Quote from: An amorous cow-herder on May 06, 2014, 06:23:02 PM

Bullish long term.
Bearish short term (4-8 years). There have to be at least 1-2 block reward halvings until BTC is even close to being competitive as a payment system (ever calculated the real cost of a transaction? Just divide block reward by the number of transactions per block ...)

Can you expand on this? Why does the "real cost" have to be lower for bitcoin to be competitive? Aren't the "extra" costs borne by the miners? How are bitcoin transactions (payment system) not competitive due to the cost of mining (currency issuing and security)?

Had your point been that Bitcoin likely needs years of maturing it's technological infrastructure before having the appropriate hardware and software services necessary to bring Bitcoin to the masses and compete with other easy to use incumbent payment system technologies, then I'd agree completely.