Perhaps true. But do not underestimate the ability of infrastructure to grow exponentially as well.
I said it yesterday in the other post and I don't wanna be repeating myself but when talking about infrastructure I see two critical points: technology and bureaucracy.
Technology can in fact hold up (with a lot of capital and work, and other exchanges popping up to cover demand).
You cannot rush bureaucracy. You have 6 months to convince banks to process 100x the amount of money they process today, all the while trying to comply with as of yet unwritten or non-existant laws and regulations. You have to go up the chain link by link, and sweet talk every player in every country. Just not possible.
Also, consider, a 100x price implies 100x more fiat processing BUT it does
not imply 100x of the technological aspect. Price discovery does not equal every-day use adoption.
tl;dr: technology might be able to cope; bureaucracy can not keep up.
I think Voodah makes good points here.
Let me chime in with my two-cents: we can definitely hit $3,000+ with our current infrastructure and regulatory climate, but a lot has to happen if we're going to make an uberbull move to $40,000 - $100,000. I think we need to wait for bitcoin ATMs to be deployed and operating at numerous major cities across the Western World (coming in 2014-2015?), and we need some way for the average guy with an eTrade account to get in on the game. If these two things were in place, then I can see that when the media bitcoin blitz begins again, the infrastructure can meet new demand and the price can truly reach the oort cloud.
I few more points about the ATMs....
A lot of people are excited by the news that Lamassu has already sold over 100 machines (
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/lamassu-sells-100th-bitcoin-atm-392148). They should be excited because this means that engineers are actively working to build cost-effective bitcoin ATMs, and that entrepreneurs are eager to purchase these machines.
But just because the machines have been built and purchased, doesn't mean they will be deployed in large numbers in the wild any time soon. I
know that some people ordered these machines before performing due diligence in regards to the regulatory compliance required to operate them. They wanted to get "in line" and figured that they would solve any regulatory problems as they come up. I'm not saying this is a bad idea, I'm just saying that...hmm...so far there's only two operating ATMs in the world (that I know of).
It wasn't that long ago that people were saying that ATMs wouldn't make it to the US due to FINCEN and state money-transmitter compliance. And people are now saying that because these Lamassu machines only sell bitcoin, that somehow they will be exempt from AML/KYC requirements too. This sounds sensible to me, but until we have a fleet of ATMs deployed across the Western World, I think we must
expect future obstacles.