What spurs the next run?
It is worth remembering there are only 10,000 addresses with more than 100 coins currently. There will only ever be 21,000,000 coins available and over half of those are already mined and out there. Supply will constrain significantly after 2016.
My view is that bitcoin remains an incredible technology. A supranational, global internet currency which is cryptographically secure, allowing payment to someone in outer mongolia from scotland (for example Mat) in seconds. Money in the hands of the people, money given value by the the people for the first time, not the banks or government, unprintable/ or counterfeitable, existing only in the cloud.
The internet changed everything. More and more of the world will irreversibly become connected in the coming years. An rising tide that will flow until only the very poorest are excluded.
I view smartphones as the internet 2.0. A personal handheld device, always connected, a powerful linux client, already with the capabilities of a desktop computer. There are 7 billion mobile phones on the planet, mainly dumbphones. I don't have figures for smartphones but you better believe that they will be ubiquitous where there is mains electricity in the next 5 years as device costs continue to fall. This is a silent global revolution. A groundswell of ubiquitous powerful personal computing and communication devices for the masses.
Bitcoin is simply the next logical evolution of money. Money in the cloud, secure, and most importantly accessible and spendable on your phone. It can be cheaply integrated into online services avoiding the legacy banking system entirely. And it is.
I understand you are bearish Mat. But I wonder if you mistake being whipsawed a few times by the bitcoin market price, for the astonishing upside potential that bitcoin represents. I think you are missing the big picture.
Mathematically enforced scarcity drove up the price as bitoin users rose from a handful to a few. With 50k downloads of blockchain.info from the google play store and only 10,000 users with 100 coins or more the upside should be obvious. It's a big world out there and soon large swathes of it are coming online.
Infrastructure is being built. Political and central banking opposition and dirty price interference tactics will soon start in earnest if they havent already. Barring internet shutdown or global war, or a global political consensus against bitcoin, there is only one way this project ends. Everyone on this forum knows it. The cat is out the bag. If it isn't bitcoin it will be an usurper.
What other asset would you wish to hold for the next five years?
Nice clear thinking for a change.
I would digress however on the issue of Bitcoin being a currency that for the first time is being given value by the people. All forms of money that ever did exist was given it's value by the people. Problem is that not all people are equal. Whilst Bitcoin may serve to shift human consciousness a bit in terms of what money is perceived to be. Their are far too many big boys around who can take the Bitcoin market and do what they like with it. And then there is the issue of Satoshi's 1.5 MBTC. I shall not go into my theories on 'Satoshi Nakamoto' again here, but if Mr Nakamoto just happened to be a Big Boy working for 'The Man', then Bitcoin is fated to prove to be nothing other than a further evolution in the control grid and will ultimately find it's purpose in some range of nefarious deeds that have not very much to do with human liberty or freedom.
I am bearish on Bitcoin because it has been going down overall and will continue to do so. With that said, I shall never short Bitcoin again as I have discovered that engaging in this activity opens a whole psychological can of worms that I am not good at dealing with. By the same token, I shall never use leverage in Bitcoin ever again. The next time I shall buy Bitcoins is when we are back down at the lower range of the trendline. Next stop mid $200 range. Even if I fuck up doing this and the market goes much further down than I anticipated, at least I 'own' physical Bitcoins and I have the option of holding out indefinitely until I can get my money back. Up until now, providing BTC has been bought at lower reaches of trading range, the opportunities have always arisen for the Bitcoin buyer to break even or profit. With leverage, long or short, the same thing can't be said.
