Where do you see bitcoins in 5 year?

[hyphenx]

banks continue to lend more money than they have, we see another collapse in the financial market. Several companies begin to adopt it as their national currency as the value of theirs decreases/economy collapses as seen in Iceland.

[kxxxmxxx]

I think since already we are exchanging goods for bitcoins, then it will continue in the future. It is already an economy. The good think is that you cannot really forge it. So it is valuable, like gold or more. People will be aggregating it. I think people like the idea of independence of it - it is like cash or better. There are of course some shady deals and money laundering going on. Probably this is what fuels part of the transactions. I think introduction of asics will cause volatility until all gpu miners will go out of business.

[DarkBet]

in 5 years:

-Bitcoin has become mainstream and the preferred method for online payments within a few genres.
-Several banks allow and recommend users to buy bitcoins within their site for online shopping.
-Internet/credicard fraud hits an all time low for the 4 year in a row.
-1 bitcoin is worth 1k USD and this forum is riddled with obnoxious rich people.
-There are paypal like services that allows shops to accept creditcard payment and receive all funds in bitcoin, with several great advantages for seller, user and the bitcoin economy.

Edit:

-And there are prepaid card services alla Neteller, allowing users to spend their bitcoins where its not yet accepted.

[AdriKGB]

I see it as the normal internet currency for everything

[qrs]

In five years, we will be using bitcoin to pay for something but only on Internet.

[kxxxmxxx]

The problem with bitcoin is that it is still not recognized as currency as government. At the same time, there are thefts. People have reported their computers hacked and bitcoins stolen from their wallet. I think it is even hard to report now, not to mention even think the police will have chance finding anyone, since they are not used to this currency. More chances with big frauds, they will dedicate efforts, but for just a single person money, I doubt they will expedite their best, most knowledgeable people to solve the crime.

[bam91]

The price will skyrocket.

[BitcoinAshley]

The price will skyrocket.

This.

In terms of which digital coin takes precedence, I don't think it really matters. The biggest issue with Bitcoin appears to be scalability re: block size, but I don't think this is as big an issue as some people paint it to be. It's often painted as an either/or - either we raise the block size, and potentially risk centralization and the ability of anyone with a machine older than 1.5 years to run a full node, or we keep it where it is and it takes half a year for a transaction to go through and small transactions cost an arm and a leg. The reason this is a silly representation of the issue is that yesterday I spent like an hour reading through pages of proposals on how to solve this problem and not one of them framed the issue this way. There are some really creative programmers out there and suffice it to say if we want the ability to have lite nodes with 0 trust, it's possible. If we want bitcoin to be scalable without sacrificing a significant amount of decentralization, we can do it. The smart people are finding solutions and the silly people are framing it as an either/or doomsday scenario.
People are pulling their hair out about bitcoin's future in regards to scalability even though (1) there are indeed viable solutions, you're just too lazy to read pages of programming and cryptography talk so instead you complain about it, and (2) there are plenty of other coins, sorry your portfolio isn't diverse at all because you know that's not an important part of investing 101 or anything.
Even if Bitcoin does end up having scalability issues, ripple and other services can operate hand-in-hand with BTC and fill in any potential weaknesses. And I doubt only one digital coin will have significant value. I can see a day where you can use Bitcoins or Litecoins or or exchange them by proxy with XRP or even variations on a personally-issued credit coin - at the local fruit market. The future of Bitcoin itself will be grand, but the future of digital currency in general will be even richer.

[twolifeinexile]

I think since already we are exchanging goods for bitcoins, then it will continue in the future. It is already an economy. The good think is that you cannot really forge it. So it is valuable, like gold or more. People will be aggregating it. I think people like the idea of independence of it - it is like cash or better. There are of course some shady deals and money laundering going on. Probably this is what fuels part of the transactions. I think introduction of asics will cause volatility until all gpu miners will go out of business.

Why do you think ASICs can cause volatility, it will not change supply of bitcoins.

[evccyr]

Some interesting - if outlandish - predictions in this thread. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't mind it one bit if my 500BTC end up being worth $500,000, but I just don't think that's realistic, especially in less than five years.

There's a lot to be said about crypto-currencies, but we are still in the early days of such things. Developers need to understand what users want, users need to understand what the cryptocurrency is, and merchants need to understand how to deal with them. A settlement network must be developed (which I guess is what Ripple is trying to do) and a lot of work to set rules, develop regulations and perhaps even laws will have to be put it.

Right now, we're in the wild, wild west. But we can't stay the wild, wild west forever.

[BitcoinAshley]

I think since already we are exchanging goods for bitcoins, then it will continue in the future. It is already an economy. The good think is that you cannot really forge it. So it is valuable, like gold or more. People will be aggregating it. I think people like the idea of independence of it - it is like cash or better. There are of course some shady deals and money laundering going on. Probably this is what fuels part of the transactions. I think introduction of asics will cause volatility until all gpu miners will go out of business.

Why do you think ASICs can cause volatility, it will not change supply of bitcoins.

LOL @ people who still think mining has a significant effect on price despite being an insignificant % of total supply. Don't question them, you'll make them think too hard 
 

Ok, here's what it does affect
-The value of ASIC-related stocks on MPeX and others
-ATI's warehouse/sales managers finally get a day off
-A teeny, teeny, teeny, tiny bit of the total supply
-Ok, that teeny bit is a little more concentrated since the total number of peeps mining probably took a little slide but it's not like you have to be a megamillionaire to afford the lowest model ASIC so none of this super-rich 1%-who-can-afford-an-ASIC miners taking over the network crap

[nwbitcoin]

Some interesting - if outlandish - predictions in this thread. Don't get me wrong - I wouldn't mind it one bit if my 500BTC end up being worth $500,000, but I just don't think that's realistic, especially in less than five years.

There's a lot to be said about crypto-currencies, but we are still in the early days of such things. Developers need to understand what users want, users need to understand what the cryptocurrency is, and merchants need to understand how to deal with them. A settlement network must be developed (which I guess is what Ripple is trying to do) and a lot of work to set rules, develop regulations and perhaps even laws will have to be put it.

Right now, we're in the wild, wild west. But we can't stay the wild, wild west forever.

Having heard the term wild west for while but it's very true.

Great post

[luke.watson]

It's definitely too hard to say i think within the next few years they will steadily grow in demand and perhaps another currency will come about which will be able to rival or even surpass bitcoin and it would be interesting to know whether or not bitcoin will remain or if it will be considered the birth of ecurrencys or if it is completely forgotten due to a even more revolutionary idea

One thing i have to say is i dont see the government as any kind of threat to the life of bitcoin, as I have seen the idea passed about of the government buying all the bitcoin they can and trying to manipulate the market as shown with the many bitcoin clones and similar ideas, they can easily be revived with a different name and slight different behavior and because of this there would be no sense trying to kill one currency when in the amount of time it took you to buy enough of the said currency 10 more have appeared all in increasing popularity and increasing value.

It would be interesting to see how bitcoin is used by large corporations like google who have spent a lot of time and resources developing google wallet which shows the same aspects of bitcoin (in a day to day spending sense) but of cause uses conventional currency and acts as a payment processor, it will be interesting to see how google reacts to bitcoin. Though I do hope it some how manages to bring down paypal

One thing is for sure, electronic currencys will continue to be popular and we will see a big advancement on how they are used

[veteranBtc]

In five years, bitcoin will be a pay method for any shop from the world!
There will be cards with bitcoins, like credit cards..

Isn't that nice?

[NeoModulus]

I see it as a viable currency in everyday use.

[ny2cafuse]

I honestly think as long as the people who use bitcoin don't troll it in to the ground, it will be recognized as an official currency.  But that takes everyone getting along... mmmkay.

[linoleumhand]

Economically and financially its role will expand exponentially. Although I see turbulent times ahead as well. Legally it will still be in the grey area, with a better outlook to be truly recognized as a real method of exchange one day.

[Slackware1995]

banks continue to lend more money than they have, we see another collapse in the financial market. Several companies begin to adopt it as their national currency as the value of theirs decreases/economy collapses as seen in Iceland.

It's called Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB). It really blows my mind that a company that can literally create "money" from thin air, can fail. With FRB, banks shouldn't be charging fees for anything. Everything the bank does should revolve around getting more deposits so they can give out more loans to make free money. It's crazy to think that a bank could offer 20% interest on deposits, then with FRB loan out money at 10% interest and make a fortune.

As an example, I deposit $1000 in a bank, now the bank can loan out $10000 for say 6 years. The crazier thing is that every bit of payments on the loan can now be loaned out at the same 10:1 ratio.

[Wekkel]

It's called Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB). It really blows my mind that a company that can literally create "money" from thin air, can fail.

It's not about the money that can be created, but about the capital that supports it. Banks are not reserve restrained, but capital restrained. And you cannot print capital (although CB's are trying very hard).

[Slackware1995]

It's called Fractional Reserve Banking (FRB). It really blows my mind that a company that can literally create "money" from thin air, can fail.

It's not about the money that can be created, but about the capital that supports it. Banks are not reserve restrained, but capital restrained. And you cannot print capital (although CB's are trying very hard).

Actually, they aren't capital restrained anymore. They "borrow" money from the Fed (or the central bank of the country they operate in, as most do the same) at near 0% interest, then turn around and buy T-bills.. instant capital.