The value spike... c'mon, you all noticed it!

[Vasco]

What's the deal with the quick rise in the value of BTC the last week or so? I remember about 3 weeks ago it was less than .88 USD and now its bypassed the US dollar and is at 1.17-1.19 USD depending on the market.

Is this type of rise typical? What is the all time high of bitcoin? It seems that it has hit 1.20 before. Do the math wizards on this forum predict a consistent rise in the value BTC? Is it ever going to drop below $1 again? I have seen speculations on blogs that are predicting the possibility of $10 USD per BTC. Is this feasible? Will the value of a BTC hover over the price of the USD or will it drop again?

These are just thoughts I have had, as once I saw it surpass the USD I was amused at how even though BTC has no precious metal backing (just like the USD) it is still held as more valuable.  Does this mean the US dollar is really that weak? Or does it mean that BTC is really that strong? Both perhaps?

I'm new to this, I've only been following it for a few months now, so I'm not sure what the more experienced bitcoin veterans have seen.

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[N12]

Whether it’s 0.1$, 1$, 10$ or 100$ is arbitrary and purely determined by supply and demand. The supply side is fixed and the inflation rate known. If it was 2.1 million BTC max instead of 21 million, the exchange rate would be 10$ now.

The exchange rate has risen now due to increased demand that surpassed supply and inflation.

For historical figures, check the charts on http://bitcoincharts.com.

[kiba]

Here's how I think about it:

Bitcoin price as bitcoin does. There is no use to amuse ourselves with trying to predict the price of bitcoin in the short term. It's random and noisy and it's very hard to gather the necessary information about the future.

Uncertainty is part of life. So don't try to connect events to reasons because very likely you are just wrong.

[error]

Maybe that guy who wanted to buy 100k BTC at 2 USD started buying.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Maybe that guy who wanted to buy 100k BTC at 2 USD started buying.

I think there maybe more than one, looks to me like we just went through a mini bidding war ... taking a breather for now though.

[Mahkul]

Price vs. the 'long' term trend shows a standard deviation of about .36, which means it is not improbable that it may drop back below $1 based on the available statistical universe.

If you believe that trend it could still be years before we see $10/BTC, but it is a fair certainty that we will eventually see those levels and much higher IMO. As it has been mentioned, how fast that happens really depends on the growth of demand.

You need to take into account that the reward for finding a block is going to be divided by two in ~2 years. This will certainly change the trend.

[marcus_of_augustus]

Price vs. the 'long' term trend shows a standard deviation of about .36, which means it is not improbable that it may drop back below $1 based on the available statistical universe.

If you believe that trend it could still be years before we see $10/BTC, but it is a fair certainty that we will eventually see those levels and much higher IMO. As it has been mentioned, how fast that happens really depends on the growth of demand.

You need to take into account that the reward for finding a block is going to be divided by two in ~2 years. This will certainly change the trend.

Yes, it has been troubling me, because I don't really have much of a clue about how that would affect the market other than to force it up. But by how much? Twice the rate? I don't know. For the sake of having numbers to look at that's what I have plugged in, but I have a feeling it could be a lot higher.

I'm kind of considering like an afterburner type of effect for now .... widespread awareness will be getting near to a peak, or saturation, and if it is still alive most of the bigger threats will have been taken on imo.

Jan 2013 and the neat fuel gets dumped into the exhaust when bitcoin entering circulation halves, it could create chaotic scenes if demand is still powerful (growth continued at current exponential rates) and weakened state currencies, bonds and credit markets are sensing a disruptive force.

[Raulo]

You need to take into account that the reward for finding a block is going to be divided by two in ~2 years. This will certainly change the trend.

By the time the reward gets halved, the difficulty will increase at least 10-fold and, therefore, reward per compute unit.  I think nobody should really care right now about halving the reward.

[deadlizard]

You need to take into account that the reward for finding a block is going to be divided by two in ~2 years. This will certainly change the trend.

By the time the reward gets halved, the difficulty will increase at least 10-fold and, therefore, reward per compute unit.  I think nobody should really care right now about halving the reward.

Yep, Halving the reward in 2013 is an old news and as such is priced in already... Best to ignore...

nothing to see here, move along 

[tomcollins]

You need to take into account that the reward for finding a block is going to be divided by two in ~2 years. This will certainly change the trend.

By the time the reward gets halved, the difficulty will increase at least 10-fold and, therefore, reward per compute unit.  I think nobody should really care right now about halving the reward.

I care, and I think most miners care. My best projection places Difficulty near 900,000 come Jan. 2013. That means your average 5870 core could take 20 weeks, on average, to solve a block. If fees+$/BTC does not  compensate for this a lot of miners could drop out, and starting a new mining operation with current technology could become unattractive. Maybe Difficulty will even plunge once the block bounty halves. But this will depend largely on what happens with $/BTC. Right now it looks like we could be averaging $3.20/BTC by then. But as to what happens after that, I'm taking a mostly wait-and-see approach.

Is there a precedent we can draw from to make a projection?

New mining operations are already barely profitable.  Unless you have free electricity.

You could get more BTCs buying them on the exchange than creating a rig and running it for the same cost.  But you couldn't resell the hardware when you are done, but even then I think you come ahead just buying the coins.

[ptd]

New mining operations are already barely profitable.  Unless you have free electricity.

You could get more BTCs buying them on the exchange than creating a rig and running it for the same cost.  But you couldn't resell the hardware when you are done, but even then I think you come ahead just buying the coins.

Woohoo! The free market has done it again!

What people don't seem to realize is that price drives difficulty, not the other way around. When the block reward halves, difficulty will halve as well .

If the difficulty is too high (mining makes a loss), people will stop mining. If difficulty is too low (mining makes a profit), people will start mining.

[Littleshop]

New mining operations are already barely profitable.  Unless you have free electricity.

You could get more BTCs buying them on the exchange than creating a rig and running it for the same cost.  But you couldn't resell the hardware when you are done, but even then I think you come ahead just buying the coins.

Woohoo! The free market has done it again!

What people don't seem to realize is that price drives difficulty, not the other way around. When the block reward halves, difficulty will halve as well .

If the difficulty is too high (mining makes a loss), people will stop mining. If difficulty is too low (mining makes a profit), people will start mining.

And the free market seems to be working well here.  Difficulty increase has slowed but is at a pretty high level.  I think it will slowly increase now as miners start in areas with cheaper electricity and force those out in areas of expensive electricity.

[FooDSt4mP]

New mining operations are already barely profitable.  Unless you have free electricity.

You could get more BTCs buying them on the exchange than creating a rig and running it for the same cost.  But you couldn't resell the hardware when you are done, but even then I think you come ahead just buying the coins.

Woohoo! The free market has done it again!

What people don't seem to realize is that price drives difficulty, not the other way around. When the block reward halves, difficulty will halve as well .

If the difficulty is too high (mining makes a loss), people will stop mining. If difficulty is too low (mining makes a profit), people will start mining.

Once miners like myself grow large enough to be able to buy electricity on half hourly auctions and mining at night and/or not mining at peak hours the hobbyist are going to be driven out of the mining market and I bet it will happen by 2012-2013. Basically my prognosis is that price and difficulty will converge somewhere below price of electricity during the day and price of industrial electricity at night. Also if a miner got DC with PUE way more than 1.1 it will be mining at loss. Enjoy mining while it lasts. But yea... nothing to see here... move along people...

And due to the infrequency of difficulty updates, this is entirely possible and would result in all transactions backing up during the day and being processed at night.  Goodbye short transaction times.

[Nefario]

And due to the infrequency of difficulty updates, this is entirely possible and would result in all transactions backing up during the day and being processed at night.  Goodbye short transaction times.

This must be "globe of US syndrome"  Did you know that while in US it is daytime there are places on this planet where it is night?

No way.

[FooDSt4mP]

And due to the infrequency of difficulty updates, this is entirely possible and would result in all transactions backing up during the day and being processed at night.  Goodbye short transaction times.

This must be "globe of US syndrome"  Did you know that while in US it is daytime there are places on this planet where it is night?

No way.

Palmface

[Alex Beckenham]

And due to the infrequency of difficulty updates, this is entirely possible and would result in all transactions backing up during the day and being processed at night.  Goodbye short transaction times.

This must be "globe of US syndrome"   Did you know that while in US it is daytime there are places on this planet where it is night?

It's quite funny when you think about it, because it means most transactions will be processed by a foreign miner; Each country around the globe is taking turns processing other countries transactions, and not processing much of their own (during daylight hours).

[FatherMcGruder]

Do any of the mining profitability calculators take into account the ability to buy new hardware when it comes out?

[Raulo]

Once miners like myself grow large enough to be able to buy electricity on half hourly auctions and mining at night and/or not mining at peak hours the hobbyist are going to be driven out of the mining market and I bet it will happen by 2012-2013. Basically my prognosis is that price and difficulty will converge somewhere below price of electricity during the day and price of industrial electricity at night. Also if a miner got DC with PUE way more than 1.1 it will be mining at loss. Enjoy mining while it lasts. But yea... nothing to see here... move along people...

This will never happen. I mean switching mining off during the peak hours. Already for GPUs, the non-electricity costs (most importantly equipment depreciation) are of similar order  to electricity costs. And for "professional" miner even more so who must pay for management, collocation, monitoring and all the stuff you always mention when you justify your sky-high prices, don't you?.  And it will be more pronounced for ASICs which are more energy efficient and capital costs are a more significant fraction of the total costs. The difference between the day and night electricity prices are not large enough to make switching off during higher prices economical. If it is not worth mining during higher electricity prices, it will not be worth at all.

[Grinder]

Once miners like myself grow large enough to be able to buy electricity on half hourly auctions and mining at night and/or not mining at peak hours the hobbyist are going to be driven out of the mining market and I bet it will happen by 2012-2013.

You'll have to do pretty well on those auctions to drive us out. My electricity costs for mining is less than 1/6 of the price you charge. I think it'll be the other way around - those who use expensive professional services will be driven out by hobbyists who hack together cheap but mostly working solutions. Unlike most web related services, uptime and reliability is of minimal importance for mining.

Hopefully it will stay that way, because it will be a lot easier to attack the network if mining becomes too centralised. On the other hand, when we have to use mining pools to get bitcoins regularly the security is already weakened.

[Raulo]

And now imagine that miner "able to buy electricity on half hourly auctions" as I said above as a qualification to anything followed. Do you know much about energy marketplace? Do you know that electricity prices for a few peak hours could be easily 10 times of night rates?

Yes, two three times a year there is such a difference. Typically, it's much less. And those peak rates are still of the order of capital depreciation. Your GPU has 24 month lifetime at the very best. After that it is either dead, or obsoleted by more efficient equipment. When it sits idle, it costs money. And let's not forget that the idle energy usage is non-zero.

Do you know that there are companies in US which aggregate electricity consumption from a set of customers and pay customers to not use electricity for a few (peak) hours a day?

For a laundry that have a load to process and sits idle during the rest of the day, yes but for a compute center? You must be kidding.