The last 4 years has been the "Alpha", now we are in the Beta.

Bitcoin won't know it's true value until you can spend it virtually everywhere, on every continent, in every country, including person to person transactions using cellphones and ATM machines. By the end of 2014 we may then be in the mainstream phase, and having to watch out for the real speculative bubble.

I'm thinking $7,000-10,000 per btc.

If it survives the next wave then who knows, $100,000 or more.

This is in the rhealm of possibility but by that point there will be heavy competition. At the momeny alt coins are a joke but the "2nd Generation" is showing some promise. Nxt tried but was more of a scam than anything, Protoshares a great idea that is showing some promise, CGB is a very unique idea that has yet to be fully released, and as a beta tester of Emunies, looks like a combination of all these things and is about to blow the top off when it get's released. It's going to rock the boat and unlike other alts not feed off of bitcoin's success but draw in crowds independently.

Unless scaling issues and pool issues are solved not much bigger.

Good news is its possible, bad is we don't seem to have willing developers.

IMHO BTC is totaly in control by the only few who can mine it, 51% atack very easy to do by a "Bank system" who hates the idea? think about a broked coin in few years! totaly centralized... the ALPHA idea is great but the time will tell us!

There is a chance the USD will drop in value 10-fold or more, which could cause BTC/USD to go up maybe squared that.

That's why there is proof of stake coins.

I personally think it will eventually hit $100,000,000,000.

Will take some time though.

That is actually more of a when, not if.

Think of BTC as buying power, and the exchange back to Fiat as a stop gap to expressing that buying power.

The real value is in store of value and large value transfer, eg in 10-100 millions if not billions at will.

This is something that Fiat nor the current banking system can offer, in any form. They buying of nick nacks from amazon/ebay or coffee is low value. Look at thier market caps, versus the value of the property market, high value.

This is to some extent why I think Peercoin may be the better solution.

I don't know about the exchange rate value of bitcoin.

But as far as adoption goes I could see bitcoin becoming as common as something like debit cards in the coming decades. Or at least something LIKE bitcoin.  The benefits it offers both consumers and merchants is to real for it not to expand IMO , unless of course gov's start cracing down on it.