How to make bitcoin be worth more?

[simon66]

I really don't understand this very much.

Bitcoin is at $5 1 BTC. How did it get so low compared to the $20 I used to remember and how can we bring it up?

Thank you.

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[steelhouse]

It was only $20 for a very short period of time when there was a media blitz on it.  January 2011 it was like $0.30 and ended the year at like $4.  I think it will in take use and time.  I expect $10 bitcoin at the end of the year.

[simon66]

But why did it drop that much?

[matthewh3]

But why did it drop that much?

Because it was only a bubble in the first place.  So the better question is how did it get so high in such a short space of time.

[cbeast]

But why did it drop that much?

Because it was only a bubble in the first place.  So the better question is how did it get so high in such a short space of time.

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

[Stephen Gornick]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

[GroundRod]

Excellent point Stephen.

What was rambling around in my head when seeing the OP's subject line, was relative to what?  A head of lettuce, a bushel of wheat?  What it's worth relative to the old fiat currencies is only important to those that still have a mindset to think in those terms, the sooner the day comes when nobody bothers anymore the better off we'll all be.

[friedcat]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

It will trade at $20 instead of $5 if more people start using it. Higher price is the consequence of wider adoption, but probably not the cause.

[cbeast]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

Right now almost nobody is spending Bitcoin. They are trading representative mtgox credits in lieu of Bitcoin to make the price fluctuate, but that has little to do with adoption. The price is low because miners are willing to go to market with their product at near cost because they are bad businessmen. They should have a higher markup and sell to brokers who in turn move the bitcoin to whatever exchanges offer the best action.

[unclescrooge]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

Right now almost nobody is spending Bitcoin. They are trading representative mtgox credits in lieu of Bitcoin to make the price fluctuate, but that has little to do with adoption. The price is low because miners are willing to go to market with their product at near cost because they are bad businessmen. They should have a higher markup and sell to brokers who in turn move the bitcoin to whatever exchanges offer the best action.

Nobody? Really? Every day hundreds of people buys drugs and such on black markets like Silk Road, and that's the only reason I trust bitcoin to succeed.

[GroundRod]

Lots of food for thought here, agree most comments seem to have part of the answer.  For some reason I keep coming back to thinking about the use of coins within the construct of commodities as the best way to broaden it's acceptance, here I'm talking about things like corn, wheat, cattle and the like.  Once adoption could be made for basic things like those, then it's eXchange rate between the various fiats would stabilize, or dare I say disappear.  

The question is how do you get such a wide acceptance of BitCoin usage, that price discovery can start to happen independent of local fiat?  Only think I can think of, is if they were to diminish in acceptance & use.

Imagine we take one of those 30,000 counties in the USofA, say it's filled more with millions of acres of wheat than people & all of them farmer hicks in that county agreed:
  
  We want nothing more to do with federal reserve notes, charge backs and re-hypothecation crap being throw at us.

Furthermore, suppose they said to those of you outside our county, if you want our wheat, you need to offer us a price in BitCoins, we're now excepting offers.  At that moment, true price discovery could start to take place for BitCoins in terms of a substantial quantity of wheat.  It wouldn't be long before a huge avalanche of acceptance in many other areas could follow...

just some more thoughts to gnaw on...

[Jeremy West spendbitcoins.com]

I really don't understand this very much.

Bitcoin is at $5 1 BTC. How did it get so low compared to the $20 I used to remember and how can we bring it up?

Thank you.

It's just an exchange rate. Do you say, "How to make the USD worth more?"

My view is you don't worry about how much it's worth and don't try to evangelize it to everybody. Just use it yourself and let it grow organically. Bitcoins are to money as the internet is to information. No one had to go around selling everyone on how great the internet was and just why they had to use it. People just slowly saw its potential and how it could make their lives better and while the first several years were just a bunch of geeks talking on message boards like this one and later a lot of people looking at porn, slowly the internet began to take over every aspect of our lives to the point where we can't imagine not having the encyclopaedia known as google in our pockets to look up practically any bit of information we need or want at any moment of the day or night without having to go to a library or lug out our decades old encyclopaedias and the yearly addenda.

All this to say... the very point of bitcoin is that it's not centrally controlled. So stop trying to control it and just let it be.

[ThomasV]

while the exchange rate has been stagnating, some markets have been booming over the last months.
my favorite example is virwox:

[FreeMoney]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

I can pay for a lot more development on my bitcoin sites at $20 than $5. I earmarked 1000BTC for development, advertising and promos for Seals. At the time that would have gotten me $15k worth of value, by the time I used the bulk of it it got me about $3k in value. The value of Bitcoin is the health of Bitcoin.

[doldgigger]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

I'm not sure why this would be the "best" question given the fact that it doesn't have much to do with the purpose of this thread. There is nothing wrong with the OP trying to raise the BTC-USD exchange rate - there may be valid reasons for doing so. I cannot deduce that he tried to do something for bitcoin or to have more people using bitcoin.

Raising the BTC-USD exchange rate can be achieved by understanding basic mechanisms of free markets. For example, the exchange rate will go up if you spend enough resources for buying bitcoins, either by selling USD or by selling goods or services which have some value on USD-based markets.

[doldgigger]

All this to say... the very point of bitcoin is that it's not centrally controlled. So stop trying to control it and just let it be.

Isn't this point purely rhetorical? If bitcoin was centrally controlled and the OP was in control of it, I don't think he would ask here. As it is not, virtually everyone may attempt to manipulate its value. Now, if we try to evangelize people not to do so, the bitcoin community will fail to develop methods to cope with that manipulation, and may fail badly later on.

[doldgigger]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

I can pay for a lot more development on my bitcoin sites at $20 than $5. I earmarked 1000BTC for development, advertising and promos for Seals. At the time that would have gotten me $15k worth of value, by the time I used the bulk of it it got me about $3k in value. The value of Bitcoin is the health of Bitcoin.

Well, if you speculate on an increased bitcoin value using your development and marketing budget, this is your own business decision. If this speculation results in losses, it is rather inappropriate to try to have the development or marketing guys cover the losses, or to compare the private mis-speculation to the "health of bitcoin".

Sadly, many companies buying development services using bitcoin seem to go this route, resulting in rather ridiculous offers for software development. I would rather take the opposite position: it will be healthy for bitcoin if bitcoin companies stop blaming bad decisions on the bitcoin exchange rate. If someone doesn't believe in the bitcoin value going up, he can still sell and invest is something else.

[johnyj]

The best place for BTC to grow is virtual reality, and virtual world economy is going to be larger than physical world economy in the near future, just like software company outpacing hardware company

But the biggest problem today is that so few people have possibility to explore the beauty of the virtual world. They need top level display and graphic card and a game like Skyrim to be enough realistic to match the real world, they need lot's of computer knowledge, and some of them get motion sickness due to the poor display technology that we use today. Those problems have to be solved one by one, and by then virtual reality will become people's daily life

If there is a decentralized virtual reality world, then BTC will be adapted very quickly. As I know, second life is still centralized, maybe in the future a collaboration project combines best VR engine developers will make a basic framework   

[bulanula]

I really don't understand this very much.

Bitcoin is at $5 1 BTC. How did it get so low compared to the $20 I used to remember and how can we bring it up?

Thank you.

I am telling you ... it is all a big government conspiracy !

Maybe SR is getting less sales and the hoarding stopped and people lost faith when it went to $1.9

[JohnBigheart]

And an even better question, why did it not die like all the pundits predicted?

And maybe the best question...

"How to Make bitcoin be worth more?" <--  Why?  What does that do for bitcoin?  Do you expect more people to start using if it trades at $20 instead of $5?

I can pay for a lot more development on my bitcoin sites at $20 than $5. I earmarked 1000BTC for development, advertising and promos for Seals. At the time that would have gotten me $15k worth of value, by the time I used the bulk of it it got me about $3k in value. The value of Bitcoin is the health of Bitcoin.

I can get a lot more bitcoins for my developer skills at $5 than $20. You made 1000 BTC for a few days of CPU mining in the early adopter days. Now you want people to do a lot of work for those 1000 BTCs. The value of Bitcoin is the advantage of early adopters on the masses. Once that advantage starts to level out bitcoin will actually start to function as a currency.