Topic: What Value do YOU think bitcoins will be worth once all coins are mined? (Read 2345 times)

IMHO miners can move really little the bitcoin value, at the moment the "big players" are the traders, so we can expect some peak in both direction (I can imagine something in 10-40$) but as  more shops and online services will accept bitcoin we can see a more stable trend (fluctuation are inevitable but perhaps there will be in the +/-10% range): and as the BTC economy grows the coins has to grow in value too. I can imagine a value of 100-120$ in 2-4 years  and 400-1000$ in another 5-6 years. Or on the other side no or little shops wants to use BTC and so the price will remain in 10-40$ range.
Just my 0.00000001BTC

So, if the more miners there are the faster the coins get mined, and the harder it is to mine the more valuable they will become? It would be really cool to figure out who mined the very last block when that happens.

So long as no crippling vulnerabilities in bitcoins ever exposed, widespread adoption seems quite likely which could easily lead to price of $100,000/Btc

If governments are worried about tax avoidance, they they will have to start paying wages and salaries in bitcoin, and withhold the income tax from your regular pay.  It the only way to regulate it.

I look forward to regulation - if you mean outlawing or general noise in parliament/congress. But if it's a scalpel attack (like funding sophisticated crackers, adding fear) then I think there is trouble on the horizon.

In the United States, I understand internet sales are generally already tax free. If for example, Europe made a lot of noise about tax evasion, that would get a lot of Americans curious. Since countries don't harmonize policy, later countries will take a trade advantage other earlier bans. Thomas Friedman was right about at least one thing. Countries are competing in a race to the bottom.

I think the single greatest threat is the ease with which a wallet can be stolen. I am already moving the majority of my bitcoins offline, will not put bitcoins on my phone, nor can recommend this to family and friends (no in fact I would now discourage most). That's hardly liquid. But by the time all bitcoins are mined (if even 2/3 are ever mined) then by that time all these problems would have been ironed out (or we wouldn't have gotten there). If bitcoins are still trading above $15 two years from now then why not for hundreds or thousands time more?

Nobody goes to that restaurant, it's too crowded.

If nobody is bothering to mine, then the difficulty will drop and it will be very easy to mine.

My opinion is its going to be directly proportional to the number of vendors/exchangers, ... So it could be as low as half a penny/cent, but if successful, possibly $1000-$100,000 each...

True, but not everybody in the world has $1 million either.

However, let's not forget bitcoin is highly divisible. If it did ever get to being worth $1m, and you had only 0.01349895 BTC, moving the decimal point six places to the right, that'd be equal to $13,498.95. Of course, a loaf of bread might very well be selling for $1,000 then...

So yes, bitcents/millicents would be far more readily available than a whole bit and it might very well that a vast majority of people will never ever see a full bitcoin. But with a limit on the amount of deflationary currency in circulation (21 million BTC), at least the price of things might be affordable for most, if not all.

Yes, the future if bitcoin is speculative. I only wish I had sent a ten-dollar bill to that one guy who wanted to sell me 9.9 BTC back in March. I thought it was risky sending cash through the mail. I forgot about bitcoins until early June, when I read about them again online.

Now I'm a little miner at 500mhps and I have purchased 8 coins at $16, and have mined 2 coins so far in 10 days.

Back on topic, I think the market will determine the value.  I hope that all exchanges will have "dark pools" as to not drive the market when moving thousands of coins on it.

I don't have any yet but i intend to buy half a dozen or so just in case they go crazy and are worth several thousand or millon each in future years.  i'll just sit on them.  if they crash i dont really care as its a speculative game.

also, with only 21 million of them available, not everybody in the world will be able to have one.  Hell not eveyone in Australia will be able to have one!  they will be very very scarce.

It definitely seems like the price to mine will be a big decision-maker.

We know that technology is speeding up very rapidly, so that means it will be cheaper to mine in the future.
BUT
It will continually get more difficult to mine, thus requiring more money to do the mining, so you can take away the savings you have because of advancing technology.

Probably $0.00 - $100.00

I think we're saying the same thing.  The cost to mine is important for professionals to stay in the game, but doesn't drive pricing.  A bitcoin miner can't force the market to buy at his (higher than market) production cost.  Ultimately demand has to drive pricing to make mining at a particular difficulty profitable.

If you are spending $10,000/oz to mine gold that you can sell at $1500/oz, you won't be in business very long.

The cost to mine bitcoins is irrelevant to amateur miners, but to professionals it is very important.The difficulty is going to go up for at least two more weeks, and unless the price of bitcoins follows, professionals are going to start shutting down because it isn't profitable. I predict we will see a difficulty decrease before the end of the summer.

: As for the $10B number, I pulled that
: out of thin air.  It's hard to say how big
: the bitcoin economy will be.

Why not consider the aspects of tthe economic where bitcoin adds most value... global black market, online payment, wire transfers, funding revolutions...

I believe its well in the trillions as bitcoins will be convertible to "the next new thing".

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal), US GDP =~ $14T, Eurozone GDP =~$17T.
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Money_supply, US monetary base =~ $2.0T, Eurozone M1 =~ 3B Euro.

This leads to my rough estimate of M0 =~ 0.15 GDP.  Why am I making that comparison?  It's the best way I can think of to compare the size of an economy (GDP) to the amount of currency needed to support it.  I'm assuming that bitcoins are analogous to physical currency.  Note that this comparison could be argued to be an underestimate, as both the dollar and euro are subject to fractional reserve lending.  It's not clear if bitcoins will develop such a market. 

As for the $10B number, I pulled that out of thin air.  It's hard to say how big the bitcoin economy will be.  It would be nice to think it could eventually grow to a sizable fraction of the dollar or euro, but perhaps more realistic is the size of an economy such as Jamaica or Iceland (which is ~$10B, per GDP page above).

It may be just as arbitrary as the poster who says that a bitcoin will someday represent $1M (though if you use my M0/GDP metric, that would require the bitcoin to take over the entire world economy).  However, valuation estimates have to start from somewhere, so basically, my estimate is that the value of one bitcoin =~ 0.15 * size of bitcoin economy / total # of bitcoins in circulation.

The standard answer is that the most probable future value is todays value (efficient market hypothesis). However the market for Bitcoins is somewhat illiquid, and the EMH is controversial, anyway.
In Bitcoins case the random variable dominating all others is future adoption.
Current market prices imply lots of future growth, I would say about 100x. If people believe this growth will not be realized, prices will fall and if it looks like this growth will be exceeded, prices will rise.

There are a lot of variables still, wide acceptability, easy of use, shrink (number of bitcoins lost forever)...

If BTC can find its place limits look good.  I am still concerned about easy of use.   

Where do you get your numbers from?

http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&id=BASE

Looks like M0 is almost 3 trillion USD. How do you go from M0, GDP, to the size of bitcoin economy? What's the connection, where's the math?

Each Bitcoin will have the buying power of between 1 Million and 100Million Dollars does today, why, because Bitcoin is a finite but divisible currency AND it has the potential for complete privacy in financial transactions, for that reason, once the masses understand this, there will be another Gold Rush.
Think of the potential to be able to send your children £20 without requiring a Bank, or Govt, it will be too temptig for businesses too.
Though they may try to fight it, Govt will have to come round to our way of thinking.