What the price would be if there is no Bitcoin scaling in next 5 years?

[w00t]

First of all I'm huge BTC fan, had account here since 2013 and always been bullish - I don't want to draw any doom scenarios but seriously:

Where are we heading in next 5 years?

Some considerations:
1) We didn't even reach 28 % support and the support for SegWit is dropping already: https://blockchain.info/charts/bip-9-segwit?timespan=all
Who profits from this?

2) If SegWit is not implemented what will happen to BTC? Is it going to become an obscure payment method and only speculative store of wealth?
Apparently without SegWit there is no Lightning Network: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/segwit-lightning/

3) What happens once the block size of 1 MB is really maxed out? https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?daysAverageString=30&scale=1&timespan=all
My knowledge of economy points me to questions like - Are we going to pay $100 per transaction in fees in order to have it cleared in less than few hours/days? This is the end game of BTC miners? To make money on movement of the speculative asset?

4) Rising price of BTC is a pleasant thing and if you ask me today - I still consider it undervalued and it can probably go on par with Gold as it's easier to move around than Gold and cannot be confiscated by gov officials like gold but I guess that's it? So are we looking on: Gold market cap / total amount of non-lost bitcoins as maximum? So something like 400k USD per 1 BTC and that's it?

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[quake313]

It seems to me, one way or the other, good or bad, it will be settled long before 5 years. Probably this year. The way it looks we are heading to a split of the blockchain. A core chain and an alt chain (probably BU). Who knows, maybe we'll end up with more than two? If we have learned anything from Donald Trump's unlikely rise to president, is that when people are pissed and fed up they make irrational and often self-destructive decisions.

[Killerpotleaf]

What the price would be if there is no Bitcoin scaling in next 5 years?

1BTC = 1LTC
this is what happens with 5 years of bitcoin stagnation

[romero121]

Scaling factor doesn't affect our bitcoin, even after 5years. From its existence scaling has been a major problem, but it have been compromised with several updates following several debates on the blocksize and things relating to it. This time too developers generate solutions, if not we get a slow down in the transaction.

[Money Maker Shaker]

$5000+

how many bitcoin holders/investor do you know that are spending bitcoin on daily basis and worry about confirmation time being lengthy?

[BitcoinBarrel]

Answer: MOON 

[ArdiPrabowo]

what do you mean in point 3, if bitcoin sending fee can incraese until reach 100dollr/send
i think is real , sending fee 100dollar/send bitcoin can die

[Bitcoin0916]

I'm not sure the price of the bitcoin in 5 years could reach $5,000. It was clear the price of January will not reach $1,000. It looks like the price of the bitcoin will continue to stagnate in quite a long time, if year 2016 in July ago there is a halving day, but this year there is no halving day. Marketcap has reached more 14 billion it's time the speculators take profit.

[Biodom]

So are we looking on: Gold market cap / total amount of non-lost bitcoins as maximum? So something like 40k USD per 1 BTC and that's it?

You lost a zero here somewhere.
market cap of gold is around 7-7.4 trillions, which would be about 350-400K/btc considering 16-18 mil btc (3-5 mil could be lost).

[Kakmakr]

The answer is simple, Blockstream will apply SegWit and LN to another Alt coin like LiteCoin and it will function as a true Peer-to-Peer digital payment system, and Bitcoin will loose users to whatever Alt coin that incorporated this. So you will have a 3rd division in this community.

Bitcoin will then serve as a store of value for the hoarders, until it lose enough value that they too will also abandon it. Miners cannot survive in a scenario where mass hoarding takes place. No tx's = No mining, and NO mining = NO Bitcoin.

[pooya87]

when you are asking a speculation question and you are talking about price of bitcoin in the future the only thing you have to consider is "how price goes up and who is buying bitcoin (what is the demand)".

all the things you said here in your considerations are true but they are not true about the price.

a sad truth about bitcoin is that it has become an investment, and it is not completely a currency, it is not even 50/50!
and because of that, price will continue to go on up as people use it as investment. now because of this i believe price will go up but don't expect moon because moon will only happen with mass adoption and mass adoption needs people using bitcoin as currency and that needs scaling.

[Amph]

either another solution will come up in 5 years, like Segwit but maybe better or bitcoin will remain niche, unless a rich guy will pump the shit out of it for speculation

but if you ignore all this miners still need the price to be higher, therefore all miners in the end are forced to welcome he adoption if they want their profit to remian the same or higher

[lionheart78]

As the earlier post said, Bitcoin is viewed as an investment, so bitcoin will incline in price, i have no doubt that the problem Bitcoin facing atm will be solved within that time range.  I also don't see the problem of no miner mining bitcoin because I am sure there is always someone willing to mine Bitcoin even as a hobby or to take profit.

[w00t]

So are we looking on: Gold market cap / total amount of non-lost bitcoins as maximum? So something like 40k USD per 1 BTC and that's it?

You lost a zero here somewhere.
market cap of gold is around 7-7.4 trillions, which would be about 350-400K/btc considering 16-18 mil btc (3-5 mil could be lost).

My apologies - you are right it should have been ~400k - fixed in the OP

[1Referee]

The answer is simple, Blockstream will apply SegWit and LN to another Alt coin like LiteCoin and it will function as a true Peer-to-Peer digital payment system, and Bitcoin will loose users to whatever Alt coin that incorporated this. So you will have a 3rd division in this community.

What's the point of adding Segwit and LN to another altcoin, when they can simply create a new coin having the best of everything on board already? If you purely look at Litecoin and the technological aspect, then even Litecoin could be seen as "outdated". Don't forget that the majority of the circulating Litecoins are in the hands of just a few players. Far worse than is the case with Bitcoin's level of wealth distribution. Also don't forget that nothing happens without a selfish thought where people are looking to gain a massive benefit from each and every situation.

[w00t]

The answer is simple, Blockstream will apply SegWit and LN to another Alt coin like LiteCoin and it will function as a true Peer-to-Peer digital payment system, and Bitcoin will loose users to whatever Alt coin that incorporated this. So you will have a 3rd division in this community.

Bitcoin will then serve as a store of value for the hoarders, until it lose enough value that they too will also abandon it. Miners cannot survive in a scenario where mass hoarding takes place. No tx's = No mining, and NO mining = NO Bitcoin.

Actually this thought was also on my mind, though in less radical version - maybe Litecoin implementing SW+LN will become a go to currency when it comes to actual buying and selling things, however as Litecoin network is not (at least yet) secure enough the coins won't stay there for long and going back to Bitcoin ie. at the end of every day or end of the week - similar to what small businesses do with cash every day or every week - they take it and deposit it to a "safer" place such as bank.

Essentially it might in the end look like this:

BTC hoarder has 8 BTC in his account - that's his monthly salary. He knows every month it costs him ~5 BTC to pay rent, groceries and others so he exchanges 5 BTC to 500 LTC on let's say 7th of the month and slowly using it throughout the month spending the 500 LTC, saving 3 BTC and pocketing another 8 BTC the next month. This is probably similar to what some people do every now and then when withdrawing cash from ATM.

Businesses offering goods and services will be collecting the above mentioned 500 LTC throughout the month as they are selling their services and let's say every week to hedge the risk they might exchange it to BTC and later pay the employees with BTC (as it's not super time intensive).

But then it comes back to what you originally proposed - even though LTC might be less secure in overall, are people going to bother themselves to exchange it twice? Why not just stay on the LTC?

I never really fully understood why there was so much resistance to 2MB block or 8 MB block or other blocks (the technical constrain I don't really buy - storage as well as bandwidth is cheap and if it goes faster than Moore's law then the storage technology will followup), now there is resistance towards SegWit and eventually LN.

Do the miners actually understand that if some 2nd or 3rd most popular crypto pickups this technology then BTC will put itself at serious disadvantage? Only then we can expect overnight switch in sentiment?

Full disclosure: I know very little about LTC and I don't own any, just as it's probably 2nd or 3rd most popular crypto I thought to put it here as an example.

[European Central Bank]

a lot of people are already sick of it and there really aren't very many people involved in bitcoin. those on the outside will see that it's stuck in political deadlock and just bypass it for something that actually caters to their needs.

bitcoin is trapped in an echo chamber that seems to expect that the rest of the world will be delighted to pay vast amounts to the old guard because of a totally artificial situation of their own creation. er, no they won't. i'll be long gone too.

i've seen some people believing that users are gonna be willing to pay $100 in fees for censorless payments. for starters the censorless thing has never been put to the test and i ain't so sure it would pass as soon as real authoritarian pressure is applied.

second of all bitcoin will be over ten years old with pretty much the same overall code, albeit greatly refined. that's ten years of learning to apply to something better without all the bullshit posturing that's hobbling bitcoin. somewhere along the line there has to be a tipping point. i assume something's gonna be done before then.

[Tanic]

Answer: MOON 

"MOON" just can came true in five years. It's too short time to bitcoin would get so much popularity and support to get such high price. I think the price will be around 5000$ per 1BTC and even that would be a lot. I'm afraid that in the case of such high price bitcoin simply can be banned by government.

[cracxme]

1 BTC = $7000 in next 5 years   
As block size increasing and by 2017 end it will be 1MB+ so txn fees will also increase.

[Febo]

3) What happens once the block size of 1 MB is really maxed out? https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?daysAverageString=30&scale=1&timespan=all
My knowledge of economy points me to questions like - Are we going to pay $100 per transaction in fees in order to have it cleared in less than few hours/days? This is the end game of BTC miners? To make money on movement of the speculative asset?

We already live in world of lots of Blockchains. And some of them are becoming big. What will be different 5 years from now or even earlier is that The most dominating blockchain will not have such dominating share as Bitcoin have today.

[w00t]

3) What happens once the block size of 1 MB is really maxed out? https://blockchain.info/charts/avg-block-size?daysAverageString=30&scale=1&timespan=all
My knowledge of economy points me to questions like - Are we going to pay $100 per transaction in fees in order to have it cleared in less than few hours/days? This is the end game of BTC miners? To make money on movement of the speculative asset?

We already live in world of lots of Blockchains. And some of them are becoming big. What will be different 5 years from now or even earlier is that The most dominating blockchain will not have such dominating share as Bitcoin have today.

I'm really curious about this one - it sort of falls back to the original thought that BTC might be eventually replaced by something more superior.

[d5000]

Interesting thread. Myself I am thinking much about this question. I already suffered many delayed transactions - as a Bitcoin "veteran" I know what I have to do, but for a newbie it must be hell. So I think adoption could be severely hit by a continuation of the "blocksize wars".

Actually this thought was also on my mind, though in less radical version - maybe Litecoin implementing SW+LN will become a go to currency when it comes to actual buying and selling things, however as Litecoin network is not (at least yet) secure enough the coins won't stay there for long and going back to Bitcoin [...]

If LTC manages to become the main "payment network" thanks to Segwit & LN then also its security will increase drastically as there would be a massive price increase and many miners switching to it (although they then need other hardware, as far as I know).

But then it comes back to what you originally proposed - even though LTC might be less secure in overall, are people going to bother themselves to exchange it twice? Why not just stay on the LTC?

Exactly - they would stay inside LTC and the security problem would go away.

I never really fully understood why there was so much resistance to 2MB block or 8 MB block or other blocks (the technical constrain I don't really buy - storage as well as bandwidth is cheap and if it goes faster than Moore's law then the storage technology will followup),

The problem is bandwidth, not storage. Synchronizing a 1 TB blockchain would be only possible in a flawless way for datacenter users - home users and probably also many users living behind China's "Great Firewall" would get serious difficulties to maintain full nodes.

Do the miners actually understand that if some 2nd or 3rd most popular crypto pickups this technology then BTC will put itself at serious disadvantage? Only then we can expect overnight switch in sentiment?

The problem is that some miners fear that Segwit would be the "final" blocksize increase on the Core roadmap and when the new 1.7 MB in capacity is filled (could happen in 1-2 years if transaction volume continues to grow like until now), we'll have worse bottlenecks than now. And some of them think Lightning would not be able to replace on-chain transactions, like seen in this interview with a ViaBTC spokesperson.

In part, I agree with this view. I would like to use on-chain transactions for middle-to large buys and sells, only for real microtransactions (like buying a coffee) LN seems acceptable to me.

I have returned to be a bit more optimistic because of this article by Rick Falkvinge about the last Satoshi Roundtable. And my view of the most promising outcome would be a multi-blockchain world with BTC in a leading role. But for this to happen, there _must_ be a block size increase, at least a continous 10-20% increase per year, as well as off-chain methods like LN for microtransactions. If this doesn't happen, forget about BTC's leading position in some years.

[w00t]

I have returned to be a bit more optimistic because of this article by Rick Falkvinge about the last Satoshi Roundtable. And my view of the most promising outcome would be a multi-blockchain world with BTC in a leading role. But for this to happen, there _must_ be a block size increase, at least a continous 10-20% increase per year, as well as off-chain methods like LN for microtransactions. If this doesn't happen, forget about BTC's leading position in some years.

That's positive - thx for sharing. Eventually the 2MB are probably going to happen - less hassle than the SegWit.

[d5000]

Eventually the 2MB are probably going to happen - less hassle than the SegWit.

I for myself would like Segwit to be activated, as I consider the Transaction Malleability fix important. It is, however, true that there are alternative proposals like Flexible Transactions that would fix it as well.

Fixed transaction malleability would enable all the much-buzzed off-chain transaction methods (Lightning Network etc.) and atomic cross-chain trading (trustless currency exchange between different blockchains, e.g. BTC to LTC). However, as already said, I consider it important to be able to do on-chain transactions if needed and for that to happen a block size increase is also "a must" when the ~1.7 MB offered by Segwit are full.

[azguard]

What the price would be if there is no Bitcoin scaling in next 5 years?

1BTC = 1LTC
this is what happens with 5 years of bitcoin stagnation

Not gonna happen. Price for bitcoin will be in stable 4 digits, for correct price it will be on current market demand and economy of the word more adoption more price increase. With current double price it would be just fine.

[BTCLovingDude]

lack of scaling will surely damage bitcoin in the long term, specially when it is coupled with spam attacks that cause such a huge mempool size. nobody is going to continue this way as long as fees are constantly rising, in other words those idiots who are spamming the mempool are harming bitcoin more.

but at the same time, things can not go on like this, eventually miners will be forced to accept one of the proposals or a new one in between to increase the block size.

[LFC_Bitcoin]

Answer: MOON  

That's the spirit
I'm sure this scaling/block size debate will be sorted within the next 12 months or so. I support Core but I just haven't bothered to upgrade my wallet. I'm still running 0.12.1, I'm sure there are lots more like me.

[shapeshiftscam]

What the price would be if there is no Bitcoin scaling in next 5 years?

1BTC = 1LTC
this is what happens with 5 years of bitcoin stagnation

Don't dream about LTC=BTC, it was dreamed by so many miners in 2013, but the truth is after 2013 huge spike of LTC price(0.05 ATH)， LTC has been constantly dumped, now is below 0.004 btc per ltc. LTC has no future, only BTC is the future, even if BTC is stagnant in 5 years.

[NUFCrichard]

I don't really think it will make too much difference to the price.

The price is 99% speculation at the moment, Bitcoin couldn't be used as a currency as it is now, it doesn't have the capacity.
I can see the problem remaining unsolved, thus making Bitcoin unusable by the masses, but the speculation will continue to ignore that and keep the price rising.

I don't know what the long term answer is, I am sure it isn't litecoin though!  Hopefully greed doesn't win the day and stop Bitcoin from developing into the coin that it should become, but often times that is what happens.

[d5000]

The price is 99% speculation at the moment, Bitcoin couldn't be used as a currency as it is now, it doesn't have the capacity.
I can see the problem remaining unsolved, thus making Bitcoin unusable by the masses, but the speculation will continue to ignore that and keep the price rising.

The problem is that you need a "story" for speculation to work. In the case of Bitcoin the bulls tell us often some kind of "mass adoption story", like: "Cyprus people use Bitcoin to escape savings tax" (2013), "Chinese people using BTC to evade currency controls" (2016), "Trump will crash the markets and people will go into BTC" (2017) and so on.

If you think a bit about these stories, they are all totally unrealistic, as the blockchain capacity isn't enough even for e.g. 1/1000 of all Mexicans trying to evade Trump's planned remittance taxes. In the past, it was easy to make people believe this hype stories though, because nobody felt the blockchain was full.

This time it is different - most Bitcoiners have already experienced problems with delayed transactions in late 2016 and early 2017. So the myth of a mass adoption has become not exactly more credible. And if the developers don't find a solution, then we will crash hard.