I just posted this on a topic elsewhere, but I wanted to give it a thread of its own as it is about BTC price and utility which are fundamental concerns to us all:
i cant even get a hooker for btc.
This is one of the most insightful comments I have seen on this forum for some time.
As someone interested in economics, I think the establishment of a measure for the adoption level of a digital currency would be useful, and I think 'The Hooker Point' is perfect for it.
If we take an average city of (say) 100,000 inhabitants we can deem it to have reached this point when it is possible within the city's limits to find a locally available defined sexual service directly from a provider (without a 3rd party exchange involved) with a given currency in a (controlled) 24 hour period.
So a country can be defined by how many Hooker Point cities it has, or what proportion of its qualifying cities have reached the Hooker Point (for BTC).
Comparisons can be made over time and against other countries.
Since currencies go back to pre-literate times and prostitution is the oldest profession, it is a measure likely to remain current for the foreseeable future.
Further comment on price and utilty:
1. Market prices fall when more people want to sell than buy, and prices rise for the opposite reason.
2. People's choice as to whether they wish to be a buyer or seller is affected by their needs (entering or leaving a market due to the need to buy or sell what the market trades) or for reasons of sentiment (optimism or pessimism about the market price).
3. Although economics supposedly deals in rational situations in the market place, it is a fact that markets and sentiments are not necessarily rational. A herd instinct, or copying instinct means that people often buy
because people are buying - or sell
because people are selling.
4. At present BTC has little practical utility (see 'Hooker Point' above). Therefore, the market for it is much more heavily influenced by sentiment than other markets. Since most people do not need to pay their rent or buy food with it, its value is almost entirely based on sentiment.
The only conclusion a rational person can reach in the light of the above is that any price predictions for BTC are very likely to be completely and utterly useless.