Live data from Hacker News

Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

lightspeedindia.wordpress.com

21–30 of 87 posts

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#21
This guy certainly has a chatty crystal ball. Personally I'd recommend to everybody to ignore such "predictions". And as always, keep in mind that this is a new technology and BTC itself might be worth $0.01 at the end of the year (even if I don't hope so).

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#22

Here's one that I'm sure I'm going to regret saying publicly later. But, here goes: Dogecoin will outperform Bitcoin in terms of percentage market cap growth in 2014. Even if both are negative.

History has shown that there are a lot of "greedy", but dumb people. A fantastic example comes to mind: In the Netherlands we have a saying "to sell fried air" (Gebakken lucht verkopen) to explain someone selling bullshit.

Yet, in the "dotcom"-hype, there was a Dutch company selling shares for their startup, "f/ried air" and people got in line to buy these shares.

http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/af_database/permalink/ipo...

There will be people buying into Dogecoin, simply because they are greedy and see profit, and choose to ignore the signs that it is a clear Pun.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#23
post #19

Here's one that I'm sure I'm going to regret saying publicly later. But, here goes: Dogecoin will outperform Bitcoin in terms of percentage market cap growth in 2014. Even if both are negative.

What does "percentage market cap growth" mean? (Is there a glossary of financial for beginners that anyone can recommend?) If dogecoin takes off on Reddit and 4Chan as a way of showing appreciation I can see it having many users.

Market cap is a term borrowed from the share market[1]. I don't think it's technically correct applied to BTC but it commonly is.

Market cap growth as a percentage just means, if all BTCs in circulation are worth $10bn today, and $15bn tomorrow, then the market cap has grown by 50%.

I didn't use the price of the coins themselves as BTC is being minted more slowly than DOGE.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_capitalization

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#24
> 9. The price of Bitcoin is likely to range between $4000-5000 by the end of 2014

Setting aside the author's flawed reasoning as to what drives demand for currency - I don't see how this is a positive prediction for Bitcoin as I think it implies.

I'd like to see a decentralised currency work in the long run and the best thing for Bitcoin right now is to maintain stability against USD. It needs to prove itself as a trusted medium of exchange/store of value.

My prediction for 2014: speculators will deal a big blow to the credibility of Bitcoin slowing down widespread adoption for any decentralised currency

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#25

It will bounce around $1000, as a "magic point" on a low volume - those who still want it most would buy small quantities at a price range between $1000 and $800, and then it will crash, perhaps, around April-May.

Historically, there was never a case when Bitcoin had a stable price and then crashed from it. It was always the other way: everyone who wanted to sell off, did so quickly. Then after 6-8 months of some stable price (in late 2011, mid 2012, late 2012 and mid 2013) new investors saw that it's not going down any time soon and started jumping in. The massive increases were also caused by the fact that most people got to learn about Bitcoin during the previous "bubble" and have taken some time to learn about it and wait till the prices stabilizes or starts rising again. There's no technical reason to break this pattern yet. On contrary, more and more people learn about Bitcoin and see that it's still working as well as 1 or 2 years ago.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#26
post #11
post #7

Mining: if we're to believe in free markets, fees will adjust to the amount of available CPU resources. I hope that it won't be profitable enough for people to dedicate farms to mining, but that companies with a lot of CPU power will rentabilise their spare CPU cycles by doing a bit of mining with it. This would be reassuring, as it would keep mining decentralized, which is important to maintain trust in bitcoins.

Mining with a CPU is long since irrelevant, even GPUs are completely useless as far as mining is concerned. The network uses ASIC hardware now, basically chips designed only to mine Bitcoin quickly and efficiently. Attempting to mine on a CPU is completely futile and does absolutely nothing for the network.

It's not really useless. There is Primecoin that is searching for prime chains as proof of work. At the moment there is no (public?) GPU miner. The involved computations are also difficult to port to the GPU.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#27
post #5

The BitCoin Browser is going to be very significant. I hope someone 'good' emerges to capture that market. It'd be rotten if there were a "Microsoft Bitcoin browser" and an "OSX Bitcoin browser" ...

I may have misunderstood, but I think his point '8' is more akin to saying that Bitcoin needs it's killer app, kind of like how the browser was the killer app for the internet.

In some sense, the killer app of Bitcoin is ability to preserve (and possibly multiply) wealth. That's already useful and many people jump on Bitcoin for that reason alone.

In the same time, Blockchain.info, BitPay and Coinbase are doing great job in servicing private people and businesses. These three are the most Netscape-like guys in this early history.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#28

Here's one that I'm sure I'm going to regret saying publicly later. But, here goes: Dogecoin will outperform Bitcoin in terms of percentage market cap growth in 2014. Even if both are negative.

Dogecoin's transaction volume has been higher than Bitcoin for the past few days: http://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/transactions-btc-doge.ht.... Of course, Bitcoin doesn't take into account off-chain transactions, which at this stage is probably higher than Dogecoin's. The high tx volume is most likely due to all the tipping happening with it.

Re: Bitcoin 2014 – Top predictions

#29

It will bounce around $1000, as a "magic point" on a low volume - those who still want it most would buy small quantities at a price range between $1000 and $800, and then it will crash, perhaps, around April-May.

Historically, there was never a case when Bitcoin had a stable price and then crashed from it. It was always the other way: everyone who wanted to sell off, did so quickly. Then after 6-8 months of some stable price (in late 2011, mid 2012, late 2012 and mid 2013) new investors saw that it's not going down any time soon and started jumping in. The massive increases were also caused by the fact that most people got to…

Past has no influence on the future - each toss of a coin is independent. Jokes aside, there was never such a massive bubble and such dramatic rise in price without any economic reasons. For me it looks like nothing but speculation.

If you would look at volumes in bitcoincharts.com you will notice that its dramatic rise was on relatively high volumes, while after the first drop, from $1200 to $1000 volume is rather low, which may suggest the impression that everyone are holding in hope or looking for an opportunity of a bulk sell. Right now, I think, there is no position who would buy, say, 200+ BTC at the ticker price of $900 or whatever it is.

And, of course, such kind of predictions are nothing but fun, like tea leafs.

Post reply on HN