$5000+ bitcoin?

[4mherewego]

Does anyone still believe this is gonna happen by the end of 2013, after the stagnation of May?

It dont believe it's likely but I do believe it could happen. All it would takes is for some backward country to start adopt it wide scale and I believe that would be enough. Like Kenya:
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/guest-post-kenya-primed-for-wide-scale-bitcoin-adoption/

Once Bitcoin grows, bitcoin gets more attractive and even more people want to use it, like neighbouring countries for trade. And it would legitimize it so even more countries would look to try the same experiment which would drive speculation which could take bitcoin above 5k.

Bitcoin today is very small, any non-small application of bitcoins would drive the price skywards.

[HappyBitCoinUser]

I believe in Santa, and $1M BTC.

[mp420]

Does anyone still believe this is gonna happen by the end of 2013, after the stagnation of May?

It dont believe it's likely but I do believe it could happen. All it would takes is for some backward country to start adopt it wide scale and I believe that would be enough. Like Kenya:
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/guest-post-kenya-primed-for-wide-scale-bitcoin-adoption/

Impossible. Bitcoin does not scale to over 7 tps at the moment, and there's a significant controversy among influential people on whether the limit should ever be altered. Many influential developers do not want bitcoin to scale up.

At the very most, Bitcoin could replace some "official" fringe pseudocurrency, such as the SDR.

[4mherewego]

Does anyone still believe this is gonna happen by the end of 2013, after the stagnation of May?

It dont believe it's likely but I do believe it could happen. All it would takes is for some backward country to start adopt it wide scale and I believe that would be enough. Like Kenya:
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/guest-post-kenya-primed-for-wide-scale-bitcoin-adoption/

Impossible. Bitcoin does not scale to over 7 tps at the moment, and there's a significant controversy among influential people on whether the limit should ever be altered. Many influential developers do not want bitcoin to scale up.

At the very most, Bitcoin could replace some "official" fringe pseudocurrency, such as the SDR.

At the moment...

The core Bitcoin network can scale to much higher transaction rates than are seen today, assuming that nodes in the network are primarily running on high end servers rather than desktops. Bitcoin was designed to support lightweight clients that only process small parts of the block chain (see simplified payment verification below for more details on this). A configuration in which the vast majority of users sync lightweight clients to more powerful backbone nodes is capable of scaling to millions of users and tens of thousands of transactions per second.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

[notme]

Does anyone still believe this is gonna happen by the end of 2013, after the stagnation of May?

It dont believe it's likely but I do believe it could happen. All it would takes is for some backward country to start adopt it wide scale and I believe that would be enough. Like Kenya:
http://www.thegenesisblock.com/guest-post-kenya-primed-for-wide-scale-bitcoin-adoption/

Impossible. Bitcoin does not scale to over 7 tps at the moment, and there's a significant controversy among influential people on whether the limit should ever be altered. Many influential developers do not want bitcoin to scale up.

At the very most, Bitcoin could replace some "official" fringe pseudocurrency, such as the SDR.

At the moment...

The core Bitcoin network can scale to much higher transaction rates than are seen today, assuming that nodes in the network are primarily running on high end servers rather than desktops. Bitcoin was designed to support lightweight clients that only process small parts of the block chain (see simplified payment verification below for more details on this). A configuration in which the vast majority of users sync lightweight clients to more powerful backbone nodes is capable of scaling to millions of users and tens of thousands of transactions per second.

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Scalability

From the "Current bottlenecks" of your own link:

Today the Bitcoin network is restricted to a sustained rate of 7 tps by some artificial limits. These were put in place to stop people from ballooning the size of the block chain before the network and community was ready for it. Once those limits are lifted, the maximum transaction rate will go up significantly.

This is the optimistic viewpoint, but as mp420 points out, there is likely to be a lasting hard fork if anyone tries to raise this limit.  Unless the new, unrestricted chain takes a new name there will be fighting and confusion over which chain is "bitcoin".  The good news is if such a fork happens any coins you have at the time of the fork will be spendable on both chains.

[mp420]

The "Scalability" wiki page is overly optimistic in tone and it's written from a very MAX_BLOCK_SIZE abolitionist viewpoint.

There are people who actually are trying to retcon Bitcoin's history so that the 1M block size limit would have been meant as a fundamental, eternal part of the protocol. Others think that Satoshi made a mistake when he said that the limit was a temporary measure.

While I support replacing the hard limit with a more organic limit (maybe something like "raise the limit by factor f if average size of last n blocks > k times MAX_BLOCK_SIZE AND difficulty is larger than last difficulty") I fear that my opinion is not shared by a large enough supermajority of influential Bitcoin people that it could actually be implemented at least until we have seen the economic consequences of hitting said limit hard.

[Crypt_Current]

The "Scalability" wiki page is overly optimistic in tone and it's written from a very MAX_BLOCK_SIZE abolitionist viewpoint.

There are people who actually are trying to retcon Bitcoin's history so that the 1M block size limit would have been meant as a fundamental, eternal part of the protocol. Others think that Satoshi made a mistake when he said that the limit was a temporary measure.

While I support replacing the hard limit with a more organic limit (maybe something like "raise the limit by factor f if average size of last n blocks > k times MAX_BLOCK_SIZE AND difficulty is larger than last difficulty") I fear that my opinion is not shared by a large enough supermajority of influential Bitcoin people that it could actually be implemented at least until we have seen the economic consequences of hitting said limit hard.

I've been thinking of the block size limit question as analogous to when Bill Gates said nobody would need / have a use for more than 640K RAM (not sure if that # is exactly correct but it doesn't matter here)... What happened when Microsoft chose to keep that limit, and what might have happened if they chose to extend that limit?

If I remember correctly, developers had to use either their own original memory extension drivers (or whatever they were officially referred to as:  EMS, XMS, etc.) or use third-party tools.  I don't know if Apple ever ran into this problem (or Commodore) ... point is, at the time, there was not really a viable alternative to Microsoft's Windows if one wanted to use a home PC for gaming or productivity software.

Right now the only real competition to BTC is LTC (I think of BTC as Microsoft and LTC as Apple in this analogy), so if the analogy were to continue, I'd guess that BTC core developers will choose to keep the block limit size as-is, and rely on extensions (Open Transactions, Ripple) to implement these extensions (in the form of providing transactions off the blockchain).

[mgio]

$5000 will happen if bitcoin catches on. But it is likely years away. NO WAY will we see $5k by the end of this year. We won't even see $1k by the end of this year.

In fact, I'd be honestly surprised if we were at $200 at the end of this year. I think a reasonable high for the rest of this year is $160-$170 perhaps.

[peonminer]

sub'd

[HappyBitCoinUser]

$5000 will happen if bitcoin catches on. But it is likely years away.

It finally got its mass media hype this year, and then quickly deflated. GG

[semaforo]

I have a friend of mine at the conference this weekend and he has been speaking to a few people who think a $5000 + bitcoin could be possible.

Thoughts ?

Stop making these retarded unrealistic post about $5k or $1M BTC.

 Reality is socially constructed. "Retarded" people are respected and valued in many cultures as having insight into spiritual dimensions that those of us wrapped up in phenomenal reality cannot perceive. For more information check out Aldous Huxley and Silk Road.

[painlord2k]

My opinion is Bitcoin will be between 100 US$ to 3.000$ at the end of this year.
If I should restrict the range, I would say between 300$ to 1.000$.



If USD/BTC go sideway until it touch the lower line it could be 100 around years end, but the pressure to raise would be astounding as more people use the network, new services are added and more value the network capture.

If there is a repeat of 2012 we could just go from a low 5 to an 10 high visiting 2 and 15., so we could go anywhere between 10 to 266, but I do not think so.
During 2011 the internal inflation rate of bitcoin was 4%/month to start, for a composite inflation rate of 50% YtoY, so no surprise there was a lot of pressure to lower the price (and it got the first parabolic spike).
As 2012 the inflation rate was 33% YtoY, so it explain the stable price. You have increasing adoption pushing the price up and greater inflation than the US$ pushing the price down. It managed just to grow 2x-5x (depend on when you look at it).
The current inflation rate of Bitcoin (B0) is around 10% where the current inflation of US$ (M0) is around 20% (Uncle Ben is printing 1 trillion YoY as part of QE to Infinity).
So, halving of the reward, halving the inflation rate, halving a major force pushing the price of BTC down. And this justify the spike in price, the overshooting and readjustment.
Without the halving of the reward, the price of Bitcoin would just raise as much as the users adoption (in 2013), now it can raise because it work way better than the US$ as a store of value.

In my opinion, USD/BTC is forming a bottom just now, around 100, in the worst case scenario around 90. In the absolute worst case scenario it could go to 32 now, but the rate on growth would push it to 100 by the year end. Given what we see when the price go under 100 US$, a lot of bid come out of the hood, and  lower would imply a lot more buy. There is too much people hoping to buy a 50 or less that the price will never go there.

As the BTC internal inflation continue to fall from 12,5 to 11,1 next year to 10% in 2015, the advantage to hold BTC will become even more evident. (inflation is a little higher than this because blocks are mined faster than 1/600 seconds as designed but, at worst it add 1-2% inflation that will be recovered in the not so distant future). As holding Bitcoin instead of US$ (and many other currencies like € and the stuff they use in Pakistan, Brazil, Argentina and so on) become more useful, the exchange rate will raise to balance the price of the demand and the price of the demand to hold. Why keep something inflating 20% or more YtY when you can hold something inflating 10% Y2Y and reducing the rate of inflation continuously?

As people holding on bitcoin will preserve their purchasing power better than people holding US$ (or US$ denominated assets), more people will see holding bitcoin as desirable. In the same way as more argentinians owning US$ preserve their purchasing power better than argentines holding the local currency that inflate a lot faster than the US$ (sic). They do not need to understand it to believe if they can see it happen.

The fact Bitcoin is more friendly and useful to transfer purchasing power from a person to another than Credit and Debit Cards, wire and in some cases cash, gold and silver will make sure the adoption rate will continue to grow.

If the user base continue to grow 15X in two years, as in the past, we could be around 4.5 millions nodes (say people) using it in any moment of the day. The means say just 3 btc for any of them (if all BTC were spread equally). Probably there are not enough available to allow 0.3 BTC for head. If everyone wanted to have 100$ in bitcoin , a BTC would need to  be, at least 300$. As people would like to save, they would keep 90% of their bitcoins and spend only the last 10% (and replenish with fiat the earn). And this would push it to 3K $ in two years.

If the user base grow faster than before or people prefer to keep more than 100$ (say 1.000$) in Bitcoin, because their fiat money is very shitty, then the price in US$ will be a lot higher.
With a 10% inflating currency you lose 65% (2/3) of your purchasing power in ten years. You are left just with 1/3 of it.
With a 20% inflating currency you lose it in 5 years (the US, for now are spreading this over all the world as the US$ is hold as a reserve currency, so in the US people feel just half of it).

Given the choice people will try to hold more of the less inflating currency available as practically possible. And this is a rational binary choice.
Who choose wisely will preserve or increase its purchasing power, who doesn't will lose it and will become irrelevant.

The adoption of Bitcoin can be very fast, so we could see the price raise a lot in response of any disturbance of the economy (and there will be a lot in the near future as this monetary system collapse)

[thoughtfan]

My opinion is Bitcoin will be between 100 US$ to 3.000$ at the end of this year.
If I should restrict the range, I would say between 300$ to 1.000$.



...


With a 10% inflating currency you lose 65% (2/3) of your purchasing power in ten years. You are left just with 1/3 of it.
With a 20% inflating currency you lose it in 5 years (the US, for now are spreading this over all the world as the US$ is hold as a reserve currency, so in the US people feel just half of it).

Given the choice people will try to hold more of the less inflating currency available as practically possible. And this is a rational binary choice.
Who choose wisely will preserve or increase its purchasing power, who doesn't will lose it and will become irrelevant.

The adoption of Bitcoin can be very fast, so we could see the price raise a lot in response of any disturbance of the economy (and there will be a lot in the near future as this monetary system collapse)

I always enjoy these kind of analyses so thanks for sharing.

You do however appear to be conflating money-supply inflation with price-inflation.  And whilst I am not trying to claim they are unrelated there are many potentially wildly moving variables that would need to remain constant for a 10% money-supply inflation result in a 65% loss of purchasing power in ten years.  It wouldn't matter by how much Bitcoin's money-supply inflation is slowing down year-on-year if people stopped using it, gradually or suddenly for whatever reason.  Price-inflation is the determinant in retaining or losing purchasing power, not money-supply inflation.

For the record though my opinion that Bitcoin is more likely than not to end up at a price orders-of-magnitude higher than it is today remains irrespective of price behaviour in the last couple of months.

[painlord2k]

You do however appear to be conflating money-supply inflation with price-inflation.  And whilst I am not trying to claim they are unrelated there are many potentially wildly moving variables that would need to remain constant for a 10% money-supply inflation result in a 65% loss of purchasing power in ten years.  It wouldn't matter by how much Bitcoin's money-supply inflation is slowing down year-on-year if people stopped using it, gradually or suddenly for whatever reason.  Price-inflation is the determinant in retaining or losing purchasing power, not money-supply inflation.

For the record though my opinion that Bitcoin is more likely than not to end up at a price orders-of-magnitude higher than it is today remains irrespective of price behaviour in the last couple of months.

I know there is no direct relation to money supply increase and specific price increases. But there are plenty of indirect relations and more time passes, more it is probable the increase of money supply become a generalize increase of prices.
In fact, as the money supply increase and the people (miners or central bank) obtaining the new money use it, the money spread out of their control influencing all prices in different and often difficult to foresight ways.
For example: when the Fed lowered the interest rate it caused the dot com bubble, because the new money flew to the stock market and this caused a lot of wealth transfer; the wealthier people started to buy homes in some places and the prices there grew faster than in other places. When the dotcom bubble popped, the Fed lowered the interest again and caused the real estate bubble. Again wealth was transferred to the people receiving the new money first from the people obtaining the new money later (directly or indirectly).

The way new money is created in Bitcoin make more probable the increase of the money supply become faster a generalized increase of prices, because the new money is spread to a lot of people, so there is not a dominant group deciding where the new money will go. It is like the Fed. starting to give money not to the few big banks but to pop and mom business all around the countries or just using a real helicopter to shower it down the people. In this case the money inflation would cause a diffuse increase of prices for all types of goods and services (but again not completely even).

Anyway, price inflation is different for every individual, because everyone have different spending pattern than anyone else, so any price index is misleading if people do not understand what it is describing.

[Cyberdyne]

When ppl exchange bitcoin thru localbitcoin, it does not reflex price on exchanges.

Just as the butterfly in China affects the weather in Florida, so too do exchanges done on localbitcoin affect the price on Mt Gox and other exchanges.

[yantis]

+1

What a lot of people seem to forget is that for the time being, bitcoin is still inflating.  Yes IN-flating in the sense that more of it is newly mined each day.  Despite the eventual hard limit, 3600 BTC are created out of nothing each day and that number correlates with about 12% inflation per year (exponentially decreasing over time, yes)

This correlates with the amount of "sell pressure" that can exist for BTC at a given price.  Run this little thought experiment:  

If the bitcoin is equivalently traded for $100 USD, then 100*3600= $360,000 equivalent USD is made each day.  The global market effectively needs to cumulatively buy or hold more than 360k each day in order to sustain or raise the BTC price.

If the bitcoin price is traded for $5,000 USD, then 5,000*3600=  18,000,000. The global market effectively needs to cumulatively buy or hold more than 18m each day in order to sustain or raise the BTC price.  Notice that this is harder to sustain.  As the price gets higher it becomes harder to buy the amount required to keep up with inflation.  It also gets more attractive to sell.  So an equilibrium is roughly reached.  

Then let's examine what happens in the next 4 years as the mining reward is cut in half.  
$5,000*1800= $9,000,000 equivalent USD mined each day.  Now that BTC is more scarce it becomes easier to sustain a price level like $5,000 .

Let's go ahead and think longer term.  Past the year 2025 only about 450 BTC will be mined each day.  

$5,000*450= $2,250,000  Bitcoins will be much more scarce by then, making the $5000 USD/BTC price level even more likely to be sustainable or able to be surpassed.  

And then hypothetically if no more bitcoins were to be created ever as of today, then there would be no inflation ever and the price would be subjected entirely to demand.  

So to answer your question OP will the price of BTC be $5,000 someday?  If bitcoin goes long term the answer is a very likely yes, but I myself am not banking on it anytime soon.  We need to be much more scarce before we can sustain those levels.

[Jozzaboy]

+1

What a lot of people seem to forget is that for the time being, bitcoin is still inflating.  Yes IN-flating in the sense that more of it is newly mined each day.  Despite the eventual hard limit, 3600 BTC are created out of nothing each day and that number correlates with about 12% inflation per year (exponentially decreasing over time, yes)

This correlates with the amount of "sell pressure" that can exist for BTC at a given price.  Run this little thought experiment:  

If the bitcoin is equivalently traded for $100 USD, then 100*3600= $360,000 equivalent USD is made each day.  The global market effectively needs to cumulatively buy or hold more than 360k each day in order to sustain or raise the BTC price.

If the bitcoin price is traded for $5,000 USD, then 5,000*3600=  18,000,000. The global market effectively needs to cumulatively buy or hold more than 18m each day in order to sustain or raise the BTC price.  Notice that this is harder to sustain.  As the price gets higher it becomes harder to buy the amount required to keep up with inflation.  It also gets more attractive to sell.  So an equilibrium is roughly reached.  

Then let's examine what happens in the next 4 years as the mining reward is cut in half.  
$5,000*1800= $9,000,000 equivalent USD mined each day.  Now that BTC is more scarce it becomes easier to sustain a price level like $5,000 .

Let's go ahead and think longer term.  Past the year 2025 only about 450 BTC will be mined each day.  

$5,000*450= $2,250,000  Bitcoins will be much more scarce by then, making the $5000 USD/BTC price level even more likely to be sustainable or able to be surpassed.  

And then hypothetically if no more bitcoins were to be created ever as of today, then there would be no inflation ever and the price would be subjected entirely to demand.  

So to answer your question OP will the price of BTC be $5,000 someday?  If bitcoin goes long term the answer is a very likely yes, but I myself am not banking on it anytime soon.  We need to be much more scarce before we can sustain those levels.

So this is why the price dropped from 135? ASIC miners released causing too many coins to be on the market. It's certainly a theory worth entertaining...

[semaforo]

I believe in Santa, and $1M BTC.

     You are much more likely to see 1 million BTC than Santa... saint nicholas the turkish/anatolian priest died more than 1600 years ago. There are probably 20 churches or so claiming to have chunks of his bones around the mediterranean, as is the case with many figures revered in Christianity. You can visit them while waiting for btc to hit a million. By the time you get back from your trip your meals, plane ticket, bus and taxi fares, hotel bills and souveneirs will have cost $0.12 cents at todays exchange rates.

[flipperfish]

Maybe I should leave my Facebook-Analogy here once again:

Fact: Facebook currently has a market cap of 50 Billion USD and a userbase of 1 Billion users.

Assumptions:

• Bitcoin does not have any serious flaws, which allow stealing of coins without knowledge of the private key.
• Bitcoin won't be banned by governments before a critical mass is hit (whatever the critical mass may be).
• Everyone who has the technical means to access Facebook also has the means to use Bitcoin.
• On average every participant in the Bitcoin-Network wants to store 1000 USD of wealth in Bitcoins.

So the simple math is:
a) Facebooks value (as agreement of the stock market) expressed in Bitcoin would yield in ~ 2,400 USD / BTC.

Calculation: 50,000 Million USD / 21 Million Bitcoins


b) Facebooks userbase completely using Bitcoin would yield in ~ 47,600 USD / BTC.

Calculation: 21 Million Bitcoins / 1,000 Million Users = 0,021 Bitcoins per User = 1000 USD wealth stored per user


I think hoping or assuming that Bitcoin might get only 10% of Facebooks userbase (which would yield in about 4,760 USD / BTC, close to what the thread title suggests) is fairly reasonable.
Also keep in mind, that Facebook provides the world with a tool to exchange gossip, while Bitcoin provides the world with a tool to transfer wealth.

[painlord2k]

Maybe I should leave my Facebook-Analogy here once again:

Fact: Facebook currently has a market cap of 50 Billion USD and a userbase of 1 Billion users.

Assumptions:

• On average every participant in the Bitcoin-Network wants to store 1000 USD of wealth in Bitcoins.

.....
Calculation: 50,000 Million USD / 21 Million Bitcoins
....
47,600 USD / BTC.

Calculation: 21 Million Bitcoins / 1,000 Million Users = 0,021 Bitcoins per User = 1000 USD wealth stored per user

I think hoping or assuming that Bitcoin might get only 10% of Facebooks userbase (which would yield in about 4,760 USD / BTC, close to what the thread title suggests) is fairly reasonable.

Your assumptions are prudent:
1) 1.000$ is a lot and not near enough.  If Bitcoin work and is validated by time (it last), people will want to store more than 1.000$ in BTC, just because it is liquid and not inflatable, easy to use.
In my case, just to say, 1.000$ per user imply there will be other 20 users with just 500$ in BTC.

2) on the other side, there are not, just now, 21 M BTC, they are 11 M. There will be 16 M BTC in the next 4 years (2017) and 20 M BTC by 2021.
For now, we play with what we have

3) A lot, and they are really a lot, of BTC are stashed away and never touched by anyone.
This imply the real cap of bitcoin is a lot lower. Probably just 2-3 M of BTC are available on the market.
This imply, IMHO, if BTC is adopted by a large chunk of people, it can skyrocket again (and again and again).