The road to $1000 would be much harder

[twolifeinexile]

Given the small "market cap" reality, I think bitcoin can goes to 100 really without too much resistence, which is indeed the case. But from here on, it may become harder to go up to $1000, simply because now we need some "$10bn market cap" (acutally much less than that, but the trading volume in dollar terms have to go up about ten times of current size, or bigger than that).

Current infrastracture apparently not ready for a volume up 10 times given all these exchanges/wallets events.

Current bitcoin blockchain size is also approaching its limits.

Also, if you look  random talking in the this forum, a lot of guys have said they may at least partial exit at $1000, this is may due to the fact at that market to market value, the cash-out value would have a positive effect on their daily life, so even there is an upside, they are willing to get out an significant portion of their stach.

Yes, there will be more money pouring in, but these counter forces will make it not a easy (or "crazy") route.

[Brushan]

I agree that it will be harder but i think the bigger the marketcap, the bigger the investors which will make price rise exponentially. I'm also worried about exchanges not being able to handle the trafic. But with the news about eToro about to add BTC trading, do you think that it can be a solution?

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

More volatile, more prone to breaking things in the infrastructure, but not harder - if by harder you mean "slower." I think we could well be there by fall or even summer if the planets align correctly. But don't expect much in the Bitcoin world to escape disruption as that happens. This is radical change we are experiencing even now, and it will only accelerate.

[phatsphere]

i think, the exchanges are ready. there are only two problems: 1. micro-transactions are allowed, just "tax" them and they go away. the actual $$$ amount is not the problem, it's the sheer number of tx. 2. there are plenty of other exchanges besides gox.
finally, yes, bigger investors are the key. only if bitcoin is inflated enough, it will also start to be a good tool serving its actual purpose as a money transmitting utility - that phase only comes after enough inflation, otherwise bitcoin is doomed anyways.

[Hyena]

At first we will be surprised to see 200$. Next time we open our eyes it's past 1000$

[smoothie]

At first we will be surprised to see 200$. Next time we open our eyes it's past 1000$

my call for this coming week of breaking $200 is in tact

also my call of $440 by April 30th, 2013 will be touched.

From there is anyone's guess.

[Jobe7]

If 1 billion people put $10 on bitcoin, then there's your tenfold increase to 1,000.

Now consider that most people put more than $10 (or equivalent in their own currency). Let's say, $50, so now you only need 200 million people. Now this would be difficult for a single country, but remember, we're talking global here.

Now, consider that certain rich individuals are putting in quite a lot more than $10, or $50, more in the thousands and tens of thousands, or more.

That cuts down the 200 million drastically.

Lets be very random and assume that with the wealthy individuals and not so wealthy individuals, it's an average of $1,000 (and tbh, I think my average number there is way too low for the coming months, with whats coming).

We're down to 1 million people now.

Now .. consider businesses that are starting to adopt bitcoin, and how much they're investing into bitcoin to pay their staff and whatever else? That's anybody's guess..

I think people vastly underestimate the crucial point we are at.

[flaab]

At this growth rate..........We can get to 1000 by summer.

[phlogistonq]

Given the small "market cap" reality, I think bitcoin can goes to 100 really without too much resistence, which is indeed the case. But from here on, it may become harder to go up to $1000, simply because now we need some "$10bn market cap" (acutally much less than that, but the trading volume in dollar terms have to go up about ten times of current size, or bigger than that).

If you are assuming that the $10bn has to be raised by the same people then you would be correct, But that is not what is happening. The price is rising because more people are joining. Only a small % of people have heard of bitcoins now and bought some. This number can -easily- multiply by a factor of ten. So, I think $10bn is no problem at all.

[Luckybit]

i think, the exchanges are ready. there are only two problems: 1. micro-transactions are allowed, just "tax" them and they go away. the actual $$$ amount is not the problem, it's the sheer number of tx. 2. there are plenty of other exchanges besides gox.
finally, yes, bigger investors are the key. only if bitcoin is inflated enough, it will also start to be a good tool serving its actual purpose as a money transmitting utility - that phase only comes after enough inflation, otherwise bitcoin is doomed anyways.

Why are micro transactions bad? When it's $1000 a coin this summer most of the transactions will have to be micro wont they? People aren't going to be able to afford to trade whole coins because most people wont have many whole coins.

[Hyena]

I just watched this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6uuAupT4AQ

At first I hated it because:
1. it discourages owning gold
2. it talks about fiat money as it was something good
3. there are illuminati symbols hidden in the video and even on the uploader's avatar

However, in the very end of the video the narrator shows facebook and tells that the future money will be peer to peer and electronic. It never mentions anything about crypto currencies nor bitcoin though.

I'm still not sure if that video was forged by evil but maybe it accidentally embraced bitcoins while it actually wanted to embrace facebook coins. I'm sure David Icke would be proud of my alertness and ability to notice subtexts like that.

And as it was somehow written in Faust - evil wants to cause harm but by doing that it actually does good.

edit:
btw, my guess on getting to 200$ and then more than 1000$ was purely based on my last night's dream where I suddenly noticed that the btc chart was in the space and I rushed to withdraw some random bitcoin lying around in SR as it costed several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

[jackofspades]

I dont think the road to 1000usd will be as hard as some say.
Once the ball gets rolling it just continues to pick up speed
and becomes even harder to stop.

The more people that get involved only increases
the likelihood of friends families co-workers peers
all spreading by word of mouth.

[randrace]

1. micro-transactions are allowed, just "tax" them and they go away.

Micropayments are one of the coolest things about Bitcoin.

[sunnankar]

Given the small "market cap" reality, I think bitcoin can goes to 100 really without too much resistence, which is indeed the case. But from here on, it may become harder to go up to $1000, simply because now we need some "$10bn market cap" (acutally much less than that, but the trading volume in dollar terms have to go up about ten times of current size, or bigger than that).

I do not agree. I think the first $10m was the hardest. Then $100m was not too hard but it leveled out for a while around $350m. But look how fast it went from $1b to $1.5b. The capital pools are a lot deeper now with a lot more market participants.

[shmadz]

edit:
btw, my guess on getting to 200$ and then more than 1000$ was purely based on my last night's dream where I suddenly noticed that the btc chart was in the space and I rushed to withdraw some random bitcoin lying around in SR as it costed several hundreds of thousands of dollars.

WOW! I also had my first bitcoin dream last night! I'm not making this up.

Mine was more like: We were all living in a kind of massive underground mall, there was a boss who only accepted bitcoin, but there were many other currencies that had more or less value in different parts of the mall. The boss sold 'scratch-n-win' tickets which had a random amount of bitcoin on them which you could buy with the various other currencies, so they were very popular... and then the dream got weird...

I woke up from that dream at 4:30 this morning and wrote down as much as I could remember before I forgot. every once in a while I get these dreams that are just like living through a weird movie, and this one was my favourite so far 

[Hyena]

yeah, dreams are weird. a day before I had a dream where I was tripping on some psychedelic chemical, having cool visuals, but then all of sudden hundreds of cats attacked me, I was completely helpless because I was drowning in cats and all of them were biting and scratching me. that was a total nightmare but luckily it was such a bullshit that I actually realized that it has to be a dream so that by using my lucid dreaming powers I teleported away.

[bitcon]

i was watching conspiracy theories of Fort Knox on the History channel today. some people believe there's no gold there, it was all sold back in the 80's or something. another theory is that the gold is there, but it belongs to other countries. the cool thing about bitcoin is its transparency.  the biggest scam perpetrated on america was when the FED told us this green piece of paper is worth something. if shit hits the fan/doomsday, etc. would you want to be caught with a pocket full of green paper or a pocket full of gold?

[Elwar]

People think of the price based upon the total amount of bitcoins in existence (almost 11 million).

The price does not go up a dollar after $11 million goes from dollars to bitcoins.

MtGox trades around 75,000 bitcoins per day.

It is those 75,000 bitcoins that set the price for the rest of the millions of bitcoins being used or hoarded daily.

So, if on average, $75,000 moves into the bitcoin economy per day the price will go up by $1 per day.

Just a few weeks ago we saw someone buy 20,000 bitcoins at once. The price was either $60 or $75. That is over a million dollars. $1 million divided by 75,000 is just over $13. Seeing the price go up by $13 is not uncommon.

Of course, some of those 75,000 bitcoin trades are people selling. This means that for the price to go up a dollar there are $75,000 more in buys than sells.

So, in order for the price of bitcoins to go from $140 to $1000/BTC, there would have to be about $65 million more buys than sells.

If $7 million comes into bitcoin per month we will be at $1,000 by the end of the year.

I think we can all fathom many ways in which that much money will be invested monthly.

[Adrian-x]

To fule the next opportunity I think we should rebrand Bitcoin lets call it Microbit or μBTC 

It is like a stock split we can start trading at $0.014

[Kazu]

The road to $1000 will be exactly 9 times harder than the road to $100.

([$1000-$100]/$100 = 9)