Poll: According to you how much the value of bitcoin will be after 6 months?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6806576

by anujkk • 13 years ago

22 40 13 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

jMyles• 13 years ago

At this point, I think that only catastrophic technological failure can drive it below $100. It's hard for me to think through the socio-economic dynamic that leads there otherwise.

I can certainly imagine it going to $300-$500, but there are just so many people that want to buy at that range, I think the walls are too steep to go further.

pionar• 13 years ago

Never say never :)

A bubble bursting could certainly drive it way down, sub-$100. Don't forget that less than two months ago, it was hovering around $200. 2 months does not a trend make.

wereHamster• 13 years ago

In case you haven't noticed, the price is already now at $900.

asperous• 13 years ago

I think he means crashing back down to that amount

GigabyteCoin4• 13 years ago

I personally know 5 people who are telling me they will buy the second it hits $300-$500ish.

darkmighty• 13 years ago

I think the big question is when and where the "natural dynamics" of the coin will stabilize. It's been widely discussed that bitcoin will cause massive hoarding and appreciation for a long time, causing massive deflation and ultimately limiting practical utility, which at some point will cause massive inflation, and so it goes -- what's the equilibrium of this?

I'd say we're still far from saturation, probably 1/5 of market cap for medium term (long term depends on more widespread adoption). And the practical utility which would determine it's target market is debatable -- will bitcoin settle for being a kinda-useful method of transferring money among nations using exchanges/locals as intermediaries (which already has a lot of competition), laundering money and buying illegal things or will it become a widely adopted worldwide currency?

Houshalter3• 13 years ago

A few months ago, before the current wave of hype started, I got the historical price data on bitcoin and ran Eureqa on it, which is a program that tries to find the simplest possible equation that fits the data. Not for any practical reason, I was just testing the software. I extrapolated the result forward in time a few months ahead to see what it predicted, and it showed it increasing in price exponentially.

I was disappointed because I thought that was ridiculous and that I must have overfit somehow.

frisco• 13 years ago

I must have overfit

You did overfit.

Houshalter3• 13 years ago

I don't think it was overfit, though just historical data isn't anywhere near enough information to make accurate predictions about things. I just find it funny that it wasn't as far off as I thought it would be.

NamTaf• 13 years ago

You didn't overfit. You fell in to the trap of assuming that past performance dictates future performance. It does not.

axaxs3• 13 years ago

6 months, not sure. Probably less than 100. Bitcoin is certainly interesting, but there's absolutely nothing backing it. Doesn't seem much different to me than pokemon/baseball cards/pet rocks. Once the novelty wears off, or one of the big players cashes out, we'll see it crash.

dwaltrip• 13 years ago

You really see no difference between bitcoin and baseball cards? The lack of vision embodied by such statements is quite tiresome.

axaxs3• 13 years ago

Guess we'll see, not afraid to admit when I'm wrong :)

evan_• 13 years ago

True, baseball cards sometimes come with gum.

GigabyteCoin4• 13 years ago

You can't make as many Bitcoins as you can pokemon/baseball cards/pet rocks. That's one thing backing it. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins in existence. Ever.

axaxs3• 13 years ago

I see your point, but from my perspective it means little. There will only in history be x number of hairs on my head, but that doesn't make them worth anything.

yapcguy• 13 years ago

Not really true.

We could fork the software and call it something else. Maybe change the hashing algorithm and the hard limit on the maximum number of coins, like Litecoin did. Trivial to do. There is no intrinsic difference between a Bitcoin or a Litecoin except they are used on different networks and have a different name.

By contrast, precious metals have inherent properties determined by nature. Gold is inert, it has never been recreated by man synthetically, which is what makes it so precious.

tedsanders2• 13 years ago

The supply of first edition Charizards (a pokemon card) is also fixed. Any future printings will be a later edition. By your logic, is there a reason we shouldn't use first edition Charizards as currency, since the supply is fixed? (Counterfeiting is the only good argument I see.)

derrida• 13 years ago

A big player could manipulate the price by buying their own bitcoin through an exchange.

akinity• 13 years ago

A small player could manipulate volume by buying their own bitcoins and selling their own bitcoins. There's no reason why you couldn't shuffle your own bitcoins around forever...

acchow3• 13 years ago

None of (pokemon/baseball cards/pet rocks) have all of (fungible, non-produceable/counterfeitable). I see bitcoin as quite different from these, at a fundamental level.

Bitcoin is closer to gold. After all, gold's intrinsic value is negligible in the face of its market price since:

"[gold] gets dug out of the ground in Africa, or someplace. Then we melt it down, dig another hole, bury it again and pay people to stand around guarding it. It has no utility. Anyone watching from Mars would be scratching their head.” - Warren Buffet.

zik• 13 years ago

The nothing backing bitcoin is exactly the same nothing backing every currency in the world today. Hooray for fiat currencies.

frinxor2• 13 years ago

you should short it obviously - it'd be free money for you!

olefoo2• 13 years ago

I wonder if a poll is the best forecasting device; it seems almost axiomatic that a prediction market [1] would be a superior solution.

On the other hand; I'm guessing that you might stir a bit of controversy if you were to set up a futures market where you offered people the chance to make an offer of how much they would pay for a bitcoin delivered a year from now; and others to post offers for how much they would need to be paid to _guarantee_ delivery of a bitcoin a year from now...

Just remember that it's all fun and games until the government [2] steps in.

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prediction_markets

2. http://www.cftc.gov/index.htm

Houshalter3• 13 years ago

We could use bitcoins to set up an anonymous prediction market that the government can't shut down. Oh wait.

SwellJoe2• 13 years ago

https://www.predictious.com

I'm not recommending it, just pointing out that it exists, and that is exactly the sort of thing people are making predictions on. I looks a little expensive to participate (fees seem high for what the site does, to me).

olefoo2• 13 years ago

That's awesome. People never cease to amaze.

To be clear, I was suggesting that someone setup a full-blown futures market; not a prediction market ( which is the most neutered form of a derivative market, as near as I can tell ).

If you denominated the contracts entirely in BTC it might even be legal...

And if you had some enforcement mechanism (anything from shaming to gangsters giving amateur dental work to defectors), it might even work.

The question of whether a Bitcoin futures market would be more volatile if denominated in dollars or BTC is left as an exercise for the reader.

frinxor2• 13 years ago

a poll should NOT be a forecasting device. do not go out and buy bitcoins because people on average hit the 1000-2000 option. unless of course, you mark one of the 1000+ options independently of the results of the poll, then you should go speculate in them (hell, if you were one of the several that marked 10k+, you should buy a ton!)

imo, bitcoin is very speculative and volatile, its a crazy market and these posts don't help that fact...

tedsanders2• 13 years ago

If there's no cost to storing a good, then the price today is the best predictor of the price in six months. There is no difference between a market and prediction market in this case.

znowi• 13 years ago

Unless the US government decides to shut it down it will only go up in value with increased adoption and deflationary property.

andymcsherry• 13 years ago

There's many reasons these polls are unscientific, but I think one of the most glaring issues that could be easily corrected is it tells you the results before you vote which naturally influences how people think about their answer.

joshguthrie• 13 years ago

I think 'lil Wayne got the answer predicted out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5G4hZOJSng

daivd• 13 years ago

I have a fundamental issue with bitcoins that I have not seen anyone address. Sooner or later a better bitcoin will be invented. One that can perform transactions faster, or is more anonymous or where mining for the coin helps some nice project (SETI@home, math proofs, protein folding, etc), or something completely different. When an alternative better currency catches on, at some point it will become obvious that bitcoins will be obsolete and the value should suddenly be 0 again.

It is the nature of technology that bitcoins will someday become MySpace.

I am open to be convinced otherwise by someone knowledgeable.

Markinhos• 13 years ago

Not always the best technology is the one which success. If that better bitcoin is invented too late, bitcoin can have a large infrastructure and accepted by a large proportion of merchant to be switched. Just think about VHS and Beta or OS/2

Poll: According to you how much the value of bitcoin will be after 6 months?

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