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Author Topic: how much could bitcoin actuall gro to per coin?  (Read 3246 times)
trill (OP)
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November 15, 2011, 05:52:02 AM
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does anyone actually think there is a limit to how much each coin could rise?
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November 16, 2011, 09:40:17 AM
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If bitcoin becomes the defacto standard currency of the world, one btc will be worth quite a lot. 21 million btc shared among the 12 billion people we soon will be (oh, the guesstimations are wild here!) would be worth very very much. Think of it like this: few will afford to own one btc. Because there will be more users than btc.

But to save the coins under a rock in the woods until the day when it's worth a fortune wont do any good, because the only way btc can be this popular is when its traded. So, trade it, trade it, trade it!
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November 16, 2011, 07:04:05 PM
 #3

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If bitcoin becomes the defacto standard currency of the world

-Which it will, of course  Cheesy

I will be a millionaire soon!!!
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November 20, 2011, 05:42:35 PM
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If bitcoin becomes the defacto standard currency of the world

-Which it will, of course  Cheesy

I will be a millionaire soon!!!

Would be quite neato. Sadly, if we don't spend the bitcoins, no merchant will want to take them, and then they wont be worth shit, and we wont be millionaires. So, it's impossible to get rich SadSadSadSad:Sad(SadSadSad
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November 20, 2011, 09:23:06 PM
 #5

trade half your bitcoins? keep the other half for when we can use them to buy islands/yachts/cheeseburgers from red robin.

Tym's Get Rich Slow scheme: plse send .00001 to
btc: 1DKRaNUnMQkeby6Dk1d8e6fRczSrTEhd8p ltc: LV4Udu7x9aLs28MoMCzsvVGKJbSmrHESnt
thank you.
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November 20, 2011, 10:50:32 PM
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does anyone actually think there is a limit to how much each coin could rise?

Theoretically bitcoin could replace all existing currencies. No one really knows how much wealth there is in the world, but Ill take some guesstimate I got off google that puts the total around 2500 trillion dollars (long scale trillion, so  1018 ). IOW, 21 million bitcoins could be worth that much. That gives around $100 billion (current value) per bitcoin. But Ill settle for just a 1/1000 of that Smiley.

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November 20, 2011, 11:18:47 PM
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does anyone actually think there is a limit to how much each coin could rise?

Theoretically bitcoin could replace all existing currencies. No one really knows how much wealth there is in the world, but Ill take some guesstimate I got off google that puts the total around 2500 trillion dollars (long scale trillion, so  1018 ). IOW, 21 million bitcoins could be worth that much. That gives around $100 billion (current value) per bitcoin. But Ill settle for just a 1/1000 of that Smiley.

Pretty much what I was thinking. I think you hit the nail on the head.
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November 21, 2011, 11:20:01 AM
Last edit: November 21, 2011, 11:32:57 AM by julz
 #8

I don't know for sure how many people use bitcoin at the moment - but I'm guessing it's not much more than 50K
(there are about 44K users on this forum - and  people come and go, plus not all users would be here on this primarily english-language forum)

If between 50K and 100K users can't even sustain a $3 price - I expect that a million users may similarly not be able to sustain much more than $30 per coin.

Now perhaps there's no particularly good reason to assume the relationship between *sustainable* price and number of users will be linear, but if it is, then there aren't enough people in the world to sustain the 'million dollar' bitcoin some people dream of.

edit: You have to realize that many 'users' in the future may never hold coins for any decent length of time. If they use them only during exchange - and there is always a ready pool of coins available for sale, then you can't assume the crazy high valuations.



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noodles85
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November 21, 2011, 11:29:35 AM
 #9

Theoretically there is no maximum price but its worth as much as people are willing to pay for it. I think 3/4 price bubbles have been predicted to develop before mining finishes in around 10 years. It is still early days but like it is said above if no-one is trading or spending them then they will be worth virtually nothing.
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November 21, 2011, 11:31:53 AM
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If between 50K and 100K users can't even sustain a $3 price - I expect that a million users may similarly not be able to sustain much more than $30 per coin.

There is a big fallacy in your reasoning. You count me as a bitcoin user, which I am, but I hold less than 100 BTC or ~150 euro. I can definitely support a few orders of magnitude more than that (and the same will go for most other users) if bitcoins become more useful and stable. That may or may not happen, but this was a theoretical question. If it does happen, theoretically, even the same amount of users could support a price level thats orders of magnitude higher than today.

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November 21, 2011, 11:35:54 AM
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If between 50K and 100K users can't even sustain a $3 price - I expect that a million users may similarly not be able to sustain much more than $30 per coin.

There is a big fallacy in your reasoning. You count me as a bitcoin user, which I am, but I hold less than 100 BTC or ~150 euro. I can definitely support a few orders of magnitude more than that (and the same will go for most other users) if bitcoins become more useful and stable. That may or may not happen, but this was a theoretical question. If it does happen, theoretically, even the same amount of users could support a price level thats orders of magnitude higher than today.

I guess it depends on whether bitcoin can become seen as a good stable place to store value.   If there are enough serious bubble/crash cycles - the dominant way of using them may be to convert into them only long enough to perform an exchange. 

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P4man
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November 21, 2011, 11:42:36 AM
 #12

I guess it depends on whether bitcoin can become seen as a good stable place to store value.   If there are enough serious bubble/crash cycles - the dominant way of using them may be to convert into them only long enough to perform an exchange. 

Again, the keyword here is theoretical. If I was convinced this would happen, and BTC would become the new world currency,  I wouldnt only have 100BTC. But even with its current flaws ensuring people only keep a fraction of their wealth in BTC and use only a tiny fraction of their consumption using BTC; assume your estimate is accurate, and there are 100k users today. There are over 2 billion internet users. Do the math.

julz
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November 21, 2011, 11:43:13 AM
 #13

It is still early days but like it is said above if no-one is trading or spending them then they will be worth virtually nothing.

I do wonder about the often stated requirement that there be lots of trade and merchants in order for them to be worth much.
That's just one possible scenario.

Even though at the moment they are lousy as a store of value - it seems plausible to me that they *could* become primarily seen as a savings mechanism.
Under this scenario, the merchant side of the equation would be less important.


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P4man
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November 21, 2011, 11:46:56 AM
 #14

Even though at the moment they are lousy as a store of value - it seems plausible to me that they *could* become primarily seen as a savings mechanism.
Under this scenario, the merchant side of the equation would be less important.

Then you are not seeing bitcoins as a currency, but as a scarce commodity. If bitcoin doesnt gain usefulness as a currency for trade, it has no value as commodity. You cant do anything with bitcoins other than conduct trade.

noodles85
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November 21, 2011, 11:47:32 AM
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If between 50K and 100K users can't even sustain a $3 price - I expect that a million users may similarly not be able to sustain much more than $30 per coin.

There is a big fallacy in your reasoning. You count me as a bitcoin user, which I am, but I hold less than 100 BTC or ~150 euro. I can definitely support a few orders of magnitude more than that (and the same will go for most other users) if bitcoins become more useful and stable. That may or may not happen, but this was a theoretical question. If it does happen, theoretically, even the same amount of users could support a price level thats orders of magnitude higher than today.

I guess it depends on whether bitcoin can become seen as a good stable place to store value.   If there are enough serious bubble/crash cycles - the dominant way of using them may be to convert into them only long enough to perform an exchange.  


I think the current view of how bitcoins are going to used is purely transaction based, at least for the short term. So when you when you want to buy something you convert your local currency into bitcoin, exchange it with someone else, then they convert it back to their preferred form. Doing it this way also protects against the bubbles/crashes that are bound to come, as the fluctuation in price between the two conversions should not be too much.
julz
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November 21, 2011, 12:00:01 PM
 #16

Even though at the moment they are lousy as a store of value - it seems plausible to me that they *could* become primarily seen as a savings mechanism.
Under this scenario, the merchant side of the equation would be less important.

Then you are not seeing bitcoins as a currency, but as a scarce commodity. If bitcoin doesnt gain usefulness as a currency for trade, it has no value as commodity. You cant do anything with bitcoins other than conduct trade.

While I'd personally prefer to see them used widely in trade - I'm just not convinced it's a requirement for them to function as a store of value.

Gold has historically been used in trade - but now seems to be predominantly considered to have some magic 'intrinsic value' - even though this is wildly above it's value for use in industry.   

All bitcoins would require in order to fulfill the savings role would be a *history* of people using it as such and developing confidence in it.  The attributes that make bitcoin a theoretically good unit of trade, may in my opinion be enough to 'kick start' them as a store of value and the amount of actual trading done becomes less important.

I'm thinking here also of the 'bad money drives out good' theory... which suggests to me that there is a plausible case to be made that the hoarding eventually dominates - and they may retain value even in the face of a relatively low amount of trade and transactions.






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julz
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November 21, 2011, 12:24:47 PM
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I guess it depends on whether bitcoin can become seen as a good stable place to store value.   If there are enough serious bubble/crash cycles - the dominant way of using them may be to convert into them only long enough to perform an exchange. 

Again, the keyword here is theoretical. If I was convinced this would happen, and BTC would become the new world currency,  I wouldnt only have 100BTC. But even with its current flaws ensuring people only keep a fraction of their wealth in BTC and use only a tiny fraction of their consumption using BTC; assume your estimate is accurate, and there are 100k users today. There are over 2 billion internet users. Do the math.

I'll give some maths a go. (I might be a bit crap at it!)

Let's assume a highly efficient merchant/exchange/wallet system integrated with existing currency systems such that customers don't need to hold BTC, and neither do merchants.

If we assume 6 confirmations are required, then one set of coins could potentially come full circle and be reused 4 times per day (probably more if smart wallet services allow) 

Even if only 10% of all coins are available in the pool of actively cycled coins - we have (2.1M * 4 * $btcvalue)  in available $ for transactions per day.
Even at BTC value of $30 - we get over $90Billion worth of transaction that can be done per year - more than paypal's transaction volume in  2009.


The point is that a relatively small pool of highly mobile coins could sustain a decent size economy - which may then drive down the incentive for others to hoard and thus the value.   

It all depends on what sort of velocity of coin recycling gets going - and smart wallet/merchant software is quite likely to enable this I think.

(You'll notice I seem to be arguing two opposing cases in this thread - that's because I'm not attached to either as being more likely - just sounding it out!)







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November 21, 2011, 12:48:22 PM
 #18

does anyone actually think there is a limit to how much each coin could rise?

Theoretically bitcoin could replace all existing currencies. No one really knows how much wealth there is in the world, but Ill take some guesstimate I got off google that puts the total around 2500 trillion dollars (long scale trillion, so  1018 ). IOW, 21 million bitcoins could be worth that much. That gives around $100 billion (current value) per bitcoin. But Ill settle for just a 1/1000 of that Smiley.

It could also be adapted by the Solar Federation to be used galaxy-wide. Or maybe not.  Tongue

Any significantly advanced cryptocurrency is indistinguishable from Ponzi Tulips.
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November 21, 2011, 01:12:40 PM
 #19

Let's assume a highly efficient merchant/exchange/wallet system integrated with existing currency systems such that customers don't need to hold BTC, and neither do merchants.

If you are going to instantly sell every bitcoin you earn, and buy every bitcoin you need on the spot, you are taking almost no advantage of bitcoins. You are not using it as a currency, you are using it as a wire transfer.

Banks and exchanges Im sure wouldnt mind, but it would be stupid beyond belief to pay exchange fees and banking fees twice for each and every transaction when one of the key advantages of bitcoin is that transactions are essentially free. Im all for theoretical arguments, but this one is a bit over the top Smiley.

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November 21, 2011, 01:56:25 PM
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Let's assume a highly efficient merchant/exchange/wallet system integrated with existing currency systems such that customers don't need to hold BTC, and neither do merchants.

If you are going to instantly sell every bitcoin you earn, and buy every bitcoin you need on the spot, you are taking almost no advantage of bitcoins. You are not using it as a currency, you are using it as a wire transfer.

Banks and exchanges Im sure wouldnt mind, but it would be stupid beyond belief to pay exchange fees and banking fees twice for each and every transaction when one of the key advantages of bitcoin is that transactions are essentially free. Im all for theoretical arguments, but this one is a bit over the top Smiley.

Why yes.. it would rather function as a form of more accessible wire transfer.
(credit cards would still be the more serious competitor in this scenario than 'wire transfer' though I guess)
As it has some distinct advantages in speed and cost compared to the wire transfer currently offered to consumers - it doesn't seem unreasonable to think bitcoin could compete it's way to occupy some of that space.  
Yes, I did say to assume a 'highly efficient' exchange system - so the assumption is that competition has driven down  banking/exchange fees.
Quote
...pay exchange fees and banking fees twice for each and every transaction...
I don't see how a consumer is paying fees twice for their transaction. Whether they get their bitcoins in a batch up front or on the fly as needed shouldn't make much difference in a reasonably efficient system.  At the moment everyone seems to ignore the cost of acquiring bitcoins when they talk about bitcoin transactions being nearly free - but unless you're both a merchant and a consumer (or a miner), then those costs should in theory be apportioned to work out the real per transaction cost.

The argument about fast recycling of coins in the merchant-consumer loop doesn't suggest that all merchants and all consumers always use it in that fashion alone.   I chose 10% of coins to indicate that a relatively small proportion of coins involved in that fast-loop would do to provide a large amount of value for trading, and so potentially reduce interest in hoarding. Maybe another 40% are held by consumers as ready cash and merchants yet to bank.   There's still 50% left for the hoarders speculating on whether the coins looping around are enough to support the current level of activity.

Edit:
Quote from: P4man
If I was convinced this would happen, and BTC would become the new world currency...
I guess we're arguing different scenarios here..    I'm considering the case where bitcoin is in widespread global use - but side-by-side with other currencies Tongue



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