It should be noted also that no one should expect a balanced view of the market/Bitcoin from people who define their identity on Bitcoin being a failure either. Someone who claims they have no stake in the game, and is skeptical of Bitcoin (to the point of having it included in every post) should be viewed in the same light you are projecting on the these "salesmen". That is all.
Touché. However, the stakes are very different...
Draper invested 18 M$ to buy the 30'000 BTC at 600$/BTC or so. On paper, he lost at least 4 M$ so far. SMBIT may have sold almost 100 M$ in shares (at the then-current price) and therefore earned at least 2 M$ in fees, but has sold very little for the last 6 months. For them (and other bitcoin investors and entrepreneurs), convincing people that bitcoin will go to the moon means millions of dollars. They will spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in BloombergTV and advertorials in Forbes to push that view.
On the other hand, skeptics like me, Krugman, "Prof Bitcorn", and millions others out there will not earn or lose a dime, whetever happens to bitcoin. (Actually, IIRC, Prof Bitcorn said that he does own some BTC.) We will only have to deal with bruised egos (but economists like Krugman and Bitcorn are quite used to being wrong). Apart from that, skeptics have no reason to try to influence the price; and they will not spend even 10$ to have their opinion published.
By the way, while I belive that bitcoin will not survive in the long term, I would not risk any prediction for the price in middle term. It may even go back to the 1000$ range or more, who knows. All I will risk saying is that,
unless and until a large new market opens, the price will probably keep falling towards the pre-bubble level of ~120$ (or even ~20$, if the Feb/2013 bubble too was made in China).
Poll
