Nobody here knows for sure, just lots of uninformed speculation. Hitting a new ATH definitely bodes well for bitcoin, and I think the price gains we've seen can be sustained. And I must tell you, it is nice to see old timers such as yourself chiming in.
heh old timer......
I was giving lectures in my specialty electives of banking law back in 2006 about FIAT currencies and how it all worked, FIAT is not bad per se, as it allows capital and labour to come together and produce something where otherwise it would not be able to be done by creating a consensus in about and availability in the right time frame
but fiat does cause exponential inverted pyramid of debt issuance by the banks [money printing] as the only way to pay debt off is to issue more debt. Again not to bad because you can just keep printing.
However the bad comes in where most people loose access to the proportion of the money printing, and so become disenfranchised as thier buying power become less.
It discounts labour capital and innovation. This seems to occur by the structural nature of the banking system, land ownership, and barriers to entry to various licenses and appreciating assets.
The Banking system without competition endlessly increases its % of the buying power of Banks and friends.
When I was lecturing on this, you could see the eyes glazing over, the actual sections of the banking act would have probably meant more to the audience.
Its amazing how un~prepared people are to even grasp the nature of money itself, it just beyond their comprehension. Almost every accountant I have talked about BTC outright states they do not understand it and are generally hostile.
One banker was very very hostile acting insulted that this thing could have value.
Most people are so chained by the non information surrounding FIAT that is endlessly propagated ie action x costs $Y billion as if means anything anymore.
Even my self with the the precise background to embrace BTC, both legal and technical, came across it in 2011 and still did not buy in. I tried but it was too hard from where I was in the world to get hold of BTC at least 3 days solid trying to get money through.
When it went from about $25? back to $2 I was wow I am so glad I missed out on buying that. Because I still had not grasped the implications!
It was only in 2013 when I heard on you tube video about mining that people were fabing asics the penny dropped.....because I knew from my engineering you needed serious money to get a foundry to fab up chips for you. This was not short term.
You almost have to have an epiphany to understand BTC and even then have a mind prepared by some rather unique circumstances to understand it.
Fortunately nothing educates people like seeing other people make money, and this $30B market cap makes people look on and learn.
Partly because BTC tech itself is sui generis, and so unable to be described adequately by anything before it. Its sort like only seeing the edges of something in 3D poking through, but the thing actually exists in 4D. You mind has to be able to imply the consequences, shape and impact of the thing.
Satoshi also struggled to describe the implications of the tech....its so encompassing
Then you sort of go wow, I see.
A few important aspects of BTC tech as I see it;
[1] Much of Govt rendered redundant,
[2] New form of ad hoc corporation,
[3] records system done
[4] generate trust without trust
[5] no censorship,
[6] atomized decision makeing (well not some much with the network issues atm).
[7] For the first time in the history of man, you can get wealth by a pure idea.
[8] Before this you had to go to a venture capitalist/bank and be issued money, ultimately or physically take wealth by force. For the first time in history by the power a pure idea, released, in code, an anonymous person/entity accrued $1+ Billion. They never went to Banks, VC's anyone.
[9] Another aspect of this is you can now hold wealth and only give it up if another party can convince you on the merits of their ideas. This will force rational tax policy.
[10] Nations can now have their inefficiencies and un economic decisions on a global scale by an independent actor.
[11] Aspects of legal systems may be replaced
[12] No off switch
[13] Transparent proof of wealth held.
[14] The inversion where only open source code will be trusted, which locks out most of the closed propriety models of software and ideas, and the patent system, this make it near impossible for say Facebook, Google, or any govt entity to act in the sphere maliciously
[15] The difference being you can not alienate the capital of BTC. By this I mean Apple say can make a bad decision and misspend all its capital and go bankrupt. BTC the value can not be alienated from BTC on transferred. No other company acts in this way (though banks kind of do). BTC value can de diminished by poor dev or lack of appropriate dev though.
[16] immutable ledger by which to arrange your actions
[17] You cannot buy it out, a govt or private actor and not just buy out BTC all they can do is increase its value if they choose to print money to try and buy it all.
Overall it forces trust in a trust in a trust less system it tends to minimize entropy so will win out.
When I say BTC tech I refer not to just BTC but the 1000's of alts all clamoring to be No.1, which I believe is the biggest deterrent any state actor could face in shutting down BTC itslef, there are literally so many more alts which will be exponentially harder to control, it makes BTC look rather tame.
I also suspect some government agencies are likely to launch their own coins or buy into BTC, in attempt to become a little more independent, and will see it withing their remit or lessening costs and being self funding, which will be very interesting overtime
Now a tiny fraction of a Fraction hold BTC or alts, Alot have heard about BTC, but in means almost nothing to them. The room for growth is in the trillions. As the market cap goes up its more likely to go up because it becomes more useful to larger value allocation. When you can dump it x billion and not move the market.
