Quote from: Roger_Murdock on December 31, 2013, 05:20:27 AM

So here's an "explanation" for why super-exponential growth might not be completely crazy.

Lots of people have speculated that Bitcoin's adoption might follow the familiar "S-curve" that's been seen with many other new technologies. And, of course, the initial part of the S-curve looks like exponential growth. And so that's been used to justify the underlying exponential (or so we thought) growth trend for Bitcoin's price that we've witnessed over the past four years. But why should we assume that the relationship between the rate of adoption and the price is linear? And, in fact, if the rate of adoption is a measure of the number of users, isn't there at least some reason to expect a non-linear relationship with price? After all, if there are n users in the Bitcoin network, there are n(n-1) / 2 total possible connections.

kdrop objected that the super-exponential trendline would put us at a million dollars per coin by the end of 2014 which, I have to admit, does seem a tad too optimistic. But isn't the simple response that the super-exponential trend will only hold true for the initial phase of our now-modified S-curve? On the other hand, hitting the slowdown / saturation phases in 2014 doesn't feel right to me.

Thoughts?

Maybe the psychological issue of people not wanting to spend so much per coin or fragment of coin could come into play? I have heard many say that they are "too expensive" etc. I would hope that next year the more widespread use of mBTC is used which will spur on the super-exponential growth I believe. But it waits to be seen.

I would think anyone that purchased coins in January of 2013 and saw them grow to almost 100x their investment this year would be a believer that anything can happen! There is some math to back it up too. It is not like these numbers are based on just "wishful thinking." It seems more like a "It' can't be" reaction then "To da Moon" for most people.