Quote from: throughput on March 15, 2013, 05:43:20 AM

My bet is as low as 0.5 $/BTC.

Don't get me wrong. I think it's still possible that this is a bubble, and that the pop will be nasty.

But would you like to know why I consider $5/coin an absolute floor, barring some impossible-to-forsee disaster?

Observe.

This is a chart of the three most stable months in BTC's history. During this time, the BTC price was never more than 10% away from $5/coin. After that, the price began to steadily increase - reaching $15, crashing to $8, floating around $10-$13 for a while, and then finally beginning the rally that is still going on today.

But those three months of stability created an impression. There could be no bubble involved - there could be no bull run. There was confidence, for a time period that's still a significant portion of Bitcoin's whole history, that BTC were worth about $5.

To shatter such confidence would, in my view, require the king of all bear markets.

But if you're not convinced by that, then let me show you why expecting the price to drop below $2, barring some impossible-to-forsee disaster, is total fantasyland:

This is a chart of the end of 2011. After the Big Bubble popped, the BTC market was in a downtrend. Many predicted, on this very forum, that BTC was dying and it was just a matter of time.

The price got to $2 in mid-November. At that time, Mt. Gox experienced the biggest trading volume ever - a record that still has not been broken. For several days, the market threatened to break through $2/BTC. It did not. Even in the face of a bubble that brought the price above $1/BTC and had been slowly sputtering out for six months, even among doomsayers who believed with all their hearts that the Bitcoin experiment had failed and the bubble was a one-time event... even in such a climate, people wanted BTC for $2. People wanted them enough that the price never crossed that line. It was an insurmountable foundation of support, and from there the price began to climb again.

Now, the BTC price has beaten the previous bubble - market participants know that high prices were not a one-time opportunity. There are major online services that accept it, other than Silk Road. There's been media attention. In today's environment, what could possibly hurt confidence in the currency any worse than it was hurt in November 2011? What could possibly make people less confident in BTC than they were a year and a half ago, when they bought in with all their might at $2 a coin?