Satoshi's price

[bitkilo]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

[ejinte]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

Well I think he wasn't sure that the protocol was going to work from the beginning, that people would notice it and start mining. Seriously none of us know and I think it's the same about him.

[BitCoinDream]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

Satoshi was not interested in the FIAT value of Bitcoin. He wanted Bitcoin to be an independent medium of exchange.

[DannyHamilton]

He made a decision to make the base integer unit in the protocol equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC.  That would seem to imply that he may have believed that BTC could increase in value to the point where 0.01 µBTC would be able to purchase approximately the same amount of goods or services as $0.01 can purchase today.

[TimS]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

Satoshi was not interested in the FIAT value of Bitcoin. He wanted Bitcoin to be an independent medium of exchange.

What a silly point of view. Even if it's entirely independent and people aren't exchanging fiat for Bitcoin, there'd be a buying power equivalency that'd be sensible to discuss. Can you show that was actually Satoshi's view?

[polynesia]

Satoshi was not interested in the FIAT value of Bitcoin. He wanted Bitcoin to be an independent medium of exchange.

Agreed. Nobody cares what the exchange rate between USD and Zimbabwe dollar is.
Similarly, if fiat currencies keep inflating, then the fiat value of Bitcoin really doesn't matter and would keep increasing.

[bitsmichel]

He made a decision to make the base integer unit in the protocol equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC.  That would seem to imply that he may have believed that BTC could increase in value to the point where 0.01 µBTC would be able to purchase approximately the same amount of goods or services as $0.01 can purchase today.

I agree on this, he also designed the system so that bitcoin would be deflationary. This suggests he knew the market price would rise, even if he is not interested in fiat.

 

[311]

I think people assign too much importance to the fiat value of Bitcoin. 1 Bitcoin is always worth 1 Bitcoin remember.

[guybrushthreepwood]

He made a decision to make the base integer unit in the protocol equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC.  That would seem to imply that he may have believed that BTC could increase in value to the point where 0.01 µBTC would be able to purchase approximately the same amount of goods or services as $0.01 can purchase today.

I think he was smart enough to realise the potential or to at least accommodate for the potential of it. I'm guessing Satoshi wasn't into wildly speculation on the price, but he seemed to be aware of who would take advantage of the technology from what I've read so he must've know it could very well become quite valuable.

[Willisius]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

How could he? I don't think that anything like Bitcoin has been done before, so there's no historic comparison he could make.

[bitkilo]

I guess if its true that Satoshi mined about 1 million bitcoins in the early days then he must have thought it might be worth something in years to come.

[Swordsoffreedom]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

Satoshi really didn't set a price range it was the market that decided to establish the first Bitcoin exchanges
The price has been moving based on adoption usage and other factors over the last few years.

[brian_23452]

I think people assign too much importance to the fiat value of Bitcoin. 1 Bitcoin is always worth 1 Bitcoin remember.

Maybe, but surely you can agree there is a huge difference between one bitcoin being able to purchase one gallon of milk versus one bitcoin being able to purchase one million gallons of milk versus one bitcoin not being able to purchase anything at all.  I guess you can pretend to not care about it's conversion rate into one particular currency such as USD but you surely do care about it's purchasing power, which is essentially the same thing whether you want to call it that or not.

[Skele]

Bitcoin is too much for only one genius.

I believe Satoshi was/is a very small private group of so smart and powerful people who studied economics and other stuff and knew from

the beggining the size that Bitcoin will have and the places it will reach.

[scribbles]

I think people assign too much importance to the fiat value of Bitcoin. 1 Bitcoin is always worth 1 Bitcoin remember.

Maybe, but surely you can agree there is a huge difference between one bitcoin being able to purchase one gallon of milk versus one bitcoin being able to purchase one million gallons of milk versus one bitcoin not being able to purchase anything at all.  I guess you can pretend to not care about it's conversion rate into one particular currency such as USD but you surely do care about it's purchasing power, which is essentially the same thing whether you want to call it that or not.

This.
Thank you for saving me the time of typing something similar out. As stated, we care about the purchasing power of bitcoin, and you can alway compare that to the purchasing power of a fiat currency in that same economy, if you care about such things.

[Beliathon]

He made a decision to make the base integer unit in the protocol equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC.  That would seem to imply that he may have believed that BTC could increase in value to the point where 0.01 µBTC would be able to purchase approximately the same amount of goods or services as $0.01 can purchase today.

I agree on this, he also designed the system so that bitcoin would be deflationary. This suggests he knew the market price would rise, even if he is not interested in fiat.

Satoshi foresaw a great deal, I suspect. A great deal more than even discussed here. Bitcoin desperately NEEDED to be invented, you see. I fear for the alternate universe where there was no cryptocurrency invented in time to avert the next cycle of fiat-funded nation-state war...

"I don't know what weapons World War 3 will be fought with, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones".

Humanity can't afford a World War 3. And maybe now, we won't have to.

[waldox]

satoshi nakamoto and at least 10 generations of nakamotos are set financially

[Cryptopher]

I don't believe that satoshi speculated on the fiat value of Bitcoin - although somebody may find a post/mail on the contrary?

He is more about the benefits that Bitcoin delivers, rather than the monetary value that we associate with it.

[The00Dustin]

He made a decision to make the base integer unit in the protocol equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC.  That would seem to imply that he may have believed that BTC could increase in value to the point where 0.01 µBTC would be able to purchase approximately the same amount of goods or services as $0.01 can purchase today.

I think he was smart enough to realise the potential or to at least accommodate for the potential of it. I'm guessing Satoshi wasn't into wildly speculation on the price, but he seemed to be aware of who would take advantage of the technology from what I've read so he must've know it could very well become quite valuable.

I could be wrong in associating this with satoshi, but a couple years ago, I read that, while the world's fiat wealth wouldn't convert to bitcoin at the cent-to-satoshi level, additional decimal places could be added in the future if it ever became necessary.  This would imply that the divisibility did not need to be and most likely was not considered in terms of price vs any currency.

[DannyHamilton]

I could be wrong in associating this with satoshi, but a couple years ago, I read that, while the world's fiat wealth wouldn't convert to bitcoin at the cent-to-satoshi level, additional decimal places could be added in the future if it ever became necessary.  This would imply that the divisibility did not need to be and most likely was not considered in terms of price vs any currency.

The protocol does not currently deal with decimal values.  Values are stored and handled in integer values, with the smallest unit of value being the value commonly called a "satoshi" (equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC).  When creating the protocol, Satoshi could have chosen a smaller or larger subdivision of the amount that we call "A bitcoin" to be the base unit represented in the protocol.

Changing this base unit at the protocol level to allow additional decimals would require a forking change.  While it could be done if necessary, it would need to be important enough to gain global consensus (which is a very difficult thing to do).  There are other ways to handle amounts smaller than 1 satoshi (such as side blockchains, altcoins, and off-chain transactions) which would not require a forking change, but this would leave the "true bitcoin" as only being divisible to 8 places.

As such, it would seem that Satoshi either chose an arbitrary value of 1 BTC = 100,000,000 units of currency (instead of 10,000,000 or 1,000,000,000) wihtout giving any thought whatsoever to the future scalability or:

. . . he may have believed that BTC could increase in value to the point where 0.01 µBTC would be able to purchase approximately the same amount of goods or services as $0.01 can purchase today.

[The00Dustin]

Well, I guess I should have searched to begin with.   I'm both thankful for your post here and curious as to where that mistaken impression came from...

[Ron~Popeil]

I think people assign too much importance to the fiat value of Bitcoin. 1 Bitcoin is always worth 1 Bitcoin remember.

Agreed. It is tough to break the habit of checking the price constantly but I think it is better to decouple it in our thoughts. As more merchants come online we can compare purchasing power instead of exchange rates.

[zimmah]

I don't think he realy cared about that, he just wanted to make an alternative to the current financial system and see if it works. What the actual price of a single satoshi would be is much less important than the fact that bitcoin is working as intended.

[justusranvier]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

Hal Finney did:

https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10152.html

> Announcing the first release of Bitcoin, a new electronic cash
> system that uses a peer-to-peer network to prevent double-spending.
> It's completely decentralized with no server or central authority.
>
> See bitcoin.org for screenshots.
>
> Download link:
> http://downloads.sourceforge.net/bitcoin/bitcoin-0.1.0.rar


Congratulations to Satoshi on this first alpha release.  I am looking
forward to trying it out.

> Total circulation will be 21,000,000 coins.  It'll be distributed
> to network nodes when they make blocks, with the amount cut in half
> every 4 years.
>
> first 4 years: 10,500,000 coins
> next 4 years: 5,250,000 coins
> next 4 years: 2,625,000 coins
> next 4 years: 1,312,500 coins
> etc...

It's interesting that the system can be configured to only allow a
certain maximum number of coins ever to be generated. I guess the
idea is that the amount of work needed to generate a new coin will
become more difficult as time goes on.

One immediate problem with any new currency is how to value it. Even
ignoring the practical problem that virtually no one will accept it
at first, there is still a difficulty in coming up with a reasonable
argument in favor of a particular non-zero value for the coins.

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and
becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world.  Then the
total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all
the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household
wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With
20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.

So the possibility of generating coins today with a few cents of compute
time may be quite a good bet, with a payoff of something like 100 million
to 1! Even if the odds of Bitcoin succeeding to this degree are slim,
are they really 100 million to one against? Something to think about...

Hal

[bitkilo]

satoshi nakamoto and at least 10 generations of nakamotos are set financially

Bull, he won't touch those coins and i doubt he will give the keys to his kids if he hasn't destroyed them already.

Why do u think he wont touch those coins or may have already destroyed the keys? What is the reason behind this, privacy?
  I'm sure with every jurno out there looking for him/them they know more than me on how to find people but isn't there a way to find the 1st coin in the block chain and follow the yellow bitcoin road to the IP address that mined that coin?

[DannyHamilton]

satoshi nakamoto and at least 10 generations of nakamotos are set financially

Bull, he won't touch those coins and i doubt he will give the keys to his kids if he hasn't destroyed them already.

Why do u think he wont touch those coins or may have already destroyed the keys? What is the reason behind this, privacy?
  I'm sure with every jurno out there looking for him/them they know more than me on how to find people but isn't there a way to find the 1st coin in the block chain and follow the yellow bitcoin road to the IP address that mined that coin?

There are no IP addresses stored in the blockchain.

[bitkilo]

That's crazy, Hal says it could go as high as $10,000,000 per coin! Bring it on, just let me get some more coins 1st  BTC

[Beliathon]

That's crazy, Hal says it could go as high as $10,000,000 per coin! Bring it on, just let me get some more coins 1st  BTC

It will, but that is still quite a few years off. My guess would be 2025ish

[findftp]

He made a decision to make the base integer unit in the protocol equivalent to 0.00000001 BTC.  That would seem to imply that he may have believed that BTC could increase in value to the point where 0.01 µBTC would be able to purchase approximately the same amount of goods or services as $0.01 can purchase today.

I agree on this, he also designed the system so that bitcoin would be deflationary. This suggests he knew the market price would rise, even if he is not interested in fiat.

Satoshi foresaw a great deal, I suspect. A great deal more than even discussed here. Bitcoin desperately NEEDED to be invented, you see. I fear for the alternate universe where there was no cryptocurrency invented in time to avert the next cycle of fiat-funded nation-state war...

"I don't know what weapons World War 3 will be fought with, but World War 4 will be fought with sticks and stones".

Humanity can't afford a World War 3. And maybe now, we won't have to.

Dude,  you're spot on.
Thanks for confirming my believe

[odolvlobo]

Does anybody know if Satoshi had any idea what price bitcoins may get to once all coins are mined and it is being used by a large percentage of people, or was he not really interested in that side of things?

Hal Finney did:
https://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10152.html

As an amusing thought experiment, imagine that Bitcoin is successful and becomes the dominant payment system in use throughout the world.  Then the total value of the currency should be equal to the total value of all the wealth in the world. Current estimates of total worldwide household wealth that I have found range from $100 trillion to $300 trillion. With 20 million coins, that gives each coin a value of about $10 million.
Hal

Unfortunately, the analysis is wrong (the monetary base of all currencies is nowhere near the total wealth of the world), but some kind of similar thinking could be the reason behind 100,000,000 satoshis/bitcoin.

[bitkilo]

I say roll out some easy to use bitcoin atm's , offer a discount if paying in bitcoins and lots of people will start using it and talking about how good it is, most people are like sheep they follow what others are doing so only then will it take off and the value will follow.