Interesting speculation. I find this compelling as a success scenario because it is so wild, yet not implausible. Everyone is expecting future bubbles to be similar to past bubbles, which would in your scenario result in even die hard hodlers selling far too early, hoping to buy back on the 'predictable' dip after peaking around 5-10x the pre-bubble price. Your scenario sets up a much rougher ride with massive profits available, but set up in such a way that most will be banging their heads in hindsight.

This is incorrect. Anyone who was watching the markets then could easily see that most of the buying pressure was from the big Chinese exchanges, which had recently opened.

IMO Willy wasn't big enough to cause a bubble. It probably helped, but other big traders will turn on their buy bots when the time is right, so Willy likely has some friends. It's simply a result of whales attempting to buy without moving the market. If you have millions of dollars you don't buy at market, you buy at opportune times when there is enough liquidity to accumulate. You can certainly market buy/sell to move the price as you wish or to reinforce a rally or sell-off, otherwise you have to be stealthy about it. So it helps to have an algo trader or two so you can enjoy your wealth without stressing about open trades.

There was also a lot of speculative Chinese money that left when China "banned" Bitcoin repeatedly. That's how we got our first capitulation a few months ago. Now the market makers are shaking the tree pretty hard again to get the rest if the weak handed coins, that is, those who bought during the last bubble and are jumping ship. Stronger hands (those who bought during previous bubbles) will not sell except to ride the coattails of the big money to increase their coin stash.

I can see why you might think that but on this occasion not mocking.

However neither should you think that I am saying this is definitely going to happen, just that it's one possibility that right now seems so outrageous, that were it to happen people would absolutely fail to handle it well - as per Ektra's comment...

quote author=Ektra link=topic=800330.msg9019254#msg9019254 date=1412013568]
Interesting speculation. I find this compelling as a success scenario because it is so wild, yet not implausible. Everyone is expecting future bubbles to be similar to past bubbles, which would in your scenario result in even die hard hodlers selling far too early, hoping to buy back on the 'predictable' dip after peaking around 5-10x the pre-bubble price. Your scenario sets up a much rougher ride with massive profits available, but set up in such a way that most will be banging their heads in hindsight.
[/quote]

But what wilth1 says is just as likely, perhaps more so.


That's the kind of speculation I am interested in, the big picture. How the world might (or might not change) the actual price is not so interesting. I just picked a big number to illustrate the potential magnitude of what one possible outcome might result in. It's a top end estimate but well within the realm of possibility.

What is more telling is that if you consider wilth1's "niche market" scenario you need to think about what kind of market cap that works for. if you still use the s curve + fluctuation model and take the ATH of 1230 as your absolute ATH, then the price that btc ultimately settles at cannot really ever be much lower that what we are at now.

Any argument that it is going to crash to zero, or single digits or even double digits just doesn't make any sense when you consider the big picture. all the "crash" posts seem to reason that price will go down because price has been going down. They assume a zero demand scenario, which is way more outlandish than assuming btc will go mainstream. If you have nonzero demand then evey halving if price means your going to see twice the demand. This kind of exponential increase in buying pressure will ultimately halt any sell off of an asset with limited supply.

Sure we could go half off, maybe even half off again, but the lower we go the more resistance there is because for x dollar amount you have to sell more btc. Totally simple, totally obvious to probably everyone reading this, but it is the massive gorilla in the room whenever you read any Bitcoin to the gutter post.

Ah, but Bitcoin to the moon posts are the same but in reverse!

No. Ther is only ~14m bitcoin, selling supply dries up quickly, on upticks there is infinite dollars. Buying supply can theoretically never dry up.

Assuming the pie ends up a serious size. Which is basically all that your long term holders are assuming. It's all about peice of the pie.

A crash near zero could happen if a serious vulnerability is found (and exploited), which seems most unlikely of all at this point without a significant amount of changes/new features. Even then, the demand would never reach zero and anything close to it would be temporary. Conversely, it is just as unlikely that BTC will ever be the only money -- even with global adoption as a currency. 

Folks shouting death/zero are shorting of course

28 months from now we will be in the era when 1800 btc will be minted every day. -> $76k * 1800 = $136 M/day  -> $50 B/year for next 3 years  ... miners will try to spend $49,000,0000,000 USD/year on electricity to earn  $1B USD profit.

everything that can happen does happen
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12672387-the-quantum-universe

There is a universe where bitcoin is already or will be $560000.
The only question is what is the probability distribution of this event?

That's how we were taught. However, the link below provides a different view that, apparently, majority of physicists are now aligned with.
There is no collapse, cat is simply alive in one universe and dead in another.
This has much more appeal to me than the suggestion that the fate of the proverbial cat is decided by a mysterious wave function collapse just as i open the box.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Many-worlds_interpretation

but miners don't sell in a bull market

An epic prediction indeed!

It's soo unbelievable, that it could even be true...

Actually the explanation makes some sense to me.

What doesn't make sense to me is that OP considers that he will exchange Bitcoin for fiat money in this scenario like he has done in the past. Why? Because as more capital pours into Bitcoin, more goods and services will be available for purchase with Bitcoin. So fiat money quickly becomes obsolete (at least for a bitcoiner) in this scenario.

ya.ya.yo!