Topic: Where do you see bitcoins in 5 year? (Read 3330 times)

I don't think he meant "early stages" in the way you interpreted. Bitcoin is a baby monetary system in the way that there are layers of complexity that need to be masked for common users. the word cryptography scares the hell out of most people and ultimately we are dealing with money. NOBODY fucks with money, and when I mean money, I mean lifesavings, regular paychecks, etc, not just pocket change that you use to try out your crypto-wallet. If we want people to start using bitcoin seriously, better interfaces will be required, standards will need to be established, meaning a standard client (I know I know... people in the open source world are obsessed with freedom and options and shit) sorry but people in the real world like a standard, something that everyone uses and it works well for most people.
A standard app for phones where the actuall wallet is not a bunch of characters but just your phone # linked to that string so people won't have to store an impossible number and people won't have to be next to each other to scan a QR code. Maybe the new address books from the future will come with a BTC field to store your friend's address just in case? I don't know I'm just brainstorming, but I think that's what he meant by bitcoin being in early stages. Also, bitcoin is barely accepted in some internet sites, so the concept of widely accepted is still years away. In that sense, bitcoin is an unborn child!

This isn't the early stages, this is how the system works. That is the barrier to entry for bitcoins, just like using the internet you need to pay for an ISP and have them hook it up for you. It could take a couple days. I think people like your friend need to get over the fact it takes a while to get into using bitcoin and read on why it does, and what that actually means. I see people downloading movies all the time, not once do people really complain that it could take more time to download the movie then watch the movie. They just accept it cause they know barrier to watch that movie is to capture the entire money on your system. So why can't people take that view with bitcoins is it really that hard?

Don't say doing your wife.  Don't say doing your wife.  Don't say doing your wife.




Doing your son?

Right, electrum is a good way to skip downloading the whole blockchain.

I'm a big fan of bitcoin. But to be honest, I'm not sure if bitcoin will be THE digital crytocurrency in 5 years from now. Bitcoin still is very hard to use for new users. Just yesterday I told a friend about bitcoin, he downloaded the QT-client on his mac and it took several hours before the blockchain was on his computer. In the meantime he was not able to use bitcoins at all. This shows that bitocin still is in an early stage.

I'm not saying bitcoin won't be big in five years, but maybe some other, more user-friendly system will be the superstar of 2018.

Or they take Litecoin for small payments.

Probably only if convenience and grocery stores are willing to accept zero-confirmation payments - which, given the probable low levels of resultant fraud, they may.

We could buy bread and groceries with Bitcoin, across the world?

> 1M

unforseeable:

will it become outlawed?  Some governments will try.

If it is successful, other cryptocurrencies likely will gain some steam, though not as much.  Then there will probably be "metacoin" that will straddle several currenicies.

It appears though that these cryptocurrencies may gain a stability and confidence that RW currencies may lose.

I see bitcoin finding itself up against much more competition, hopefully addressing any flaws bitcoin currently has. I doubt all fiat would collapse in 5 years, but perhaps bitcoin would be a more viable option for many more people than today as fiat severely drops in purchasing power

Far-fetched but perhaps a smaller, developed, tech-savvy nation like Iceland will adopt it as their currency, or create a digital currency based on the technology, or at least peg their currency to it. They got badly burned but the new government decided to prosecute the banksters instead of bailing them out.

I think bitcoin is getting more powerful everyday as more people are learning about it and therefore using it or even mining. I can only find 3 reasons for which the bitcoin will not be thriving in 5 years.

1) The government makes it illegal claiming its a threat of security because its anonymous and its being used in illegal markets. (war on drugs etc)
Not that this would stop bitcoin completely as it would still being used for illegal reasons.

2) Internet crashes.

I read somewhere that it could be regulated. Which means put taxes on it. This would also be a wound but not that severe to stop something that will be too powerful by the time its regulated.

The 3rd scenario is that bitcoin is SkyNET and it will take control of all the machines(and Arnold).
In that case all we can do is stop mining, sell all the bitcoins and pray for John Conor^^   

Increased network processing power (hashrate) does not lead to increased coin production, except in the very short term during the ~2.000 or so blocks before the network difficulty adjusts itself.

I think less people will be trying it because of the blockchain size.
  Hold on a minute!
I bet there will be a way so you don't have to download the whole blockchain. I use MultiBit.
I think that the speed at which processing power evolves will cause the coins to go down in value, but then more people will mine, so the value may go up.
I don't think I got that quite right. I'm going Bitcoin, Litecoin, and TerraCoin, have $0.06 worth of BTC and nothing in the latter two.

It will be extremely successful or it will banned by the powers that be.  Probably both.

They will be huge.

banks continue to lend more money than they have, we see another collapse in the financial market. Several companies begin to adopt it as their national currency as the value of theirs decreases/economy collapses as seen in Iceland.

I think that if bitcoin can become usable through a card system as Kim dot com is advocating, it will become a stable currency. The key question is also when/if sites like amazon/ebay will jump on board. Basically it needs mainstream backing, which I'm hoping for to be honest. It would be nice to have an alternative to the current banking system that doesn't involve hiding stacks of dollars under your mattress.

If just 0.1% of global GDP goes to bitcoint everyone in this forum will be rich!