To say that the price of bitcoin has been interesting lately is a bit of an understatement.
In fact, the price of bitcoin has gone up a whopping 45 percent in the past month (based on data from BitStamp). To outsiders and those unfamiliar with the digital currency, that could come as a shock. For community members, however, it’s all part of the excitement.
The recent price surge has prompted many to wonder whether we could be entering the next big bitcoin bubble. One part of that could include a price jump past $1,000 — and so we asked you whether you thought this was a possibility this month.
The opinions among you folks were just about split down the middle. In total, there were 347 votes, and 51 percent (177 votes) said that yes, they thought the price of bitcoin would reach $1,000 this month.
The other 49 percent (170 votes) said they didn’t think we’d reach $1,000 this month. So far, we have not.
At last check, we’re looking at a rate of $657 — again, BitStamp data — down about 0.74 percent in the past twelve hours.
The recent price increase could have very well been helped by the slew of good news we’ve been hearing lately, which includes Dish Network’s announcement of future acceptance of the digital currency. Another news item widely seen as good: eBay CEO John Donahoe’s hint (once again) that PayPal will have to be integrating digital currencies.
Which brings me to this week’s poll:
[poll id=”12″]
On one hand, you have the camp of folks who say this could be great as PayPal is widely used for money remittance all around the world.
On the other hand, you have the folks who would think PayPal’s digital currency integration would simply work to centralize bitcoin, for example. As we’re all well aware, one of bitcoin’s major selling points is that it’s decentralized.
Giving PayPal control over bitcoin’s core features (such as freezing accounts, charge-backs, etc) by allowing it to work through their system could have dire consequences.
What do you think?
HLTGRP 
Rob 
Gio 
Jonas Lihnell 
Krogoth Alexander 
Brandon Rising 
One more option 
Dominik Łukasz Andrzejczuk 
Max Stone 
Bitcoin can’t be centralized. So that is a misnomer. *Any* company providing services on top of the Bitcoin protocol is a centralization in itself. But Bitcoin does not “becomes centralized”. Important distinction. People always confuse Bitcoin with the third-party services interacting with it. When MtGox went bankrupt, Bitcoin supposedly went bankrupt. Not so.
Well, we almost have a centralized coalition of miners at 51%, some might say that fits the bill… Not saying I’m worried, but I think saying “Bitcoin can’t be centralized” isn’t necessarily true.
Not exactly. The big miners have no interest whatsoever to reach 51% because if they did the all BTC system would collapse and they would be the very, very first people to loose in this game due to their heavy investment. They would gain nothing whatsoever by reaching the 51% and instead lose everything. That is why those at Ghash are working day and night to avoid this.
If they do not reach the 51% limit, whether they are at 30 or 47% makes no difference.
BTC is not and cannot be centralizes. If it was or became it would automatically collapse.
I actually refuse to accept the notion that bitcoin can be centralized, at least as long as it has value. The very fact that there is no limits at all as to who can and cannot help confirming transactions (mining bitcoins) means that as long as people find the network, and the decentralization, valuable, then there will always be people at work to keep it such.
That said, I wouldn’t be surprised if we saw a couple 51%+ pools in the years to come, and nothing bad stemming from it. The pool operators after all, will have a reputation at stake and such will not make any blatant attacks on the network which provides them their value in the first place.
Ah, you gotta love proper incentive systems 🙂
Pools start kicking workers at 45%.. I find it very unlikly we see +48% on one pool.
The writer is probably just the guy who knows the most in his circle about bitcoin. Oh well. Good enough I suppose.
3. Makes no difference at all
In order for the price to surge to $1,000, there would need to be a purchase satisfies all the “asks” prior to that $1,000 baseline. My guess is there needs to be a single purchase of over $10 MM, whereby the buyer purchases @ market and gobbles up all those asks.
There needs to be a heavy hitter that wants to purchase all those BTCs for one reason or another to see such a price spike. My guess however is that this is highly unlikely given the economics of the situation.
Disclosure: I am long BTC and DRK
On the 27th of this month the US government is auctioning off Silk Roads assets including $17.4 million dollars worth of BTC… Is that enough to stimulate it? Oh ya and then once the auction is complete the USA government will officially be Bitcoin traders and have injected almost $18,000,000 worth of Bitcoin into the US economy… If our government sells it… It must be real!!!! After that… It’s real.. Get ready…. F’ the moon… We are going to Uranus!!!
I like the enthusiasm Max, but this is a sell auction…not a buy auction. The US government will likely sell off a bulk of bitcoins at a discount, which may not be very good for the market. It’s not that i’m a bitcoin bear, i’m definitely bullish, but unfortuantely I see this as a negative on the short term outlook for bitcoin’s price. Just trying to be real…