Silk Road forums

Discussion => Security => Topic started by: quinone on November 26, 2012, 02:55 pm

Title: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: quinone on November 26, 2012, 02:55 pm
What are your guy's thoughts on what will happen to the value of bitcoins when it's halving difficulty is increased in the next (predicted) few days?

Obviously there is no golden answer, just a curiosity on what other's might think will happen to it's value, will people dump their BTC's? Stock up on BTC before the difficulty increase? No change at all?

I honestly have no opinion on what, it anything will occur, I was never paying attention to market trends when past block difficulty increases occurred.

Interested to hear what people's opinions/conspiracies/etc. are.
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: astor on November 26, 2012, 03:25 pm
There are several threads about this on bitcoin.org. You might want to read them.

The value of bitcoins is determined by the supply-demand ratio. If more people sell bitcoins than buy them, the value goes down and vice versa. Halving the mining reward doesn't affect that. Also, this isn't some unexpected event. People have known about it since the beginning and have been able to plan accordingly, so there shouldn't be a drastic change in buy/sell behavior in the next few days.

By this straight forward logic, the value of bitcoins shouldn't be affected by the halving of the mining reward. Of course, it can change for other reasons.
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: newjac on November 26, 2012, 03:53 pm
There are several threads about this on bitcoin.org. You might want to read them.

The value of bitcoins is determined by the supply-demand ratio. If more people sell bitcoins than buy them, the value goes down and vice versa. Halving the mining reward doesn't affect that. Also, this isn't some unexpected event. People have known about it since the beginning and have been able to plan accordingly, so there shouldn't be a drastic change in buy/sell behavior in the next few days.

By this straight forward logic, the value of bitcoins shouldn't be affected by the halving of the mining reward. Of course, it can change for other reasons.

This is purely anecdotal, as I haven't been reading or following anything on the subject lately, but haven't they gone up by about 15 or 20 percent in the last couple of weeks? 

Is that due to speculation, or one of those "other reasons"?
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: SelfSovereignty on November 26, 2012, 04:27 pm
This is purely anecdotal, as I haven't been reading or following anything on the subject lately, but haven't they gone up by about 15 or 20 percent in the last couple of weeks? 

Is that due to speculation, or one of those "other reasons"?


Personally I think they went up solely because of WordPress beginning to accept them (WordPress is the 22nd most-visited site on the internet).  Everybody who already knew about Bitcoin decided they wanted a few more, and the demand went up -- but not very far, because it was just speculation from people who already knew about them (as opposed to tons of new people discovering them and buying a few).

I could always be wrong, but the price was hovering at about $10 USD for quite awhile until WordPress made their announcement.
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: quinone on November 26, 2012, 04:49 pm
This is purely anecdotal, as I haven't been reading or following anything on the subject lately, but haven't they gone up by about 15 or 20 percent in the last couple of weeks? 

Is that due to speculation, or one of those "other reasons"?


Personally I think they went up solely because of WordPress beginning to accept them (WordPress is the 22nd most-visited site on the internet).  Everybody who already knew about Bitcoin decided they wanted a few more, and the demand went up -- but not very far, because it was just speculation from people who already knew about them (as opposed to tons of new people discovering them and buying a few).

I could always be wrong, but the price was hovering at about $10 USD for quite awhile until WordPress made their announcement.

Yeah the wordpress thing gained a lot of excitement amongst the bitcoin community.  I'm glad to see BTC expanding to large and .... 'legit' organizations.

And yes Astor I know there are several posts elsewhere, I just thought out of curiosity that i'd ask the Silk Road community what their thoughts on the topic are since we use BTC for different reason's (anonymity).

I'm curious more in what people's speculation might be regarding the value of BTC AFTER the difficulty change, not the current and past few week trend.  It's impossible to predict of course, i'm just curious what people's THOUGHT's on the issue are :).
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: Andrewbud420 on November 26, 2012, 04:58 pm
My guess is difficulty will decrease. BUT each block will only contain 25btc. so half the rewards.


We'll see how it pans out.

Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: captainpicard on November 26, 2012, 05:02 pm
IMO it will make the price shoot up even more rapidly than before. At least, that's what Miss Cleo said.
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: quinone on November 26, 2012, 05:17 pm
Wish I had more BTC in the market in the case that it's value increases substantially, but alas, being an experimenting drug user they disappear quickly to vendor's on SR :P

On the flip side of the coin, who knows the value might plummet, in which case i'd be glad I spent most of my BTCs heh
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: astor on November 26, 2012, 05:47 pm
Personally I think they went up solely because of WordPress beginning to accept them (WordPress is the 22nd most-visited site on the internet).

That was an interesting turn of events and could get WordPress into trouble. American corporations are prohibited from doing business with certain countries, like Iran and Cuba, yet they explicitly stated in their press release that this would allow Iranians to pay for services. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government investigates.
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: deep987 on November 26, 2012, 06:01 pm
I think the price may jump up a little, and  and go up more as time goes on. The sharp drops/corrections that we've seen lately will be even more pronounced.
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: blowdrobro on November 26, 2012, 09:04 pm
Wish I had more BTC in the market in the case that it's value increases substantially, but alas, being an experimenting drug user they disappear quickly to vendor's on SR :P

On the flip side of the coin, who knows the value might plummet, in which case i'd be glad I spent most of my BTCs heh

My sentiments exactly lol.
Title: Re: Predictions/Opinions On Value of BTC After Upcoming Block Difficulty Increase
Post by: SelfSovereignty on November 27, 2012, 03:08 am
Personally I think they went up solely because of WordPress beginning to accept them (WordPress is the 22nd most-visited site on the internet).

That was an interesting turn of events and could get WordPress into trouble. American corporations are prohibited from doing business with certain countries, like Iran and Cuba, yet they explicitly stated in their press release that this would allow Iranians to pay for services. I wouldn't be surprised if the US government investigates.

Oh wow, I hadn't even considered that... I think you're absolutely right.  I'll be damned.  Well that doesn't bode well for Bitcoin, now does it...

As for speculation, I don't think the value will change significantly.  Right now there are 50 new coins generated every 10 minutes, bsaically (ignoring transaction fees collected).  But there's a much, much higher volume on any given day than just 50 * 6 * 24 = 7200 new coins per day from mining in any 24 hour period.  And who knows how often they actually sell off those coins anyway.  Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of miners end up "hoarding" their rewards because they either haven't paid off their rigs yet or just barely have and are trying to accumulate some gains now.