Long-term Log Chart: $500 by Late Winter

[jubalix]

ppc will be around, its made to be around.....longer than BTC

[jubalix]

ppc will be around, its made to be around.....longer than BTC

Do what now?

does not rely that much on mining for security long term and other features.

[smoothie]

I suspect we will hit $500 by early to mid winter.

I think we will hit a medium term spike in November or Early December 2013.

[jeezy]

Christmas economy spike totally plausible.

[afbitcoins]

This is my arbitrary line. Its more of a fairly conservative baseline support level. I expect there will continue to be bumps along the way, but I dont think the price will ever dip much below this line failing a black swan event.

$1000 BTC July '15  seems reasonable.

+1 This is the arbitrary line I like to use when looking at long term trends too.

~sometimes I draw it with windows paint  

I agree with the long term trend (as highlighted in this thread), bitcoins has a long way to go yet with lots of euphoric peaks and panic crashes along the way, but I don't see why this trend won't hold for quite some time yet. Bitcoins have such scarcity that the price has to go up as more people get involved.

[gabrielmiron]

Math identifies numerical trends but not the "why".  let's put a story behind these numbers:

Once China BTC early adopter acceptance is saturated, it will be MUCH easier to convince a supplier to accept the currency.  This will allow the use of bitcoin for small volume wholesale purchasing.  The repetitive nature of these relationships makes the front-end effort of setting up a bitcoin payment channel (ie. EUR -> exchange -> BTC -> payment -> BTC -> other exchange -> CNY) worthwhile.

This is the first killer app for bitcoin -- B2B sourcing for small to medium sized companies.  These Chinese companies do not take Paypal (I'm not sure why), instead requesting something like Western Union.  For example, I was recently involved in prototyping and sourcing 1000-10000 units of a custom remote control, and other electronics.  We are talking prototype payments of 100 - 500 euro and wholesale order of 1000 - 30000 euro.  Payment was an incredible PITA, especially for the prototype.  A 100 euro payment took 400 euro in time (it took more time to set up the payment then the entire rest of the prototype vendor selection process)  This adoption process is slow and mostly invisible to the consumer (you), and will even be considered by some companies to be a confidential competitive advantage.  So expect news about this to be under-reported.  This is 2014. 

In 2015, adoption by Chinese suppliers will back-drive BTC adoption within non-early adopter small businesses in the rest of the world, especially for low margin products.  This should be aided by another year for the rest of the world to streamline the fiat to BTC conversion process within this legal environment.  This adoption will primarily be driven by the desire to reduce costs and will drive BTC into businesses outside of technology circles.


Simultaneously with world-to-China B2B commerce India will begin its early adopter acquisition bubble (spring 2014).  Mid to late 2014 will see the beginnings of world->India payments for B2B IT and consulting services, with real volumes happening late 2015 to 2016.

Broad B2B international commerce adoption will set the stage for these same companies to offer Bitcoin as a payment option to their direct sales (ebay etc) outlets, but I expect non-technical consumers will not move to the currency unless driven to it by political issues resulting in fiat instability.  However, a consumer "killer-app" (ad-less browsing or something) might drive end user adoption earlier.

At the same time 2014-2016, remittance will continue to grow slowly but will be hampered by lack of smart phone and fiat->BTC exchanges in the destination countries.  Adoption will be highest in countries with good tech infrastructure, an unstable fiat currency, and remittance.  Argentina looks to be the best bet, India looks quite good.

I found this comment really interesting.  We are setting up an exchange for the Mexican market that will launch in mid December.  At the moment we are handling small accounts that pay their providers in Japan and Spain an average of USD 1,500 - 2,500 each 15 to 30 days.  We are selling them BTC for MXN and taking care that the provider gets his EUR or JPY in their bank account with a local contact in the country.  Our clients save aprox USD 50 - 60 and 2/3 days.  We see it as a sustainable business, and working hard in our reputation as it is the key to the customers trust. 

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

That's awesome, Gabriel. Have you posted about that on the Bitcoin subreddit yet? Thezerg's comments on industrial adoption should also generate a lot of interest.

[rpietila]

This might be of interest here.

Distribution of bitcoin ownership by # of coins.

[rpietila]

This might be of interest here.

Distribution of bitcoin ownership by # of coins.

The problem is you just guessed on the numbers. I would really really like to know the real numbers but by design we never will.

If we have a reasonable estimate of the largest holders, number of holders, and shape of the curve, the blanks can be filled with mathematics. The accuracy of the estimates determines how good the result is, but it cannot be arbitrarily bad since we know certain things such as the total number of bitcoins. Anyway, the thread is there as a rally point for a community effort to research on the topic and arrive at better understanding.

[theonewhowaskazu]

This might be of interest here.

Distribution of bitcoin ownership by # of coins.

The problem is you just guessed on the numbers. I would really really like to know the real numbers but by design we never will.

If we have a reasonable estimate of the largest holders, number of holders, and shape of the curve, the blanks can be filled with mathematics. The accuracy of the estimates determines how good the result is, but it cannot be arbitrarily bad since we know certain things such as the total number of bitcoins. Anyway, the thread is there as a rally point for a community effort to research on the topic and arrive at better understanding.

I highly doubt the biggest holders would ever intentionally tell you how many coins they have. That'd be pretty dumb if they did. Their biggest advantage is nobody knows what they're doing.