Bank of America covers Bitcoin - 1300$ fair price, potential for growth

[dego]

“We believe Bitcoin can become a major means of payment for e-commerce and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers,” wrote Bank of America currency strategist David Woo in a 14-page note to clients this morning. “As a medium of exchange, Bitcoin has clear potential for growth, in our view.”

See:
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/baml-initiates-coverage-on-bitcoin-2013-12

[Dr Bloggood]

Interesting. Very positive for BTC. But strange on several levels:

1. Why are they doing this? BTC is competition, how should they get their piece of the cake?

2. Store of value close to silver? Lol, with all respect due to BTC, silver has been around for a couple of 1000 years...

3. Where does this number of 1300$ come from? My guess: They totally pulled it out of their asses... when you look at number of people, money supply, total available gold, etc, etc, that number is MUCH higher...

[dego]

Interesting. Very positive for BTC. But strange on several levels:

1. Why are they doing this? BTC is competition, how should they get their piece of the cake?

2. Store of value close to silver? Lol, with all respect due to BTC, silver has been around for a couple of 1000 years...

3. Where does this number of 1300$ come from? My guess: They totally pulled it out of their asses... when you look at number of people, money supply, total available gold, etc, etc, that number is MUCH higher...

1. If they can rip you off when you trade silver with them, they will know how to rip you off while trading Bitcoins with them

2. But it actually is a store of value, even if it becomes worthless and its also volatile as silver

3. Yes, pulled out of their asses, as they do with all the other commodities, stocks etc.

[porcupine87]

“We believe Bitcoin can become a major means of payment for e-commerce and may emerge as a serious competitor to traditional money transfer providers,” wrote Bank of America currency strategist David Woo in a 14-page note to clients this morning. “As a medium of exchange, Bitcoin has clear potential for growth, in our view.”

See:
http://www.businessinsider.com.au/baml-initiates-coverage-on-bitcoin-2013-12

Is Bank of America not a one of the big four? That is more interesting than such free adds from some unknown companies...

[mccoyspace]

Maybe this is the emerging consensus by the powers that be: bitcoin is new kind of commodity.
That's the box that they will stuff it into.

[porcupine87]

Interesting. Very positive for BTC. But strange on several levels:

1. Why are they doing this? BTC is competition, how should they get their piece of the cake?

Maybe the bank thinks: We will lose anyway. The only change to stay alive is to use Bitcoin. Imagine, you can store your bitcoins on a server of a multi-billion-company. I would do that!

[dego]

Is Bank of America not a one of the big four? That is more interesting than such free adds from some unknown companies...

You can imagine, that all the others also look very closely to Bitcoin... and you can bet that they won't wait for long if they have any indication that its possible to make $$$ with BTC.

[Herp]

This is a HUGE turning point for BTC.

Big banks finally starting to realize this is something they can't fight but have to accept. Be part of it or be left behind.

Big turning point and game changer.

[crazy_rabbit]

Maybe this is the emerging consensus by the powers that be: bitcoin is new kind of commodity.
That's the box that they will stuff it into.

True, and if bitcoin is a new kind of commodity- there are going to be all sorts of new ways to make money off it.

Also it's pretty interesting they say $1300 is fair price. Kind of gives an indication that maybe bitcoin is right where it ought to be for the moment.

[matt608]

They clearly don't understand bitcoin is far more than a currency/store of value/financial instrument, it is a protocol that will revolutionise dozens of industries. It's like the next layer of the Internet. This is a massive undervaluation.

There's coloured coins which is being developed which will allow for a completely secure decentralised stock exchange and that will be a brilliant way to equity crowd-fund any project, ranging from a blog, an art project to a business or social venture.

Then there's a ton of other things, this video gives a few really good ideas of what it could be used for but I've seen all sorts of other things too: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1rsm4r/stefan_molyneux_explains_why_bitcoin_may_be_the/

[dego]

Other analysts see a bit higher prices (but I guess they invested in BTC themselves):

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-reach-98500-say-wall-street-analysts/

[Herp]

Other analysts see a bit higher prices (but I guess they invested in BTC themselves):

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-price-reach-98500-say-wall-street-analysts/

Analysts from big banks just want to play it safe and don't risk more extreme price targets. Keeping their job, by playing it safe is more important than getting it right. If 1000 people say same thing and they're wrong about it, it's very easy to save face. If only one makes such statement and he's wrong about it, his job may be at risk because it's much harder to save face. Most analysts are aware of this and act accordingly.

[laowai80]

Game on now. After this you can fully expect each big bank to develop their own crypto, maybe smaller banks will do too.

[Herp]

Game on now. After this you can fully expect each big bank to develop their own crypto, maybe smaller banks will do too.

They won't go down that road because it takes big investments in infrastructure and it's not something their mindset allows them to do.

More banks will start coverage of Bitcoin. Expect Morgan Stanley, Goldman, Paribas, Societe Generale, Deutsche Bank to follow suit. This in turn will bring even more money into Bitcoin itself and the bitcoin infrastructure.

[dego]

Game on now. After this you can fully expect each big bank to develop their own crypto, maybe smaller banks will do too.

You mean BOACoin?

[laowai80]

They won't go down that road because it takes big investments in infrastructure and it's not something their mindset allows them to do.
 

No special investments are required. People do it all the time in Alternative Currencies section with very limited resources. It doesn't take much to clone bitcoin code or even write something difefrent from it in some aspects. These alt-coins find a lot of supporters here on the forum, who start mining it, and if a big bank starts backing an alt-coin, it'll gather hundreds of miners in 24 hours. No special invesment is required here, bank's staff probably spends more on lunches each day.

[RodeoX]

Why they are doing this is simple. It is now more profitable to launch bitcoin banking services than to limit bitcoin's expansion. You and I know that we don't need a bank with bitcoin. But the next wave of users will not understand the technology and may very well be wooed into BoA online wallets and exchanges. The profits will be sick!

[balanghai]

I think from the beginning they have been buying huge chunks of coin. And come to think of that they have neat powerful main frames to do massive computing power. They could have invested earlier.

[Herp]

They won't go down that road because it takes big investments in infrastructure and it's not something their mindset allows them to do.
 

No special investments are required. People do it all the time in Alternative Currencies section with very limited resources. It doesn't take much to clone bitcoin code or even write something difefrent from it in some aspects. These alt-coins find a lot of supporters here on the forum, who start mining it, and if a big bank starts backing an alt-coin, it'll gather hundreds of miners in 24 hours. No special invesment is required here, bank's staff probably spends more on lunches each day.

Banks invest, they're not big on creating new systems. They will just pick a currency like Bitcoin or Litecoin and invest in either currency itself or the infrastructure.

[indianplayers]

Very good news, but for some reason it feels strange that this is coming from a bank.