I've seen many posts and threads about price speculations and hitting 5k per coin.
Now, to try and stay a little bit on-topic:
What are these speculations based on? Althought, I'd say hell yes to BTC being worth $5000,- per coin but I can't really see this happen.
And no, the reason why I can't see this happen is not about the drama caused by Gox.
Is anyone here able to clarify this?
IT is fairly easy to advance beyond $5000 per BTC.. based on market cap and based on BTC taking over some of the functionality of gold or any currency... for example gold has more than a 6.5 trillion dollar market cap and the dollar more than 15 trillion market cap... anyhow there are a lot of currencies that BTC could serve b/c there are 190 countries.. even the international transmittal system has a lot of potential for BTC to take on some of that value.. or the stock market.. etc etc..
ONCE BTC takes on some of this value, its market cap will increase from currently 7 billion to.... whatever amount... IN order to reach $5000 per BTC, the BTC market cap only need to rise to about 90Billion... which is NOT a very high target if it takes on some of these values.
actually theres probably less then 1 million bitcoin for sale under $5k so it would need less then 10 billion
I am NOT sure whether I understand your point completely...
For example, we know that gold does NOT really circulate very much... but it fluctuates in price based on perceived value and also that it is considered to be a inflationary hedge and good storage of value..
If you are saying that the amount of BTC in circulation is going to affect how it is priced, I agree with your general sentiment, that the hoarding factor (I don't really like that word, hoarding) is going to cause BTC prices to go up additionally b/c it will cause a demand for BTC b/c of the shortage and b/c people are generally wanting to keep some of their assets in BTC..
For example, for the money transmittal feature of BTC or for various purchases that are being made with BTC, there will be a need for BTC to carry out the transmission of the money or for the purchase..
Let's say that there is a certain amount of BTC circulating 1 million.. as you stated, then those million BTC are used to conduct a multitude of transactions.. , but also people begin to believe that BTC is a valuable asset to hang on to. Accordingly, people may still spend quite a bit in BTC; however, those people will also have an incentive to replace their stored BTC as soon as possible b/c they understand that BTC holds its value well, relative to other assets.