Quote from: rpietila on September 01, 2014, 10:34:36 AM

The following is only speculation about the price, and not intended to affect the trading decisions. Often trading decisions need to take into account volume, tax and other considerations.

Scenarios:

Fatal. Any of the following: Monero is found out to be a high level scam, Poloniex is hacked and coins stolen, tech breaks down etc. This would lead the supporters of Monero to stop their buying, and many speculators selling their coins. The exchange rate plummets to anything between 0 and 300. Going to zero in a short time is not likely unless the network totally crashes or even then (Goxcoins still have some value). The likelihood of this happening in the next 30 days is 1-5%.

Negative. Price turns down due to news or no news, coupled with great dumps that smash the support currently at ~400. If no support is found until 290, it breaks the rising bottoms trend, leading to further insecurity. Also Bitcoin starting to rise dramatically could lead to this outcome just because alts typically follow suit a little later. Likelihood 5-10%.

Slightly negative. Price fails to break 580 this week, and retreats back to 400, however the previous bottom in 290 is not threatened. Accumulation phase may continue in the sticky price area of 400-450. Likelihood 20-40%

Neutral. Slow grind higher continues with occasional spikes and dumps, 580 is taken but no definite push towards ATH. Likelihood 20-40%.

Slightly positive. The uptrend continues with a higher ascent, about 3-4% per day, leading to near 1000 before 30 days, which will likely to be a venue of some shuffling of the deck. Likelihood 10-20%

Positive. 1000 is destroyed and march higher goes on relentlessly (may also make a bubble top and come down in the space of 30 days, nevertheless only after making a new ATH). Likelihood 10-20%.

Stellar. Some external event means that investment capital flocks into Monero, and even $10 million compared to the market cap of about the same range means that a completely new range is established. Price can go to 5000 in an instant, yet will find its support level much lower. Likelihood 2-10%.

It's impressive that price speculation has come as far as it has what with XMR lacking some major ease of use features. I understand that there is a priority list for the developers and I'm not questioning that. However, how high can speculation really go without a large base of users that require things like SPV wallets?

I say that any of the bottom 3 scenarios are not plausible or sustainable until development progresses further. Bitcoin had Armory, Blockchain.info and mobile offerings before it hit a market cap of $100m (~ 15X today's XMR cap). Is it reasonable to expect Monero to do that with a CLI / desktop app that requires a more or less dedicated computer to run?