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mav (OP)
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January 02, 2012, 02:11:47 AM |
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I'm working on an infographic and thought people here might be able to help me speculate about the current actual value of bitcoin and not just the future market price of bitcoin.
Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
I'm also trying to work out the social and commercial value which is roughly a function of:
how many services are being offered
how valuable those services are to the people who use them
how many people use those services (with bitcoin)
So for example, selling pizza - the market is large, but the number of people offering and using that service (with bitcoin) is small, so it doesn't really add much value to bitcoin. If the number of people offering this service increased and the number of people using it also increased, bitcoin would gain additional value.
I'm thinking as there's increases in point-of-sale infrastructure, international money transfer options, stores of wealth (ie replacement for gold) etc bitcoin value will also increase, and as such it's just as sensible to speculate about these things as it is to speculate about market trends.
Currently these non-mining factors all contribute a tiny amount to the value of bitcoin, I'd say less even than the electricity cost of mining. As these aspects grow, their value will far outweigh the energy cost of maintaining the network.
So, any ideas of what the current ACTUAL value of 1btc is? Or how to calculate it? Or what will be the big value-adders that are on the horizon?
Any ideas on how to approach creating this infographic are welcome. I have my own ideas of course but I would like it to be an actually useful piece of information rather than just some curiosity that means little.
My guess is currently around the 10 USD mark, but not really based on anything solid yet, I still have to do some data research.
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CliffordM
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Activity: 95
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January 02, 2012, 02:30:28 AM |
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why should the electricity cost represent a 'minimum value' ?
The large part of the mtgox price is represented by a whopping risk-premium that Bitcoin might be more valuable in the future. To this extent the market-clearing price is rather similar to a call option with a very low strike price, long maturity and very high volatility.
The actual mtgox volume is tiny compared to the underlying free-float, which makes the gox price something of a lottery.
We hope is it valuable. Beyond that we have to trust in the market mechanism to help us find our way. And, the market mechanism can be a real bitch. Even when we are right.
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evoorhees
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Democracy is the original 51% attack
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January 02, 2012, 04:17:25 AM |
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Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
No, sorry. This is totally false. The only value a bitcoin "stores" is the purchasing power it retains, which purely a function of supply and demand. The cost of electricity has little to nothing to do with how much a Bitcoin should cost. To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No. Supply and demand is all that matters. |
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trogdorjw73
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January 02, 2012, 04:47:17 AM |
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Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
No, sorry. This is totally false. The only value a bitcoin "stores" is the purchasing power it retains, which purely a function of supply and demand. The cost of electricity has little to nothing to do with how much a Bitcoin should cost. To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No. Supply and demand is all that matters. Cost of power, price of bitcoin, and difficulty are all interrlated. If the cost of power greatly increases and the price of bitcoin remains the same, the difficulty will adjust over time to compensate (e.g. fewer people will mine and thus difficulty will drop). Generally speaking, difficulty reacts to changes in the other two, though there's probably a minimum difficulty where certain people will always mine because they believe in Bitcoin. As for the price of Bitcoin, it's pretty much based on the perception people have of it's value. If people think it's worth $5, that's where the price will settle; if they think it's worth $20 or $2, we'll see price adjust to those as well. Of course, perceptions change, sometimes rapidly, which is why we end up with rapid fluctuations in the price of Bitcoin. |
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Crypt_Current
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January 02, 2012, 05:18:21 AM |
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Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
No, sorry. This is totally false. The only value a bitcoin "stores" is the purchasing power it retains, which purely a function of supply and demand. The cost of electricity has little to nothing to do with how much a Bitcoin should cost. To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No. Supply and demand is all that matters. The extent to which the cost of electricity power plays a role in the price point of a bitcoin depends on how that electricity is obtained and how much of it needs to be used to generate a given amount of processing power. I can't wait til the Radeon 7000 series comes out, and maybe someday really soon I can afford FPGAs. Solar panels are in my future and if I can a windmill going in my backyard, I will do it. |
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Crypt_Current
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January 02, 2012, 05:22:55 AM |
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Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
No, sorry. This is totally false. The only value a bitcoin "stores" is the purchasing power it retains, which purely a function of supply and demand. The cost of electricity has little to nothing to do with how much a Bitcoin should cost. To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No. Supply and demand is all that matters. The extent to which the cost of electricity power plays a role in the price point of a bitcoin depends on how that electricity is obtained and how much of it needs to be used to generate a given amount of processing power. I can't wait til the Radeon 7000 series comes out, and maybe someday really soon I can afford FPGAs. Solar panels are in my future and if I can a windmill going in my backyard, I will do it. I think I should clarify that I actually believe that power consumption plays a negligible role if any in the price of bitcoin. But, as a miner, the more cheaply I can get my base resources (in this case power), the higher my profit margins, at any price point. |
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mav (OP)
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January 02, 2012, 05:57:28 AM |
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Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
No, sorry. This is totally false. The only value a bitcoin "stores" is the purchasing power it retains, which purely a function of supply and demand. The cost of electricity has little to nothing to do with how much a Bitcoin should cost. To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No. Supply and demand is all that matters. Quite true. If a miner spends $1 creating a bitcoin and can only sell it for $0.01 it only stores $0.01 of value, ie the demand value not the production value. Thanks for pointing that out. However if price jumped, less people would mine, difficulty would go down, the amount of electricity required would be less, and the price to create 1btc would eventually roughly even out... which makes me think that still electricity is a reasonable estimate of the minimum price of a bitcoin. |
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Crypt_Current
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January 02, 2012, 06:14:06 AM |
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However if price jumped, less people would mine, difficulty would go down,
dwur, huh??? If price jumped, i'd mine twice as hard. depends on how high of a jump though... but if (when?) it hits $10BTC/USD, oh man oh man bitcoin mining is gonna be all I do. |
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mav (OP)
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January 02, 2012, 06:24:26 AM |
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However if price jumped, less people would mine, difficulty would go down,
dwur, huh??? If price jumped, i'd mine twice as hard. depends on how high of a jump though... but if (when?) it hits $10BTC/USD, oh man oh man bitcoin mining is gonna be all I do. Sorry I should say if the price of electricity suddenly jumped so that each coin cost a lot more to produce... as per To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No.
So I'm saying that if electricity suddenly jumped up to 100x, the amount of people mining would drop because they couldn't afford electricity; consequently the difficulty would go down and hence the amount of electricity to produce 1btc would correct itself to roughly the price before the jump. |
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Bigpiggy01
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January 02, 2012, 06:31:11 AM |
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The only value a bitcoin "stores" is the purchasing power it retains, which purely a function of supply and demand. The cost of electricity has little to nothing to do with how much a Bitcoin should cost. To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No.
Supply and demand is all that matters. I believe that you're leaving out the "utility" factor in here. A large amount of the value I personally find in bitcoin comes directly from the freedom it gives me to do what I want right when I want to do so with my money. A good example of that is that I received coins yesterday (Jan 1st my time) purchased on Mt Gox to cover my flying to southern China to do an inspection on a container of noodles for a friend of mine tonight. Using the traditional system I wouldn't be down there until the end of the week or I'd be charging my friend a huge premium for upfronting the cash for this trip. The power to do stuff like this has a distinct yet hard to quantify value that is one of the driving forces of price apart from just supply and demand. Ok, you could argue that this is a factor that drives demand. However I'd still define this a being more than simplistic supply and demand  |
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Crypt_Current
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January 02, 2012, 06:54:17 AM |
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However if price jumped, less people would mine, difficulty would go down,
dwur, huh??? If price jumped, i'd mine twice as hard. depends on how high of a jump though... but if (when?) it hits $10BTC/USD, oh man oh man bitcoin mining is gonna be all I do. Sorry I should say if the price of electricity suddenly jumped so that each coin cost a lot more to produce... as per To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No.
So I'm saying that if electricity suddenly jumped up to 100x, the amount of people mining would drop because they couldn't afford electricity; consequently the difficulty would go down and hence the amount of electricity to produce 1btc would correct itself to roughly the price before the jump. I see; my bad for the hasty reading |
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Sargasm
Member
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Activity: 112
Merit: 10
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January 02, 2012, 07:06:42 AM |
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Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
No, sorry. This is totally false. The only value a bitcoin "stores" is the purchasing power it retains, which purely a function of supply and demand. The cost of electricity has little to nothing to do with how much a Bitcoin should cost. To illustrate, imagine if suddenly tomorrow everyone's electricity costs 100x more. Does that mean a Bitcoin must sell for $500 (given current price of $5)? No. Supply and demand is all that matters. You completely ignore that the supply will go away if the value is less than the cost of production... so in otherwards... a force pushing towards equilibrium actually will be the cost of production. [edit] rather... low prices push people out until prices equalize. No one can produce at a loss forever. Unless they're smarter than the average bear. |
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Sargasm
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Activity: 112
Merit: 10
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January 02, 2012, 07:09:53 AM |
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I'm working on an infographic and thought people here might be able to help me speculate about the current actual value of bitcoin and not just the future market price of bitcoin.
Currently, bitcoin stores some sort of value.
The most obvious store is the electricity from the miners, which is roughly a function of bitcoin difficulty, and of course the price of electricity where you live (and the efficiency of your hardware etc).
This aspect of the value of bitcoin reflects the bare minimum value. Bitcoins should be worth at least the cost of electricity miners put into their creation.
I'm also trying to work out the social and commercial value which is roughly a function of:
how many services are being offered
how valuable those services are to the people who use them
how many people use those services (with bitcoin)
So for example, selling pizza - the market is large, but the number of people offering and using that service (with bitcoin) is small, so it doesn't really add much value to bitcoin. If the number of people offering this service increased and the number of people using it also increased, bitcoin would gain additional value.
I'm thinking as there's increases in point-of-sale infrastructure, international money transfer options, stores of wealth (ie replacement for gold) etc bitcoin value will also increase, and as such it's just as sensible to speculate about these things as it is to speculate about market trends.
Currently these non-mining factors all contribute a tiny amount to the value of bitcoin, I'd say less even than the electricity cost of mining. As these aspects grow, their value will far outweigh the energy cost of maintaining the network.
So, any ideas of what the current ACTUAL value of 1btc is? Or how to calculate it? Or what will be the big value-adders that are on the horizon?
Any ideas on how to approach creating this infographic are welcome. I have my own ideas of course but I would like it to be an actually useful piece of information rather than just some curiosity that means little.
My guess is currently around the 10 USD mark, but not really based on anything solid yet, I still have to do some data research.
This is what I came up with.... https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=48136.msg577080#msg577080How do you like my analysis? hehe... I was actually stopping by because I wanted to see what I'd said. |
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FlipPro
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January 02, 2012, 07:14:52 AM |
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The real price of Bitcoin is the price that it is right now at this second.
Yeah that's the real price of Bitcoin... Everything else is just horsecrap..
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Sargasm
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January 02, 2012, 07:16:16 AM |
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<shrug>
The data bared out my predicts pretty well. I did it roughly, but I expected things to happen pretty much as they did.
If you'd like to lay it out and see who's is longer, I'd love to see your predictions and analysis from october.
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NothinG
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January 02, 2012, 07:22:19 AM |
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I edit someone else's formula a long time ago depicting what the price SHOULD be. I actually don't remember why or how I came up with the formula for what it is now, but here it is. http://zombietoday.com/dev/pricecal.2.php(((b/r)*(bc/mbc))/100)+(d/mbc)
b = Block Count
r = Reward (BTC Per Block)
bc = Total BTC Released
mbc = Max BTC Ever
d = Difficulty
100 = change it from pennies to dollars |
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Sargasm
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January 02, 2012, 07:25:56 AM |
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For my pricing model, I relied on crudely depreciated estimated aggregate costs and a desire not to lose money to prop up prices. I figured people just simply wouldn't sell below a certain price because why not lose a dollar if you've already lost .80 and could make 100.
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BadBear
v2.0
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January 02, 2012, 12:57:36 PM |
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When I want to calculate the proper price I sit in a teepee with burning rubber until I see visions, then extrapolate from that what I need to do.
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gewure
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[#][#][#]
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January 04, 2012, 12:30:25 AM |
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currently about 5$ per BTC. That makes a Bitcoin economy worth 21.000.000 * 5 = 105.000.000 Dollar.
my estimation
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adamstgBit
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Trusted Bitcoiner
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January 04, 2012, 02:35:06 AM |
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i'd say bitcoin "real value" is the supple VS demand
supply is their for everyone to see... ~8mill
the demand on the other hand is anyone's guess, and who's to say what effect it will have on price.
my guess is that at 1$ their is way way more then 8mil coins of demand, if you agree, then you can say 1 bitcoin is at the very least worth 1$
finding the "true price" of bitcoin is dead simple, look at the chart!
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