Topic: Where do Bitcoin prices belong? (Read 1987 times)

Yes, exactly. Though I don't think 30+ is reasonable right now, it looks like some people are either extremely bullish or didn't factor in failure probability.

A functioning medium of exchange needs strong forces to balance swings on either side, preferably of a size up to USD 10M. A price of 2 USD is kind of low for that, since we only have less than 8M coins so far and one should expect half of them inaccessible due to hoarding, and a new market like this one is not perfectly liquid yet.

I voted 5-10. I know that sounds very very bullish, but hey, it's the speculation board. This is just based on the possibility that some small market starts using Bitcoin, which is not all that unlikely and might justify double-digits, so multiplying probability with outcome, I end up somewhere in between.

I hear this claim a lot. I don't agree.

Reduced mining power will actually reduce a 51% attack risk. The biggest risk for a 51% is the big pools being hijacked, or colluding with one another to mount such an attack.

With cheaper, more powerful sha256 block mining devices (FPGA & Structured ASICs) coming online, a reduction in total network power from inefficient GPU mining provides the opportunity for many smaller pools and even individual mining efforts. Additionally, these devices won't be able to replace GPU mining all at once, because there are production and sourcing limits, so there will be a continued slow attrition of GPU miners, until the last one is squeezed out.

-Jonathan

Mark my words,

if the network proves to be resilient to price manipulation, and constant daily attacks, Bitcoins will be worth well over $1,000 a pop.

This is all a big IF ! People can only mine at a loss for SO long. People signing off, only makes the chances for a 51% attack that much more likely.

Those are the unpredictable outliers. The mysterious ones.

12 percent liked turtles..

Bitcoins are borderless and could be trasnferred and hidden in countries that are enemys of the countrys being dealt with without much effort. Still it is all very traceable but its not likke the government could step in and confiscate someones bitcoins or force them to be taken out of circulation. Such a larger system would have to be borderless and could only be enforced by the open source community as I am sure they would not bow to the will of any one country. The very art of outlawing bitcoins however, I speculate would raise prices as they become more sought after by the illegal community. I howver would rather see them become more popular among legitimate merchants and consumers.

This just isn't necessarily true.
As I explained - governments could easily make certain bitcoins less spendable.

Already, mtgox is known to have been tracking certain stolen coins.   I believe recently someone's mtgox account was temporarily locked because of this.
In that case - it ultimately didn't stop the coins being spent as the depositor was considered an innocent party - but there's no reason a larger such system couldn't enforce the issue more strongly.

All bitcoins can be spent the same and therfore have the same merit. Just like the dollar in that sense. Silkroad has been a bad thing because it has associated bitcoin with the drug economy. What we need is bitcoins being used for more legitimate purposes such as buying and selling computer parts, computer power, etc. There is not a whole lot of work involved with tracking every transaction as it stands now as the blockchains are all published online with blockexplorer. Those that think bitcoin is anonymous are naive at best.

I don't see how Silk Road has been a terrible thing.
What could turn out to be a terrible thing would be if radical groups who otherwise couldn't get together enough resources, manage to use bitcoin to source enough financial backing to be dangerous.

I suspect governments will employ sophisticated software to track the blockchain, and rather than attempt to ban bitcoin as a whole - will do something like declare that all bitcoin transfers must be traceable to a 'clean' source.  ie - all the way back to an exchange which keeps records in accordance with AML laws.
or at the very least require that businesses subscribe to government blacklist of known 'dirty' bitcoin address-chains.  
Businesses/individuals which accept 'dirty' transactions will risk penalty, or at least the inability to spend those coins with other regulated businesses etc.
Once certain coins become hard to spend at popular merchants - the government 'coin-checking' software would spread and become an appealing add-on to ordinary users because they don't want 'dodgy' coins.

While it would be a lot of data to track, I think it's well within the range of what software can do.  
Eventually Bitcoin may turn out to provide a lot less privacy from governments than people imagine.

That raises the interesting spectre of loss of fungibility.  Some bitcoins will be worth more than others - and we'll end up with 'blackmarket' bitcoin exchanges as well as 'whitemarket' exchanges.   Am I way out of line with this reasoning?

Interesting divergence..

So people believe that bitcoin will be a better method of exchange at a higher price..

So far we have 60% above current prices and 40% below. Very interesting results indeed.

Thanks for your input. I think somewhere around mining prices for the average joe is the correct value. I think $30 a couple of years from now is very appropriate since the reward per block will be halved and therefore its true vision as the opposite of a fiat currency will come to be true. I agree however that current or lower market values present too much volatility and too many people with large sums of coins or money can control the market in either direction.

I hope bitcoin will turn out to be a great thing but it could very well turn out to be a terrible thing as we have seen with SR. I really hope we do not see less than $1 BTC because in my opinion it would signal the end of bitcoins.

'belong' is a funny term to use, but I voted anyway.  In fact, they 'belong' wherever they happen to be in any given situation sort of by definition.

I choose $30.00+ to indicate that that is where they need to be in order to have a semi-functional and semi-useful monetary system (given the various parameters of supply, user-base, etc.)

We may never get there, but I've been prepared for that all along.  I'd be bummed, but only partly because I have always had some suspicion that Bitcoin could turn out to be a terrible thing for society.  If we never find out it will be at least a mixed blessing.

Feel free to donate your supposed worthless bitcoin if you feel my entertainment is of value to you .

I used to go to reddit for my laughs. Thank you for being you.

-Jonathan

A little upset we arent heading to less than $1 BTC in all likelihood are we?

FTFY

Interesting that no one has yet pegged the current market value. Going by the current concesnsus which is sure to change I would say that in general people seem to believe it is worth significantly more than it is right now.

It happened once, It can happen again! (maybe)