Where do you see Bitcoin in 5 years?

[Alley]

Price?  Applications?  Mainstream acceptance?

[TrailingComet]

Not getting into price but I would hope to see 5% of Internet transactions to go thru btc

[double.o]

I wrote a recent post on where I envision Bitcoin. It's not a five year projection per se, it's more of a vision for a bitcoin-based economy and I explain why it's essentially a matter of time. Could be 3 years, 5 or closer to 10. But I do see a migration towards a crypto-currency based economy, I happen to believe Bitcoin enjoys first-mover and network-based advantages, and I believe bitcoin will take off among individuals, companies, non-profits, and between governments - possibly playing a major role as a foreign currency reserves as well given its attributes as a store of long term value and the lack of political strings attached to it since its not issued or governed by any one particular government or central entity.

the complete article is here:  http://bitcoinreflections.com/?p=86

[Kaligulax]

In 5 years i see 1000 BTC in my wallet... starting now.... 1,2,3....

[Gilberto]

Price?  Applications?  Mainstream acceptance?

In 5 years I see Bitcoin replacing Paypal as the currency of the Internet. The price will be over $100,000 and it will be built into all sorts of applications from chat, to file sharing, to the fabric of the web itself.

[TheAccountant]

@Kaligulax, love the positive mind, positive outcome mindset.  Keep it up!

Bitcoin offers a reality where we can transact globally with reasonable translation costs.  Within five years, I think we'll see a currency crash in some country hit bitcoin as a stabilzing force.  People can use it as a lifeboat as their inflation skyrockets and they can avert huge losses.  It will be another "gold" that you hold for those "oh hell" moments.  And do so in seconds with limited holding costs.

The exchanges and wallets will consolidate into a few big players.  Similar to how you think Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.  There will be just a few trusted players.  Some of us will trade in off the path exchanges, but that will be for off the record things and have a higher cost.  The exchange rates will stabilize as Wall Street starts trading bitcoin against major currency and ETFs and other bitcoin linked trading is created.

Mining will progress faster than difficulty.  As a result, the rest of the model will be finished.  The cap will inherently drive the value of a bitcoin up.  But it will be a bumpy ride.  The only thing that could kill Bitcoin would be for one of the other cryptocurrencies to establish a 'self policing' model before bitcoin does.  I know the math wonks love to admire the purity of their model, but a theft doesn't go on for years and years unless there are integrity issues.

[Kluge]

Sure, why not?

1) Multi-coin wallet clients will finally be released into the wild, though they may be more centralized approaches than would be ideal for security and privacy. Alt-coin prices will soar.

2) Exchanges will largely be replaced by p2p and ATMs. ATMs will run their own federated exchanges, solely using current market price. Various trading options may still exist to speculate, but I see them becoming toys for the ultra-wealthy only.

3) Bitcoin-like networks will see significant, though maybe not widespread, use as a notary system, competing with email and un-notarized paper as the de facto way to record mundane p2p contracts.

4) Node centralization will become a major concern, both due to bandwidth/connection bottlenecks and security and privacy risks, and we'll probably be trying to figure out a solution to this well after negative events occur due to the issue. The Bitcoin Foundation or similar may be sending out free physical blockchain copies to anyone who asks.

5) Widespread, explicit discounts by companies for users paying in BTC. 3-5%, at least.

6) Bitpay will eat everyone's breakfast, possibly becoming The Crypto Company if the payment processing space isn't adequately competed in. Bitpay will have the money to finally implement some of the more ambitious ideas like hybrid crypto-fiat debit cards. Bitpay will be largely responsible for the crypto revolution, I believe.

7) Increased skepticism and outright opposition by government officials, and lobbyists for existing infrastructure explicitly attempting to undermine cryptocurrency. We'll see more major markets ban bitcoin transactions and exchanges outright.

8 ) Fracturing of QT project, and eventual decay into irrelevancy as developers move on to other clients and are not competently replaced. Formal organization of protocol development which will look like various protocol alliances we see in other industries... for better or worse, the protocol's fate will be in the hands of relevant corporations. This may end up being a defining moment, possibly causing exodus from Bitcoin itself into other coins with separate protocols.

9) Heavy development in the mixing/anonymization sector of cryptocurrency. All major clients will support cheaper, heavily-mixed transactions.

10) BTC price = $2500-6000 (nobody will use "bitcoin" to price bitcoin, with ksat being the most common unit of measurement)
10a) $10-1000 if major fracturing occurs due to ideological dispute over protocol development

[miketonic]

I hope to see BTC becoming more used as a mean of exchange. Also I hope that the "infrastructure" is more developed so that there are no incidents like Mt Gox. I'm not going to make any predictions about the price because I think in 5 years even the value of USD can be a lot different from what it is now..

[knightcoin]

Sure, why not?

1) Multi-coin wallet clients will finally be released into the wild, though they may be more centralized approaches than would be ideal for security and privacy. Alt-coin prices will soar.

2) Exchanges will largely be replaced by p2p and ATMs. ATMs will run their own federated exchanges, solely using current market price. Various trading options may still exist to speculate, but I see them becoming toys for the ultra-wealthy only.

3) Bitcoin-like networks will see significant, though maybe not widespread, use as a notary system, competing with email and un-notarized paper as the de facto way to record mundane p2p contracts.

4) Node centralization will become a major concern, both due to bandwidth/connection bottlenecks and security and privacy risks, and we'll probably be trying to figure out a solution to this well after negative events occur due to the issue. The Bitcoin Foundation or similar may be sending out free physical blockchain copies to anyone who asks.

5) Widespread, explicit discounts by companies for users paying in BTC. 3-5%, at least.

6) Bitpay will eat everyone's breakfast, possibly becoming The Crypto Company if the payment processing space isn't adequately competed in. Bitpay will have the money to finally implement some of the more ambitious ideas like hybrid crypto-fiat debit cards. Bitpay will be largely responsible for the crypto revolution, I believe.

7) Increased skepticism and outright opposition by government officials, and lobbyists for existing infrastructure explicitly attempting to undermine cryptocurrency. We'll see more major markets ban bitcoin transactions and exchanges outright.

8 ) Fracturing of QT project, and eventual decay into irrelevancy as developers move on to other clients and are not competently replaced. Formal organization of protocol development which will look like various protocol alliances we see in other industries... for better or worse, the protocol's fate will be in the hands of relevant corporations. This may end up being a defining moment, possibly causing exodus from Bitcoin itself into other coins with separate protocols.

9) Heavy development in the mixing/anonymization sector of cryptocurrency. All major clients will support cheaper, heavily-mixed transactions.

10) BTC price = $2500-6000 (nobody will use "bitcoin" to price bitcoin, with ksat being the most common unit of measurement)
10a) $10-1000 if major fracturing occurs due to ideological dispute over protocol development

Good post. About the protocol development it self .. what your opinion about Smart transaction fees ? ( http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-development-falling-behind-warns-mike-hearn/ )

Thanks

[Gilberto]

Sure, why not?

1) Multi-coin wallet clients will finally be released into the wild, though they may be more centralized approaches than would be ideal for security and privacy. Alt-coin prices will soar.

2) Exchanges will largely be replaced by p2p and ATMs. ATMs will run their own federated exchanges, solely using current market price. Various trading options may still exist to speculate, but I see them becoming toys for the ultra-wealthy only.

3) Bitcoin-like networks will see significant, though maybe not widespread, use as a notary system, competing with email and un-notarized paper as the de facto way to record mundane p2p contracts.

4) Node centralization will become a major concern, both due to bandwidth/connection bottlenecks and security and privacy risks, and we'll probably be trying to figure out a solution to this well after negative events occur due to the issue. The Bitcoin Foundation or similar may be sending out free physical blockchain copies to anyone who asks.

5) Widespread, explicit discounts by companies for users paying in BTC. 3-5%, at least.

6) Bitpay will eat everyone's breakfast, possibly becoming The Crypto Company if the payment processing space isn't adequately competed in. Bitpay will have the money to finally implement some of the more ambitious ideas like hybrid crypto-fiat debit cards. Bitpay will be largely responsible for the crypto revolution, I believe.

7) Increased skepticism and outright opposition by government officials, and lobbyists for existing infrastructure explicitly attempting to undermine cryptocurrency. We'll see more major markets ban bitcoin transactions and exchanges outright.

8 ) Fracturing of QT project, and eventual decay into irrelevancy as developers move on to other clients and are not competently replaced. Formal organization of protocol development which will look like various protocol alliances we see in other industries... for better or worse, the protocol's fate will be in the hands of relevant corporations. This may end up being a defining moment, possibly causing exodus from Bitcoin itself into other coins with separate protocols.

9) Heavy development in the mixing/anonymization sector of cryptocurrency. All major clients will support cheaper, heavily-mixed transactions.

10) BTC price = $2500-6000 (nobody will use "bitcoin" to price bitcoin, with ksat being the most common unit of measurement)
10a) $10-1000 if major fracturing occurs due to ideological dispute over protocol development

These are some good ideas. How can a P2P ATM based exchange work? I heard about an exchange which worked at the link level, but I did not hear anything about a P2P ATM based exchange.

[Kluge]

@p2p exchange -- I didn't mean to conflate p2p and ATM solutions, because I think the ATM solution will be relatively centralized. I don't see any of the really ambitious p2p exchange ideas ever taking off -- those decentralized protocol layer schemes. Maybe I lack vision. Instead, I think p2p will mostly stick to listing sites like LocalBitcoins.

ATMs are going to have a really complicated, capital-sucking time ahead of them long-term, I think, because I think we'll find we can't trust the exchanges in existence to not ruin businesses with slow turnaround time or by "accidentally" blacklisting ATM accounts (as recently happened with Bitstamp and the Vancouver ATM). I think, instead, ATM operators will bite the bullet and form their own exchanges (especially since many are forced to comply with horrible MSB crap already and already require large operating floats) which will have local, regional, or national markets depending on how laws work in a particular area -- I think we'll see "exchange disunification" for a while, where people generally don't use one global exchange to transfer multiple fiat currencies in and out for BTC. Lot of ways it could play out. Someone will definitely want to be arbing, so maybe there will be a quiet venture launched by Robocoin, Lamassu, or an ATM operator federation which makes giant stacks of cash by forming a "backbone" exchange which arbs with all the local, regional, and national ATM exchanges to ensure a relatively stable price across the world whenever there's deviation.

About the protocol development it self .. what your opinion about Smart transaction fees ? ( http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-core-development-falling-behind-warns-mike-hearn/ )

I really don't see tx fees being a big deal because altcoins have basically already solved it with relatively sucky networks, and I think just shoving more, cheaper transactions into blocks is just kicking the can down the road. Devs have never (AFAIK) pushed Bitcoin as a micropayments platform, and if usage continues exploding faster than tech can keep up, it won't go back to being one. It would be very expensive as far as resources for full nodes... kind of like an ultra-progressive tax where we let the wealthy first-worlders generously (or maliciously) control our nodes, and to a lesser extent, this is how Bitcoin is right now -- you need uncapped DSL+ (preferably cable+), you need a modern PC, and you have to want to run it enough to sacrifice hard drive speed, CPU processing time, and bandwidth to it (or pay for VPS/dedicated). In my case, where I rely on a mobile data connection, I'm counted as a full node by the node crawlers, but I'm really not because I started running my node selfishly by explicitly limiting Bitcoin's bandwidth to a point where it's not really contributing anything, only leeching.

In almost all instances, transactions cost significantly more to store and pass around than are paid in fees, so smart fees (unless they significantly increase fees on average) seems low priority and potentially detrimental compared to shrinking the blockchain and decentralized protocol layers which allow the combination of transactions to cut down on overhead. CoinJoin, for example, has major benefits both in reducing blockchain size, improving pseudonymity, and in cutting down tx fees dramatically. It's a major objective improvement to just about every aspect of Bitcoin, so that's what I'm really looking forward to. I think, to maintain Bitcoin's very strong network, there's also a need to figure out how to subsidize node costs (such as by a foundation mailing out copies of the blockchain on USB drives) and somehow figure out a fair payment mechanism for them (maybe just a foundation giving monitored full nodes a kind of salary, or paying universities). I worry about a trend toward capping Internet bandwidth consumption in more Western countries like is already seen by many less-developed nations (and some Western nations). The precedent set with the recent Comcast/Netflix blackmail is worrying, too -- "Bitcoin" won't be able to pay Comcast $400M to "fix" Bitcoin traffic, but it's too soon to tell if Comcast and other ISPs will be empowered to start really cracking down on "low-priority" (non-subsidized) traffic they can't adequately serve due to infrastructure inadequacies and severe over-selling on the ISPs' parts.

I think alt-coins like LTC and FTC (or Quark... whatever the new Feathercoin is) will have a more accepted and well-defined niche... they'll be relatively insecure, and it's where you what you want to keep your short-term spending money in due to the lower fees which come from insecurity (and lack of lite node wallet clients!). Weaker networks are where you want to do micro-payments; TANSTAAFL. With multi-coin wallet clients, I think that transition will be major and fast if major improvements to BTC like CoinJoin aren't widely implemented, but I have no idea when it will happen outside "within the next year." If we do see a major transition like that with BTC in its current state, I think it could make the VCs leave Bitcoin and either run away back to the sidelines or start wider-scope cryptocurrency businesses rather than narrow-scope Bitcoin businesses.

[runam0k]

I'm looking forward to new advances in usability. BTC addresses replaced with e.g. email addresses, phone numbers, etc. Memos allowing for e.g. proper receipts, specified change addresses and whatnot. Effortless implementation of simple contracts by anyone. Cast iron security.

Suppliers and international traders using Bitcoin would be great (giving merchants an opportunity to use the bitcoins they receive rather than having to swap them for fiat).

Professionally managed exchanges - where big money can move in and out quickly - and a host of other financial tools for hedging exposures, etc, bringing some price stability.

All within 5 years.

[bythesea]

Not getting into price but I would hope to see 5% of Internet transactions to go thru btc

5% is a bit too much. I read something that over 200B dollars is spent each year by online purchasing, 5% of that is 10B dollars, in 5 years that number would be much much larger, so not i doubt it is going to happen anytime soon

But even 1% would be more then good.

[bythesea]

Price?  Applications?  Mainstream acceptance?

In 5 years I see Bitcoin replacing Paypal as the currency of the Internet. The price will be over $100,000 and it will be built into all sorts of applications from chat, to file sharing, to the fabric of the web itself.

I hope you are kidding The price of $100,000 isn't going to happen considering that would be a jump by about 180x. Keeping in mind that some have few 100k in their wallets that would put them in FORBES TOP10 with more then $20 Billion

[nobbynobbynoob]

[In 5 years I see Bitcoin replacing Paypal as the currency of the Internet. The price will be over $100,000 and it will be built into all sorts of applications from chat, to file sharing, to the fabric of the web itself.

I hope you are kidding The price of $100,000 isn't going to happen considering that would be a jump by about 180x. Keeping in mind that some have few 100k in their wallets that would put them in FORBES TOP10 with more then $20 Billion

People said the same of $1000 not so long ago based on similar reasoning.

[bythesea]

[In 5 years I see Bitcoin replacing Paypal as the currency of the Internet. The price will be over $100,000 and it will be built into all sorts of applications from chat, to file sharing, to the fabric of the web itself.

I hope you are kidding The price of $100,000 isn't going to happen considering that would be a jump by about 180x. Keeping in mind that some have few 100k in their wallets that would put them in FORBES TOP10 with more then $20 Billion

People said the same of $1000 not so long ago based on similar reasoning.

The price atm is about 560$, granted it was up to 1200$ (?!?) but then again, people did knew the price will jump but not many have been willing to put money on that and risk it, and it only jumped due to hype about the BTC. Considering that BTC isn't that wildly accepted ( still ) price of >100,000$ is, well atm not realistic. I really don't believe that you will have billions of dollars in your wallet.

[Cyberlight]

Price: minimal 100k

[Lethn]

Price: Above $1000

Mainstream Acceptance: I expect more big companies like Overstock to look into accepting Bitcoin, maybe not so many individuals but certainly companies, if we have an even bigger collapse within this timeframe like I think we will though there may be a big drive for people to get into Bitcoin and store their wealth, it all depends on what the global markets will do

Applications: Stuff I suspect we haven't even thought of yet or imagined, ever since Bitcoin I keep getting surprised by what people come up with and actually set up.

[polarhei]

Everywhere. Especially in Europe and the States.

Online shopping website with Bitpay solution or equivalent

Exchange store (ATM or real store like anxpro in Hong Kong)

[Sindelar1938]

Mass adoption, internet currency of choice for certain demo segments

Price between $10k-40k