Quote from: thoughtfan on May 22, 2014, 03:56:00 PM

My fear is as the realisation dawns on the bigger players that Bitcoin is 'the one' that it will be pumped by banks and central banks who can magic large sums of fiat into existence with which to buy bitcoin (and who may even dump gold temporarily), creating the ultimate bitcoin megabubble so that billions of latecomer ordinary people and businesses buying their first bitcoins will be shafted as the great bitcoin dump starts, into pms, into land, artwork etc. into a 'better' crypto - assets that had been neglected for the period bitcoin was so attractive, even back into fiat (they could use this point to launch more 'stable' 'new crypto-dollar or new crypto-pound etc.) until bitcoin finds a stable long-term pricepoint well below (even orders of magnitude below) the hyped price the masses bought at. Problem is of course nobody beforehand can know what this price will be. We would still be in a much better world than today because with bitcoin established fiats (old or new) will not be that attractive but if central banks are deliberately hyperinflating forcing people into crypto on their pump stage people could end up with 1000th of what they had before.
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I explored the final megabubble idea about 6 months ago in detail. AnonyMint was the opponent. We found it quite realistic, if TPTB wants to promote it, the supply and demand dynamics coupled with the rapid rate of price increase and the insane difficulty for any large holders to actually convert their stash to other assets in a short time (it took 3.5 months for me from selling the bitcoins to buying the castle, with the proceeds being in 3 different fiat currencies in the meantime, and at least 3 AML checks). The market cap of all the bitcoins may actually rise to a multiple of the rest of the world combined (BTC1 being equivalent to $10-$100 million in present dollars) if engineered such by TPTB.

About 14 months ago I calculated that if bitcoin were the anchor of a flexible monetary system with most of the circulating money provided by credit expansion and self-liquidating real bills, the price for one would be in the tune of $300k (bitcoins having the same market cap as gold). Dropping to this level from the unfathomable heights will hurt the ones that bought at 100 times the price, of course.

If bitcoins stay "hard" so that no (or very little) credit expansion is possible, the market cap can reach a significant % of the total sum of all liquid assets in the world. That figure is currently about $100T or more. So therefore $1-$5 million per BTC is realistic.

I would suggest you to buy bitcoins so that you will hold a target amount of them at the time when they reach $1 million. Because you want to sell periodically to cover your expenses and hedge bets, you need to buy 3-10 times the amount now. If your target is to have BTC2, which would allow a retirement in a nice country, a position of BTC10 or preferably BTC20 now ($5-$10k investment) is recommended. More details are in the SSS plan. The plan ends when bitcoins are $1M, because the world will be very different.

Quote from: molecular on May 22, 2014, 03:39:07 PM

So even if entities that don't "deserve" it end up with the most wealth initially (by the way you described), after the transition is complete that wealth will dissipate from them if they make bad decisions towards the people that make good decisions. If they make "good" decisions on the other hand, they get to keep and grow their wealth, and rightly so. Noone will be bailed out by the taxpayer as is the case now (no more inflation tax) and everybody will suffer or enjoy the consequences of their actions, as should be.

Exactly. In absence of coercion in the Bitcoin regime, Satoshi is not causing any trouble to the rest of us, although he holds nearly 10% of the coins outstanding. If he starts spending them in goods and services, he is generating demand for the rest of society and dissipating his stash. If he invests them in the generation of goods and services, and makes profit, it improves the quality of life of others. If he makes a loss, then the coins move to the better entrepreneurs. If he does nothing, everybody's coins are worth more.

Quote from: thoughtfan on May 22, 2014, 02:09:50 PM

I had previously been quite dismissive of the doom 'n gloom scenarios painted where disenfranchised fiat bag holders are literally up in arms against the new wealthy in a kind of apocalyptic scenario. However I'm now thinking the transition may be rougher and with much more suffering than I had previously thought.

Most of the people are net debtors in fiat terms. Whether fiat's value increases or decreases vs. their income, is more important to them than how they invest their free money that they can afford to lose. In the optimistic case, all debts are effectively cancelled. In the pessimistic case, all debtors are foreclosed (as the effects of the CB policy to pop the bubble by raising interest rates and causing unemployment), and bitcoin people get to buy their assets for cheap, but this may cause indignation. AnonyMint thinks that crypto holders will be declared enemies of state at this point and eliminated.