Price of the Bitcoin has only one way of going in the long run and this is up. When you consider the potential of this technology and how under mass adopted this thing is until now, really I think that we are having really low prices at the moment.
The fact that Bitcoin is also under inflationary with its limited supply of 21 million will just add to the buying pressure and to the increase in price.
According to many executives and industry experts, the potential is in the blockchain technology and not the Bitcoin commodity itself, which will never become mainstream. Are they correct in their assumptions? I don't know, but I hope to see them proved wrong in the future. I think this topic merits more discussion, and as others have stated above me, scarcity does not equate to value, unless there is demand. Is there demand for BTC? Everyone I know who has heard of BTC has not invested a single penny into it. Some of them have read about BTC online and understand how it works, while others simply heard about it in the mainstream media. What will change in the future that will create greater demand for BTC? Is it a financial crisis? Merchant adoption? Greater regulation? Better exchanges? Ease of use? A killer app that uses BTC?
We've already seen some of these occur to varying degrees, although their effect on the price of BTC is questionable.
What do you mean questionable? 1 btc is worth around $300. I see this as a great success. I think that this is a fair price for what Bitcoin has to offer at the moment and I also think that $1,000 was just a bubble price. $300 is vary damn good for a technology that's been here for only 7 years and technology that's doing something that was never been done before, ever!
Bitcoin also had many problems you know. And it needs to grow and improve considerably in order to be used by the masses. Yes, Bitcoin is not ready for the masses and masses are not yet ready for the Bitcoin either! But in 5 years, all of this might just change! And if it starts changing and Bitcoin starts getting mass adopted, then its deflationary nature will surely push the price upwards!
And how will we get to these masses? Well by all of the above that you have already mentioned! We will just must improve on all of the above a lot! Greater exchanges, killer applications, maybe even financial crisis and bigger regulation. Who the heck knows! I would say all of the above just improved!
