$5000+ bitcoin?

[Elwar]

I recall paying 50 cents a gallon for gas back in the late 90s.

$5,000 a bitcoin compared to $120 today is not that big of a stretch at the dollar's current pace.

Bitcoin has a lot of room to grow. Hell, even of Bitcoin supporters only a handful use it for more than 75% of their spending. How many of your friends have bitcoins?

Compare that to the amount of people you know who have used PayPal.

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

I expect we'll reach $5,000 this year. It's less than 50x the current price, and we already had a more than 20x run over the past six months. It feels like we're finally reaching critical mass, as we must in order to maintain exponential growth.

[drdanishkhan]

Its these kind of speculations thats driving people to buy and hold bitcoins.. for bitcoin to grow you need to actually use them.. buy stuff etc.. But with everyone speculating that the price will reach 5000 or 10000 or a million nobodys willing to actuallly use them.. if this goes on in the long run it wouldnt be good for the currency.. 

[BitWulf]

I expect we'll reach $5,000 this year. It's less than 50x the current price, and we already had a more than 20x run over the past six months. It feels like we're finally reaching critical mass, as we must in order to maintain exponential growth.

Bold expectation to have and I don't think it will but I hope your right so I can buy a new house :p

Its these kind of speculations thats driving people to buy and hold bitcoins.. for bitcoin to grow you need to actually use them.. buy stuff etc.. But with everyone speculating that the price will reach 5000 or 10000 or a million nobodys willing to actuallly use them.. if this goes on in the long run it wouldnt be good for the currency.. 

You sure about that? The more people that show interest and buy in, the greater the demand right?

[drdanishkhan]

Yes more the demand.. But you have to use the currency to buy stuff for it to be sustainable in the long run.. frankly people are expecting a huge rally somewhere in the future so that they can cash out. fiat.. i mean the whole idea of bitcoin was to get rid of banksters and their manipulated fiat.. kinda defeats the purpose of the whole thing when you convert coins back to fiat.. well its my personal opinion and most people tend to disagree with it..

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

For bitcoin to be useful for spending more people need to buy and hold.

[BitWulf]

Yes more the demand.. But you have to use the currency to buy stuff for it to be sustainable in the long run.. frankly people are expecting a huge rally somewhere in the future so that they can cash out. fiat.. i mean the whole idea of bitcoin was to get rid of banksters and their manipulated fiat.. kinda defeats the purpose of the whole thing when you convert coins back to fiat.. well its my personal opinion and most people tend to disagree with it..

Give me the ability to buy with my BTC and I will happily replace all my fiat. I hate the shit along with the thieving governments that control it.

[thoughtfan]

... frankly people are expecting a huge rally somewhere in the future so that they can cash out. fiat..

That is an assumption I'm not seeing.  Certainly there are many expecting a huge rally but on what basis do you believe people will be wanting to 'cash out'?  Some, certainly, but far from most I suspect.  And the reasoning behind my speculation is that anyone expecting another big rally is likely to believe bitcoin is not a flash in the pan and is therefore likely to be looking at it either as a long-term commodity investment as part of their portfolio or is holding onto it until such a time that more day-to-day transactions can be done in bitcoin.  In the meantime if things they want to buy start becoming available and good value in bitcoin the likelihood is people will buy more bitcoin to spend rather than bitning into their long-term stash.

My point is 'hoarding' bitcoin is better for bitcoin than hoarding pm, bonds, stock etc.   Spending bitcoin is better for bitcoin than spending fiat.  And should Bitcoin's long-term deflationary nature lead some to save a bit more and spend a bit less, whilst this may not be ideal to fledgling bitcoin-dependent businesses right now I'm tending to think it can't be a bad thing for the Bitcoin economy further down the road.

[julius]

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 ?

I need to have your friend's drug dealer contact details. He is buying really good shit.

[drdanishkhan]

... frankly people are expecting a huge rally somewhere in the future so that they can cash out. fiat..

My point is 'hoarding' bitcoin is better for bitcoin than hoarding pm, bonds, stock etc.   Spending bitcoin is better for bitcoin than spending fiat.  And should Bitcoin's long-term deflationary nature lead some to save a bit more and spend a bit less, whilst this may not be ideal to fledgling bitcoin-dependent businesses right now I'm tending to think it can't be a bad thing for the Bitcoin economy further down the road.

I guess you're right..

[DoomDumas]

Bitcoin are scarce.
Userbase growt is faster than the rate at wich bitcoin are generated.
Big pocket, big companies and a lots of average joe should join Bitcoin in the years to come.

5k$/BTC ?

It more than possible, IMHO, it's inevitable.

Before 2016 is my bet !

[HappyBitCoinUser]

Everyone has opinions. So what do I think about someone elses opinion? Dunno, lack of interest, cause there is so many going around.

[mp420]

Current Bitcoin can't be sustainably much over $400.

Justification: the 1MB block size limit and the fact that the price has pretty much grown hand in hand with the number of transactions per block (in the long time trend). We have free transactions now (for old enough coins). Eventually a minimum transaction fee for ANY transaction will be several dollars, when the block space scarcity really starts to constrict usage. If BTC adoption grows at the current rate, in a couple of years this scenario is going to be real. This will mean, by the way, that the block subsidy will be insignificant far sooner than most people think. At 20,000 tx/block and $1 fee per tx, assuming $400/BTC and current reward level, fees will be two thirds of total miner revenue.

I do not expect doing away with the block size limit until we've seen its economic consequences. Many influential people have gotten stuck in early 2011 and the "everyone must be able to run a full node in their cell phone" mindset.

[naphto]

Current Bitcoin can't be sustainably much over $400.

Justification: the 1MB block size limit and the fact that the price has pretty much grown hand in hand with the number of transactions per block (in the long time trend). We have free transactions now (for old enough coins). Eventually a minimum transaction fee for ANY transaction will be several dollars, when the block space scarcity really starts to constrict usage. If BTC adoption grows at the current rate, in a couple of years this scenario is going to be real. This will mean, by the way, that the block subsidy will be insignificant far sooner than most people think. At 20,000 tx/block and $1 fee per tx, assuming $400/BTC and current reward level, fees will be two thirds of total miner revenue.

I do not expect doing away with the block size limit until we've seen its economic consequences. Many influential people have gotten stuck in early 2011 and the "everyone must be able to run a full node in their cell phone" mindset.

This.

[solex]

Current Bitcoin can't be sustainably much over $400.

Justification: the 1MB block size limit and the fact that the price has pretty much grown hand in hand with the number of transactions per block (in the long time trend). We have free transactions now (for old enough coins). Eventually a minimum transaction fee for ANY transaction will be several dollars, when the block space scarcity really starts to constrict usage. If BTC adoption grows at the current rate, in a couple of years this scenario is going to be real. This will mean, by the way, that the block subsidy will be insignificant far sooner than most people think. At 20,000 tx/block and $1 fee per tx, assuming $400/BTC and current reward level, fees will be two thirds of total miner revenue.

I do not expect doing away with the block size limit until we've seen its economic consequences. Many influential people have gotten stuck in early 2011 and the "everyone must be able to run a full node in their cell phone" mindset.

+1, mp420 summarized my thinking exactly.

$400 is the most we will get until the block limit is made flexible or removed. The fear-mongering about nodes disappearing (centralization) is not shown with recent stats, which identify up to 350,000 active nodes.
http://bitnodes.io/
Many more than two years ago when it was more like 20,000

[viboracecata]

I only want to see whether we can cross $500+ within recent years.

[Zaih]

5 thousand dollars isn't cool. You know what's cool? 5 million dollars.

 

Yeh f**k it, 5 million please.

[romerun]

$5000 is a long shot. Judging from the price log scale, bitcoin will be 1000$ by the end of year. When do you think bitcoin will reach $1000 ?

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

$5000 is a long shot. Judging from the price log scale, bitcoin will be 1000$ by the end of year. When do you think bitcoin will reach $1000 ?

September.

[Rygon]

Infrastructure will limit the price. As demand increases, price will rise. Assuming the increase in demand is correlated with an increase in the actual network usage (sending txs), there will be an eventual increase in tx fees. Even assuming the average cost for getting a tx through in reasonable time remains at 0.5 mBTC, I don't think users will accept fees of anything much higher than 5% on transactions. Let's say the minimum value in USD we want to send through the network is $5 (cup of coffee?), end users are likely to balk at transmission fees higher than $.25, which would be equivalent to 1 mBTC = $0.50, or 1BTC = $500. At least in the short term, I don't think the ninfrastructure will support prices over this level because new users will start balking at the cost of sending a tx.

Of course, that is a lot of assumptions, but generall sustained higher prices means higher network traffic, which is ultimately limited by physical network speeds and ability for miners to process and include txs. The recent updates to bar small transactions support that conclusion also.