First, thank you for those of you who have provided a ton of information in this forum to noobs like myself. I appreciate it.
I am new to BitCoin, I believe in it as the technology and economics of it are sound (limited quantity, decentralized, etc). I also recently purchased about 10 BitCoins at $600.
From what I gather the price is going to fluctuate and be volatile for obvious reasons. More so than other commodities as the supply of bitcoin is fixed and the price is fully dependent on demand.
Now my question:
In the foreseeable future. What are the factors/predictions to drive these forum predicted prices like $10000 or drop to sub-$100?
From what I gather things like the below are correct. What are your thoughts or opinions? or am i missing something obvious?
My guess is something like technology that increase the usability of bitcoin which will allow for rapid adoption. Or a large company like Google or Bank announcing support. (though if that was the case why did Stripe adoption not drive the price up? or did it with this past temporary bump?)
As for drop, If the major holders of bitcoin sell a lot (though this seems odd as with the quanities they hold it would be hard to find buyers for that many without massively dropping the price) and in that matter I still see minor holders keeping what they have.
-- I wanted to add clarification to my question, I am not asking for speculation. I am asking what examples can you provide which would affect the price. Outside of the few thoughts I had.
The only thing that is going to increase the price, is people buying bitcoin. But they aren't doing that. That's why you see no jump in price with the Stripe news, and continued price falling even with the TON of merchant integration since the $1200 mark. People can't spend what they don't have and people are afraid of bitcoin. Now the IRS has basically destroyed any near-term chance at bitcoin being used as a currency. So what would make it go up to $10,000? A miracle. What would make it drop to sub-100? Everything you see happening now.
The only thing that can push price up is if BTC people need/want BTC and the demand exceeds the supply so they have to pay for it. Bitcoin is a open source protocol like bit torrent. There might be companies making money providing Bitcoin services but the BTC itself has no intrinsic value. Its not even a currency more of a commodity.