If difficulty rise 10x, that might happen, otherwise no
Is there a thread somewhere discussing the relationship between hashrate and BTC price?
This is exactly what I have been telling people - BTC is the transport, not the end result, although it does have some basic value in it as a store.
What people are also not seeing is that it isn't people buying 1 BTC for $10K, they will be buying 0.1 BTC for $1000 - knowing that its still worth $1000 for the internet sale they are arranging later that day. Its long term value will be irrelevant to people when it becomes mainstream!
This is why I don't see it having a long term value - much like Domain names were going for $100k+ during the dotcom days and today, people are smarter in how they buy their online company names.
This is the first argument that I have heard that has tempered my price expectations. It makes sense to me, but upon further thought, the backbone of the transport system are the miners. For the transport system to be healthy, miners need to make a profit via block rewards and transaction fees. Related to my question above, I therefore wonder if anyone has modeled BTC value versus hashrate (probably need subtract electricity and other costs from a BTC price).
Another factor that could affect the value of the transport system is the range of value amounts (dollars, yen, or whatever) that people / institutions want to transfer. In other words, the system needs to be large enough in terms of market cap in order to absorb these amounts without causing large volatility. ("velocity" of money?) Enough maturation to achieve this situation wont happen by Q1 2014 of course, but long term, this must make the value of a BTC very higher. I also wonder how this and the miner effect could influence each other.
Cheers.