Think the US stock market in 1987... look familiar? Bitcoin has demonstrated an immense amount of strength in how it handled todays news. 2014 is gonna be a huge year br BTC, bigger than last year. 2000...5000? There are so few bitcoins, and there will be so much money flowing into it, Currency prices are just ratios, big numbers mean nothing. Most of the "reasons" why I hear BTC can't go much higher just has to do with "how much higher can it go". If Bitcoin were a stock I would say it's Appl at $10. Lots of money has been made, especially if you bought in at $1. But those who held on because they saw real value as opposed to a quick pump and dump were/will be the real winners.
BTC is an all or nothing sort of thing IMO. Either something catastrophic like the encryption getting cracked will turn it into a failed experiment, or it will take its place as a truly market and world changing innovation in currency (among other things).
A currency whose value is solely determined by market forces, that is a better store of value than any other, as well as better transactionally, we just have to get the world used to it. Which is ok, if everyone thought it was a sure thing there wouldn't be fortunes to be made.
If the encryption is cracked we have much bigger problems, like every online banking website, SSL, credit cards, tomahawk launch codes. Bitcoin would be easier to fix, we'd just fork to using SHA512 or something stronger.
Instruct miners that at X blocks we now use SHA512, changing bitcoin would be simpler than the other things which use SHA256.
my 2 cents
