Quote from: delphic on January 30, 2014, 11:34:39 AM

Quote from: windjc on January 30, 2014, 11:30:41 AM

Quote from: jsteelbeam on January 30, 2014, 11:28:50 AM

Quote from: windjc on January 30, 2014, 11:06:10 AM

Quote from: runam0k on January 30, 2014, 10:56:19 AM

Quote from: windjc on January 30, 2014, 10:41:17 AM

But in the next 24-36 months, bitcoin is somewhere between 10k-50k. It simply has to be. The scale at which the entities getting involved now operate scale wise, bitcoin will be forced there. And 17 year olds that mined this useless Internet money will have their minds blown.

To be fair, you're taking a bet that e.g. the US government won't ban the use of Bitcoin in the US. Look at India and China, for example. Bans can be quite effective. If the US government banned Bitcoin tomorrow - not beyond the realm of possibility given the US Treasury Secretary's recent remarks and the difficulties regulators and the IRS will have addressing Bitcoin - it simply will not have the chance to grow to the size you want it to be.

I'm long Bitcoin too, but it's a gamble nonetheless.

It is absolutely beyond most realms of possibilities at this point.

Do you live in the US? It doesn't matter I suppose given how many people here are paranoid about our government, but the truth is the US doesn't go around banning technologies. And there is no indication they will ban bitcoin. They aren't banning gay marriage. They aren't banning bitcoin. The NY regulators lead these type of financial decisions in the US. And the hearings made it clear they will support bitcoin and bitcoin innovation. The US takes pride in being world leaders and bitcoin is no different.

It's happening. It's no longer if. It's when.

I actually agree 1000% with your outlook. The only thing that worries me is if it is actually Bitcoin itself with the marketshare projected 24-36 months out. I've seen many posts of people who say that the the statements from the Congressional and NY State hearings are bullish because the chairmen have made comments that they see the value in Bitcoin. But my fear is that they see the value in the blockchain technology, not Bitcoin literally.

Just think about it: the US government (and all governments, for that matter) allow the Bitcoin community to spend it's blood, sweat and tears working out the bugs of a distributed ledger to record financial transactions and work to make the public somewhat comfortable with transferring money through such a system. Once it becomes fairly polished, the government launches their own blockchain and USDollarCoin. They empower existing banks to function as exchanges from fiat to USDollarCoin and ban any entity such as businesses from transacting in Bitcoin. They can now issue their currency electronically without incurring the actual costs of printing paper money and supporting the infrastructure in distributing the physical cash.

It really is a regulator's wet dream, because right now, the government has no real visibility on what happens during cash or credit card sales on the transactional level, but once they have their own blockchain, they can trace the movement of every little penny within the system.

Let me head off the "But that defeats the decentralized benefit of Bitcoin" argument by offering this: 95% of the population can give two sh!ts about decentralization. They will just do what the government tells them to do.

Am I the only one who sees this scenario as a real threat? If so, I need to get rid of my tinfoil hat. Wink

Get rid of your tin cool hat.

...and Bitcoin holders in the rest of the world would carry on using Bitcoins, for the same reasons they got Bitcoins in the first place..

Yes, except that in my scenario, all the other major global governments would do the exact same thing.