Bitcoin recently crossed the 200USD threshold this week, largely led by Chinese interest.
China is a very interesting market for BTC. In my experience, they are generally more technically savvy and motivated than the US (they have a higher threshold for technological inconvenience and complexity), and the economic environment is very different. China likely has uses for bitcoin that much of the rest of the world does not, the most commonly mentioned is capital controls, but I suspect there are others.
I predict another bubble, maybe of an order of magnitude higher than the last.
I agree. I've been following bitcoin for awhile, and alst weeks jump was a pretty big one after the Baidu announcement. I honestly expected a bigger dip when Silk Road closed, but it didn't really come. Now it's up to $200 this morning again. I won't be surprised if this new speculation and China news drives it to $300-$350, before a crash back to $140-$160 and settling there. It will level off higher than the last level of around $100-$120, and will reach a higher peak than the last bubble of (think it was) like $280. I love reading about bitcoin. I'm too late to the game to really get into the speculation and don't feel like losing my shirt. But there is a lot of money to be had there. If I had a couple grand lying around right now I'd buy BTC today even at almost $200, because it's going to climb for a week or maybe more before it bounces back down. I also noticed a lot of Chinese exchanges are opening up to LTC (LightCoin) as well, and at a $1.80 a coin right now its pretty cheap. Light coin rises almost in pair with BTC right now, even though it's not nearly as a useful currency, people still speculate on it quite a bit. Now that it's being added to Chinese exchanges I think that's gonna rise too. Those are cheap enough that I won't feel bad about picking up a bunch of to sit on and ride the BTC bubble.I predict another bubble, maybe of an order of magnitude higher than the last.
I think this bubble could possibly go over $1k, as it's just getting started. I don't suspect that either BTC or LTC will work well as daily currencies, at least for some time to come. They are simply too volatile. Maybe LTCs faster block processing will create some stability, but I have my doubts that BTC and LTC are different enough. I think it would be interesting to see a similar cryptocurrency that had a much faster half rate. Both BTC and LTC are 4 years. I'm not sure that the price can settle until most of the coins have been mined. I've decided to hold onto my BTC for at least one more halving, or until after 2018. Five more years should better settle the question of its future. I bought them right after the first halving. I don't think I have a live-changing amount, but it could be a chunk of retirement. I'll probably buy some LTC once Coinbase enables it. I don't feel like going through the trouble of using another exchange.