Topic: What is Bitcoin's next catalyst for growth ? (Read 4012 times)

Adoption, Adoption, Adoption!

Ok, now we are ready for $3000!

Perhaps a measure could be the amount of BTC used for goods and service as % of the BTC market cap. The volume on ebay versus the World money cap, would look pretty small as well. Way more Fiat in in speculation of Forex for example, about 3T a day,

$289 a day is not payment network transactions, that figure is complete and utter bullshit. 

the vast majority of the so called "payment network transactions" are, funds to wallets, exchanges, tumblers ect.

Bitcoin payment network is tiny.  I don't know a single person in real life that has ever used bitcoin for payments and I know 100's that have used paypal.  The author of the chart is just spreading lies.

For the good and sustained growth of the currency, methinks a $3000 (or even $200; heck, even $1500) mark will even more fuel the "speculative" talk surrounding bitcoin, and consequently probably erode trust and adoption by the 'right thinking' customer/consumer. So I would personally rather not see this happen.

That said, i think the next big price hike (or decline) will happen when the next 'major' news about bitcoins comes online. e.g. when the US committee held it's hearing, price jumped to the $1000 mark. but fell down to $800 when the news from china's government to banks not to have anything to do with it.

So perhaps it's a very heavy hitter like Amazon or Walmart et al, any other 'lesser' offline (or online) adoption will not have a huge impact on price. Perhaps except to encourage more businesses and customers to adopt it.

Off the top of my head:

-wider use by merchants of Bitcoin Processors, such as BitPay.
-announcement of a Bitcoin ETF.

All it needs is for one or two big merchants to accept them and the knock on effect will be incredible.

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2013/12/ebay-bitcoin-hack/

I think your right those things would be great of BTC uptake

ebay's not that "huge", they do lots of relatively low value transactions for collectibles, shoes, IT gear and second hand goods, car fridges etc
PayPal is tied up with ebay, plus ebays its market cap, is (only) 66.5 B, BTC is already $10 B

Its telling that ebay found the payment mechanism paypal as something they had to aquire, and they paid $1.5B for it some years ago, and that was largely just for their operations or about 50% of the payment system. BTC is light years ahead of Paypal in tech etc, and offer a payment system for the world or a good % of it.....

ebay is very regional in some places its hardly used others its dominant.
big value items, currency exchange, houses, cars, classes of investment, ebay does not do

Except that there has to be a demand for it.  Ebay is huge, bitcoin is a drop in the bucket comparatively.  So that's what you can do as a customer: ask ebay sellers if they'd be willing to accept bitcoin as a payment.  It's becoming more and more well known, but I think a lot of people either a) still aren't aware of bitcoins or b) think it's a fad.

Personally, my bet on what would cause a huge catalyst for bitcoin growth would be business payment processors actually paying employees in bitcoins instead of dollars (or other local currencies in a non-US company).  I don't forsee this happening for a long time, personally, but I know I'd happily accept (some) payment in bitcoins if I were offered the option as an employee of a company.  As far as I know, the only company that has actually done this was The Internet Archive / archive.org.

It will be reconciled because sellers can offer a cheaper price without the threat of reversals, (and likley less fees) and thus attract more buyers and traders, and so that market of sellers will displace trade from ebay, causing eBay to die or adapt

the biggest catalysts for growth (imho) are

[1] the amount of international insta-pay money/value it leaves on the table (to buy things), business wants a cut of that, the larger the market cap, the more money, this self reinforces, $100B leaves a lot more on the table, 1T please sign me up now level

[2] The huge margin on Forex/remittances that BTC will consume, you know western union et.al will be out of business

[3] Alternate class of capital investment, that will force any fund or investor to keep a % off value in BTC.

[4] The large $ transfer that can be done with BTC

[5] Store of wealth (though PeerCoin may come to dominate here)

[6] A good percentage of banking/financial infrastructure, both retail and commercial is rendered obsolete. Add up the value of all those wages, software, security, account costs, real-estate of all the banks in the world, works out to quite a bit that is no longer needed.

[7] In efficient economic policy, QE and friends,

[8] In efficient state regulation will drive business to efficient state regulation regimes, and so discipline the former

[9] media hype, and its not just hype, its actually chronicling a historical and revolutionary period, that most don't yet understand this is what it is.

When I say revolution, I mean this,

A scene in the Grapes of Wrath always stuck with me,

it was the one where a tenant farmer and a tractor operator who is about to level the farmer's home. The farmer wants to know whom to shoot. The driver says he is just following orders; if the farmer shoots him another man will be sent to level the home down.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JEYHczRar8

I mulled this one over for years trying to think of an answer

The Bitcoin protocol and crypto's in general has reversed this position and provided the answer,  

Now the institutions of the state Banks and the State are now faced with the question 'who do we shoot' and they have no real answer, except, change the fundamental mathematical properties of the Universe that's what doing it.

Perhaps one of the most important features of bitcoin, is what I term as


BTC is the first vehicle to really make some in roads into this.

Perhaps a more thorny question is what else may find sovereign power...but that a bow to far for now.

bitcoin is so strange.. it's unique in that it has many of the elements that other assets don't have. it just has so many qualities that it's hard for me to make a prediction.

That's just an excuse. If people funded with BTC, paypal would convert to fiat instantly and paypal take their cut as normal. Where's the risk?

The CEO of PayPal just gave in interview where he basically said they wont be dealing with BTC until there is some price stability.  Companies aren't going to risk using a currency that could drop 25-50% in just hours.  That could represent lost tens of millions in a day for a company like paypal.  He did however say he likes it as a store of wealth for places like argentina who are dealing with hyperinflation.  So these CEO's arent against BTC, they are just not ready to accept it... yet.

There are too many opportunities for something significant to happen with use of Bitcoin's ecosystem.

There are millions of people contemplating the possibilities now and trying to capitalize on them.

I say 100x more risk to the upside at this point, than to the downside.

It doesn't even matter if PayPal will accept bitcoin, PayPal will be redundant soon.

Well PayPal could accept it as a funding method which I'd definately be up for as it gets around the merchant problem that not enough of the places that you want to buy things from accept coin still, otherwise though I hate PayPal with a passion.

Ebay could implement an escrow side of things, where the bidder pays Ebay and then they hold the coin until the seller has shipped and the bidder has received it but it's a bit of a stretch as it would make payments a lot slower compared to PayPal.

PayPal's CEO seems to like Bitcoin, he at least mentioned the possibility as a funding method as soon as there was enough regulatory clarity.

Not that I would care, rather see both of them ignoring it... On the other hand it would boost Bitcoin and I would like that

ebay / paypal ........ I just don't see it in a million years

1) Its direct competition to bitcoin
2) ebay / paypal love reversing transactions. How can they reconcile that with bitcoin?