If you believe that there is a 20% chance or more of Bitcoin being worth $10,000 within three years time, then I recommend that you sell everything you own, including your house, and put all of the money into Bitcoin, right now.
The current price is about $500, so $10,000 represents a 20 fold increase. If you think you have a one in five (20%) chance of achieving that (and let's say the only other outcome is Bitcoin = zero), then your expected profit is at least five-fold, over three years. That is an annualised (probability weighted) performance of 82%.
Losing all of your assets would be bad, but you can always rebuild. But missing out on an annualised, prob weighted performance of over 82% is a once-in-a-life-time opportunity.
This is not time to think about 'what you can afford to lose'. You can afford to lose everything, you can always beg on the street. But you cannot afford to miss this.
Personally, I do not believe that the chance is 20%. I think the chance is only about 0.1%. Bitcoin of $10,000 creates too much incentive for someone to come up with an alternative, superior, cryptocurrency that is better able to assist international transactions.
I believe even at 500, people are trying to come up with new cryptos (facebucks, ethereum maidsafe etc). Bitcoin is 6 billion (market cap). The strongest network (computational power) and has a somewhat developed infrastructure.
For a new crypto to overtake, it needs to take a few years to develop (or perhaps its in the making like if its dogecoin or something (LOL @dogecoin overtaking btc
)
A new crypto may come, but I think it would take time and resouces to overtake (unless immediate flaw in btc protocol or a team of superior devs only go into another alt)
Yes there certainly is incentive. There's also incentive to realize energy efficient cold fusion, a Dyson sphere and perpetuum mobile devices but none of these have been realized. You know why? Because it's very difficult (the first 2) or outright impossible (the latter). Economical incentive is not all that stands between something being realized or not.
