Where do you see bitcoins in 5 year?

[Odalv]

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.

Imagine: "There are no money in the world. FED will print some e.g. $1,000,000,000 and FED will give you loan only %2 interest. How can you pay interests if FED will not print another $20,000,000 ? I'm pretty sure you cannot!!! How you can return 1,020,000,000 if I had print only 1,000,000,000" :-)

[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.

Imagine: "There are no money in the world. FED will print some e.g. $1,000,000,000 and FED will give you loan only %2 interest. How can you pay interests if FED will not print another $20,000,000 ? I'm pretty sure you cannot!!! How you can return 1,020,000,000 if I had print only 1,000,000,000" :-)

You can't. Every dollar that the Fed puts into circulation is a debt. That debt is owed by the US Government. The government has to pay the Fed interest on this debt. So if the government borrows $1 trillion but only owes $1 million in interest on it. It would have to have the original $1 trillion, plus the $1 million and the only way to get that $1 million is to borrow it from the Fed. It's a loop, and it's impossible to ever pay off the debt. Gotta love turning over a countries money to a private corporation, and nice that they just happened to ignore the constitution.

"No State shall enter into any Treaty, Alliance, or Confederation; grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal; coin Money; emit Bills of Credit; make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts"

[BitClad]

The major competition to bitcoin are other crypt-currencies.

[press]

In 5 years, I see bitcoins in my wallet.
And hopefully everyone else's.

[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.

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

In hindsight, you actually may be right. I am not sure. Just concerned about two things which may happen:
1) difficulty goes up in response to increase in hashing rate because of ASICs, this causes GPU people to stop mining (electricity costs). This will create a drop in the supply, although this will be probably overcome by ASIC users in long term. However now, ASICs are also in limited supply. So, short-term spike in price.
2) ASIC users after mining as much as possible in first few weeks, will try to cash in on high bitcoin price and we will see drop in the long term.

The rate of production and behavior of producers is not irrelevant. Sure, it is only part of coins in circulation, but the current high price for bitcoin is most likely caused by halving the reward.

I bet it is hard to put everything into equation, just as difficult it is to model real markets. So I am not sure how it will turn out. But very curious about it.

The good thing is that we will have a supply of cheap video cards soon. I am looking to pick up 7970.

[zeroday]

In five years... I gonna buy a new house for 1K btc 

[deathcode]

in 5 years I see bitcoin split again. 12.5BTC for solving a block.
Bitcoin price will be in the upper hundreds 700-800...
Adoption is exponential and layers of complexity have been disolved to the point that not many people will know there's an odd looking address behind their phone number as I believe people will use their phone number combined with the BTC address to send/receive payments.
NFC will play a huge role in BTC adoption.
a major company will be the trigger of this massive adoption (eBay?/Apple?/Microsoft?/Google?) or perhaps a company in the retial industry (Target/Walmart)?

I think developers need to get busy and start developing applications that make bitcoin usage easy for everyone!

[wickedgoodtrader]

There are too many problems with bitcoin for it to just grow and take over the world like a few posters would like.

And how do those problems compare to other types of money? Pretty much stimulus packages in every form of currency right now. USD is being printed at 80 billion per month until "they just don't feel like doing it anymore".

The USD has WAAAYYYYY more problems then bitcoin and somehow it runs the world. Probabaly not for long though.

[VinceSamios]

In 5 years.... I think BTC will be trading at $3500/each

[veteranBtc]

In 5 years.... I think BTC will be trading at $3500/each

Yes! Just keep a 200 btc wallet for happy times 

[Snipes777]

Bitcoin can be updated, or other currencies will out compete. Most likely several currencies will be valuable for a time and exchanged between each other. In 5 years, I still see bitcoin over 1,000. Truly a guess so who knows. Obviously I am putting my money into it going up!

[freebeer2go]

In five years... I gonna buy a new house for 1K btc 

Too much, at most 10 BTC will be enough for a new house in 5 years.

[hellscabane]

That's a really tricky question...

A lot of people would love it if bitcoins sold at $10k+ per coin, but the possibility of that happening in a 5 years (or event hitting the $1k mark) is very slim (at least in my opinion).  Global markets, the desire of a high RoI, market penetration, general speculation, and price corrections are just a small amount of the problems that could plague bitcoin's growth and I feel that it will prevent it from reaching those lofty heights.  Although, I would not be surprised if bitcoins hit $200-$300 within 5 years.

Here's a thought though.  What if bitcoin had the purchasing power the equivalent of a fraction of the world's developed economies?

My thinking is that if a meager (although, is this really a meager amount?) .25% of the world's population adopts bitcoin, that would be 20 million people.  Let's assign them all the purchasing power the equivalent of 6 months income at an average based on the top third of the world's developed economies (that's roughly $16k a year, so $8k).  Total this all up and you would have a market that is worth $160 billion.  Let's say that this happens when virtually all bitcoins are created.

That leaves us in the ball park of roughly $7,619 per coin.  A pretty nice number.  The question is whether bitcoins can ever reach a purchasing power that great or not or if it will even survive to see that type of day.

Just my two satoshis on the matter.  I'm setting my personal target price at $135 dollars a coin in 2018.

[pc163]

go mobile should be a key thing for bitcoin, but the block size would still be a problem

[nonnihilnitoris]

When the U.S. dollar, the world's *reserve* currency, collapses due to our unsustainable debt and spending, people are going to flee to EVERY other alternative currency. The smart ones will flee to the commodity-baked currencies (silver, gold, food, oil) and decentralized electronic currencies like BTC. In 5 years, the U.S. will be well on it's way to fascism, so... I see BTC in the $100's to $1000's. Vague, but politics usually are.

-nn

[foggyb]

There are too many problems with bitcoin for it to just grow and take over the world like a few posters would like.

Think of it as the year 1994 and someone asks you how do you think Netscape Navigator will change the world?

The real question is: how will the INTERNET change the world? Bitcoin > Internet analogy works much better as an analogy.

What the internet is doing to communications, bitcoin is doing to money.

[cryptostore]

in 5 years, you will see bitcoin being mentioned everywhere. I hope.

[stevedekorte]

If in two years it's used for a significant % of the online gambling market, that would be between a 10-100x increase in price. If it starts being used in any serious amounts in other markets, who knows.

[deathcode]

if pokerstars alone starts accepting bitcoins, wait for a climb up to 300-400 in a year alone...
how much money does internet gambling moves yearly?
do the math...and that's just one industry... think what can happen if major internet players start accepting bitcoin... ebay, microsoft, amazon.. or if in a very unlikely scenario Apple decides to base his NFC/PassBook/iOS 7,8,9... in bitcoin ? (hardly unlikely but hey... you never know)

Then Bitcoin will bring huge amounts of money to the system therefore, the BTC as a whole would be a thing of the past and we will be talking about salaries of 0.5 BTC a year... for an average household..
You never know how all those big players can affect the market...

[MarkyRamone]

If just 0.1% of global GDP goes to bitcoint everyone in this forum will be rich!