A lot of people seem to be quite optimistic that the price is going to raise substantially by this summer. Could someone explain to me why that is?
It's quite simple really.
It's because Bitcoin is vastly undervalued at the moment due to noob (less than a year) speculators panic selling due to unreasonable expectations based on last autumn's bubble, and exacerbated by over-emphasis on China and Mt Gox.
More experienced Bitcoiners look at the logarithmic charts and realize that current prices are unrealistically low.
Bitcoin infrastructure continues to grow, with new
BTC ATMs being produced and installed daily on a global basis, and [bic]-related start-ups being established regularly.
Some myopic people see it only as a speculative opportunity, rather than as disruptive technology. Many are merely quasi-religious nutbar Technical Analysis zealots who don't really understand the protocol.
Older people will remember when the Internet was referred to as the "information superhighway" long before HTML and the WWW. It was seen by many as a fad. supported primarily by pr0n, just as some people thought that the only reason Bitcoin survived was the Silk Road. Then, a decade later, the dotcom bubble inflated and burst and guess what? The internet kept growing, with P2P, Google, social media, the TOR network and everything else it has to offer. No one thinks of the Internet as a gimmick any more.
Be grateful you're an early adopter. Even if you don't make a shitload of money, at least be grateful for getting in early and cheaply.
And don't even get me started on the Elliot Wave people. (Hint: Bitcoin has NOT followed the Elliot Wave pattern. Not even once. Even in hindsight.)
It's because we've seen all this before. We saw Bitfloor, a major exchange at the time (#2 only to Gox), go down. What's that? You've never heard of Bitfloor? Then I guess you don't know what we know.
We were here for the Silk Road shutdown. Many believed that Silk Road was the ONLY reason for bitcoin's price and its shutdown would tank the price. It didn't. In fact, it went up a little.
And despite all the negative news of the past, Bitcoin has still gone up at least 10× every year. Without fail. And until it doesn't, I'm going to continue to assume that it will. Bitcoin started the year at $750. And many of us believe that it will get to $7500 this year, because that's what bitcoin does.
A rocketship is coming. And when that happens, you do NOT want to be in all FIAT. These boards are littered with old posts of people that got left behind. Some are still waiting (and unfortunately posting) for a return to $100. Why? Because they got left behind in April 2013. And many others are wanting $200 or $250. Why? Because they got left behind (in all fiat) on the run up to $1200 in November.
Wall Street is coming. Anyone that predicts that bitcoin will remain constant for 12 months is foolish. Bitcoin has NEVER done that. When these ETFs start opening up for IRA, 401k and mutual fund managers to start investing, I can tell you exactly what's going to happen.
One large mutual fund manager will put 10% bitcoins into his fund. And the sheer fact that he's buying so many is going raise the price significantly. Other fund managers will start looking around to see what he did and THEY will add 10% bitcoins to their fund. The price will go up even more. Then many others will notice that the bitcoin fund is doing better than every other investment by 10 times (sort of like BIT last year).
This will be the straight vertical of the adoption curve. Nobody knows where it ends. You can play around with your measly gains of $20 back and forth here and there. But it doesn't matter if you are left behind when the rocket takes off.
And the rocket IS coming. Once the price starts going up "too fast", everyone will sell everything they have to panic buy in at any price. We know this from experience because we've seen it all before.
