I am a former supporter of bitcoin but I hate to say that bitcoin will not reach mind boggling prices. There is one important reason for this:
HACKING
1. As the price goes up, BitCoin will be more lucrative to hack. This fear of losing funds will keep the price down. And even the most secure of exchanges have been hacked like CoinBase!!! Thats right. Dont believe me? Do an internet search on coinbase hacked.
2. All exchanges are easily hacked and not secure enough. This is another contributing factor that will hold the price of BitCoin down. Weve seen wallets get emptied for an entire exchange. But its not just that, even individual accounts have been hacked if they could not hack the entire exchange.
3. BitCoins convenience is its weakness. Bitcoins are available in electronic space or Cold storage. So its much more susceptible to have the coins getting stolen. With a bank, its much more difficult to do this. I can go to the bank and make a deposit and my account is credited for that deposit. If a hacker gets my user name and password, and tries to transfer those funds, I can catch it and deny the transfer. Everything can be traced. With Bitcoin no one is even willing to prosecute hackers that steal coins. And how often does a hacker gain control of your bank account as opposed to a bitcoin exchange account? How often does a hacker empty the funds from a bank account compared to a bitcoin account? Also here in the USA, funds are FDIC insured for up to $250,000.
Also consider computer crashes and losing the paper that had all your coins on it.
4. Lets just pretend that BTC does reach 100,000. Given all the risks of how easy it is to lose your coins, why would someone pay that price? Why not hold a stock that is worth 100,000 dollars? That is much more secure than a bitcoin.
I learned all this the hardway when my cryptsy.com account was hacked. I only lost 3.11 BitCoins which was basically all my profit plus 800 dollars net loss. Its not a lot but enough for me to say I am going to stay away. None of these exchanges are secure enough like a banking website. I will move my coins away from coinbase into cold storage and hold until the price gets pumped up enough for me to sell off and break even.
BitCoin was a promising concept but until you see your wallet get emptied, you see all the flaws. BitCoin didnt ruin itself, the hackers did.
Agree w OP. The honeymoon is over. We are seeing what she truly looks like in the full light of day and we are finally noticing all the warts and scars. We didn't want to see it at first bc we were in the romantic phase of bitcoin (who here doesn't love the promise and idea of bitcoin?).
Think about the fact that 45% of bitcoin exchanges have had to close their doors/file for bankruptcy bc hackers figured them out. And you would think that people running exchanges would have some knowledge of how to protect their bitcoin? How in the world is the regular guy going to do it?
Bitcoin is on the frontline of the battle of cryptocurrencies against gov fiat. Problem is that when you're on the frontline you take all the bullets and beating. Bitcoin will not survive this attack. It will, however, allow a future crypto to rise in its wake, having learned from bitcoin's death, it will address the security necessity which is simply too lacking in bitcoin.