I don't think bitcoin will reach 10,000. EVER.
Why not.
Too many people will be too rich after speculating.
Too many compared to what? And too rich compared to what? Run some numbers for us.
I understand your need to get numbers. I can only give this example: guy sitting on 10,000 BTC gets 100 MIL USD THAT HE CAN COPY ON A USB STICK. With BTC you can move shitload of money without banks, LEAs etc to know about. That's huge power in hands of one man. You can't get this much power if you have 100 MIL USD in assets or even 100 mil USD CASH.
You'd need a truck to move 100 USD cash.
Or a bank account.
There can only be so many bitcoin thousenaires. Limited supply remember? Also any number of millions is not Rich. Billions maybe, or trillions. A relative handful of new millionaires would not majorly shift the world economy.
Then let's get to 10,000 so any 1 BTC holder can make thousands of times his investment. I've been here since bitcoin was nothing and I was so passionate on speaking and spreading it in the past, that people we're just dumb smiling at me. I really wanted to gain adoption but not to make more wealth for myself but because I was seeing it as an amazing thing.
But now things are different, we want it at 10k so we can make more $$. That's what's killing BTC at it's core. I am deeply saddened that we have still these exchanges and not using bitcoin enough, in the street.
The 10K yes nice for people wanting to make money.
The main reason for 10, 100K and over is it makes the market a lot harder to manipulate and potentially a lot deeper, which is much much more usefull as a means of exchange.
Consider that at 100K you need 500 times the money to move the market compared to now all things being equal. So if I need 100.000$ to move the market a bit, now I need $50.000.000. There are a lot less people/entites and institutions with $50M ready to go to do this than 100.000K. Thus volatility likely decreases.
At the $1 Mill mark, even federal govts such as the US or China would have difficulty coming up with with 10 Billion here or there to influence the market, every day.
The stronger BTC gets the stronger it gets if you see what I mean.
Incidentally this makes a lot of holders wealthy. A lot of central banks/Govs have probably realised this and will do their best to shake out individual BTC holders, as a BTC holder has some similarity to a sovereign central bank, or at least is running their own bank.....that can't be easily shut down.
In some ways, the regulation and tacit "banning" of BTC is good for BTC/CC's as it keeps govs out for longer which gives BTC time to evolve sufficiently.