calculus doesn't give a large window for action given a 5% growth per day as even now topping the GPU power would cost 20,000*(300+200)€=1,000,000€ (rough estimate) of rig hardware. On the other hand there must be data centers of that scale of GPU power somewhere (although I must confess I only found hints, no proofs).

So I would give it a chance to either get taken down by such an approach either this year or never.

[FreeMoney]

Not to mention, all the attack can do is allow for double spending, it won't allow the person to create new coins. It's also possible to easily recognize this fork and reset the blockchain to that point. Although the logistics of this would no doubt be difficult.

Um, no. How are you going to keep the bad power off of the new fork?

[FreeMoney]

it's a true statement. even the most intuitive attack that requires no special knowledge (the 'overwhelm the hashing power of the network' attack) would cost only a few million dollars at present for permanent purchase of the necessary hardware, and far less for rental. there are many cleverer things that can be done, however. for example, analyses by bytecoin and "s" have explained similar attacks that require fewer resources.

this isn't really a threat to the bitcoin technology as a whole. satoshi wasn't particularly concerned with it, as you can see from his last few messages at the forum. but as i and others have pointed out for a long time, it makes any individual block chain subject to more potential kinds of market manipulation that many speculators seem to suspect.

bitcoin will likely continue, but the value in any particular block chain can at present be very easily 'attacked' through denial of service and similar mechanisms. that we haven't seen much more than a denial-of-service attack on mt gox and a few mining pools likely reflects nothing more than the still-relatively-small footprint of bitcoin and the fact that it is not presently easy to profit from falls in the price of a bitcoin at any significant scale. (as i've also explained many times, the true worth of the bitcoin economy is far less than the 'market capitalisation' figure.)

Can you give me a quote (guess) on renting 20k 6970 for a day? Not saying it's more than a million, but how much?

[TiagoTiago]

If a government attacks BTC, depending on which government it is, i would expect the price to jump even if the difficulty is reduced with the reduced number of miners from the country in question, some people would even be willing to pay more per BTC just to piss the government in question

[boounce]

It seems like a technical attack would only justify the need for the system.  Another currency "threat" would soon emerge.  Me thinks it will be an attack in the media.  It may have already started. 

[billyjoeallen]

What will drive up the price is usability (utility) by more people for more functions. For this we need more user-friendly fault-tolerant software, more apps using the API, MORE BUSINESSES WILLING TO TRADE GOODS AND SERVICES FOR BITCOIN.  I think all these things are coming and the speed at which they come determines how rapidly the price will likely rise. 

The only real risk to Bitcoin is competition by another cryptocurrency (or something better), and I think that is a small risk.  A cryptocurrency with State sanction could conceivable do it, although it would be suicide for the government. There is nothing like Bitcoin. Eventually it may replace the currency used for the majority of large transactions.  There is a smaller risk of a security flaw large enough to destabilize the currency, but that risk is smaller that risks of other currencies. It's much much easier to counterfeit bank notes.

[giszmo]

It's much much easier to counterfeit bank notes.

Yes, it is easier to counterfeit bank notes. It is easier to counterfeit 2 bank notes and use them on the flee market.

No, it is not easier to steal significantly many users without getting caught.

Worms that do all kind of things are daily business in the Windows world today. If such a worm sends all the money of wallets it finds to the thief's wallet, there is no way to charge back or find the thief.

Above mentioned counterfeiter would even risk to get caught on the flee market. The BTC thief has almost no risk at all for a good chance to make millions.

Still I think that such worms are not a threat to BTC as a whole as people would call that bad luck for those not locking their wallets away or using other precautions.