Yeah, I agree, this forum is for anyone who abides by its rules... and having a different opinion about future bitcoin/usd exchange rates is not against those rules as far as I know.
However, it is not particularly helpful to be bitter about bitcoin and prognosticate its failure... and usually when people do this it seems to be because of a combination of
a)not understanding the fundamental technical innovation represented by bitcoin
b)being angry about missing the boat and wishing that bitcoin will fail so that x-coin altcoin can skyrocket like bitcoin did
so I agree that you should probably do more reading and trying to understand bitcoin.
Among people who understand the underlying technology there are basically two groups-
1) the people who think that bitcoin is like Netscape of digital currency, meaning that it is big now that digital currency is new, but will fade as altcoins improve on fundamentals of bitcoin- this group would argue that bitcoin would never reach $1 million USD in buying power (of course, at the point where $1 million dollars buys a loaf of bread, like if the petrodollar gets dropped and everyone dumps US bonds, it could reach $1 million in nominal dollars, but not in present day inflation adjusted dollars)
2) the people who think that bitcoin is like the http of digital currency. This means that it represents a fundamentally sound protocol for the transfer of value and an inflation proof, decentralized currency over the internet. http is still used by everyone who uses the internet. If this is the case, no altcoin would really render bitcoin obsolete, and bitcoin's notoriety in the media and the infrastructure already working with it would keep it in the central place for a long time. In this case, it is quite possible that bitcoin could achieve $1 million per coin in present day, inflation adjusted buying power. This would mean that 1 bitcoin could buy 4 houses at the average value in the US.
For bitcoin to reach this level would mean the market cap would have to reach 13 trillion with the number of coins currently in circulation. The total value of all the money on the earth is around $75 trillion.
"For the narrowest definition, or what's called "M0", that includes only physical money, paper bills and metal coins that constitute currency. That figure is around 5 trillion dollars. The next step up is M1, which includes all the physical money, plus quickly accessed money like that in checking accounts, and comes in at $25 trillion. M2 includes M0 and M1, but also pulls in stuff like savings accounts and CDs under $100,000. That figure is around $60 trillion. And the last figure, the $75 trillion M3, is much more abstract and not often cited in official figures. It includes institutional money market funds, long term deposits, and other stuff rich people possess that can somehow be spent but confuses the rest of us."
http://gizmodo.com/5995301/how-much-money-is-there-on-earth 13 trillion is about 17.33% of 75 trillion. This is less than one fifth. If bitcoin became the currency of choice for one fifth of the transactions on the earth, the price of bitcoin would be greater than one million dollars in today's dollars.
I think that this means that one fifth of the money on the earth would have to be directed towards buying bitcoin. This could happen more quickly than we think, because bitcoin represents and unprecedented haven for people whose wealth is disproportionately tied up in fiat, and if fiat starts to slide, people may be enabled by bitcoin to make a run on the central bank.
As most people are aware, banks sometimes keep less than 2% of their liabilities, including cash, available for withdrawal. If people think the bank is broke, they may try to run and withdraw their cash before the bank shuts down. This kind of panic has been a part of many war of the last couple centuries. This is part of why the federal reserve was brought into existence- all banks make deposits with the federal reserve, and in case the customers of one bank try to make a run on it, or withdraw their money, the central bank, in this case, the fed, can loan that bank some money to keep them from collapsing. This is important, because if one bank collapses, people at other banks may try to withdraw their money, causing all of the banks to collapse. The government doesn't want this to happen, because banks are very convenient for tracking everyone's money so that they can be sure that people pay the appropriate amount of taxes.
So what could happen with bitcoin is effectively a run on the central bank. What happens if the central bank can't cover it's debts? There is a central bank of central banks, called the bank for international settlements (BIS) in switzerland. All employees of this bank have diplomatic immunity. In the event of a fire, firemen are not allowed inside it, due to the level of secrecy. THe central banks of the world, if any one of them is threatened, can prop it up using the BIS as a channel.
If there was a run on the dollar, say, if a bunch of countries in the middle east were united under unified political leadership, and tried to enact another embargo, refusing to sell oil for dollars, effectively ending the petrodollar, there would be a run on the dollar and all dollar denominated assets, as everyone who still had dollars would try to sell them, and in this scenario, 13 trillion dollars could easily flow into the bitcoin ecosystem. This would mean the nominal price of bitcoin would be at 1 million, but the real buying power would still be much less than what 1 million dollars will buy today.
Of course, since the US military will go to war to prevent this from happening- which has already happened in Iraq and Libya, it would also take a clear defeat of the US military and the capacity of the US to wage war for this to happen.
It is hard to imagine, but the current global financial infrastructure could remain intact even with the collapse of the dollar. It is not unheard of for smaller countries to reform their currency by slashing a few zeros of the end, for example, 10,000 dollars would become 10 dollars, but in this case other fiat currencies like Chinese Yuan and the Euro could take over in the dominant position. However, with simple enough technology and high enough rates of smart phone penetration, bitcoin could easily render fiat obsolete and become the global currency, with a value of around $5 million per coin.
That is to say, it is possible that you could one day buy an oil refinery for 100 bitcoin. Is this likely to happen? God only knows.
The printing press resulted in hundreds of years of war, and resulted in power shifting from the clergy and a small aristocracy towards skilled traders and merchants.
While the spread of knowledge has dramatic consequences, the issue of a currency is probably a more salient means of controlling a population than controlling the media or information available- in this sense, the invention of bitcoin may come to be seen as more significant than the printing press. Things happen a lot faster now than they did in Luther and Gutenberg's time... so to estimate the timeline of this transition:
The bulk of this transition originally happened approximately between the issue of Luther's bible and the treaty of Westphalia, a period of about 100 years. At this time, it took about 66 days to cross the atlantic. Now it takes about 7 hours to cross the atlantic. Based on this level of time compression, the war that will establish the new world order would severely reduce the power of the current global elite and end with bitcoin owners as the leaders of the new global system would last approximately 5 to 6 months.
This may mean that people who spent a lot of their time criticizing the powers that be may be given the chance to prove that they can do a better job of it.
Of course, lots of other factors can come into play, but it seems to me quite likely that bitcoin will reach $1 million. It is much more likely that it will reach $1 million in nominal dollars than in real dollars, but it is nonetheless possible.
