Willy Woo has a useful breakdown of how to value bitcoin using the quantity theory of money. This process has separately been used to make enormous valuations by people with early vision in bitcoin. So lets have a look at four of the most prominent outlier bullish predictors.

1.  Rick Falkvinge - Founder of the Pirate Party announced that he was puttin all his savings into bitcoin in May 2011. At $10 a coin this was prescient. He also claims that  Bitcon will be worth $2-5m. His thinking is that the banking industry is heavily regulated. A deregulated version of it has the potential to replace the total value of it. "I'm counting backwards. It is a transactional system and a store of value. What is the size of that market? How much can bitcoin take? It is going to replace international trade."


2. Tuur Demeester - Early Bitcoin investor and in 2012, predictor of central bank crackdowns on digital currencies. - In the above chart he shows off some of the markets that bitcoin could disrupt. If bitcoin can replace offshore deposits it could be worth $800k

3. Wences Cesaraes - Sold his compny Patagon for $750m in 1997. "There is a 20 percent chance it goes to Zero.....I think that  there is a higher than 50% chance that bitcoin is goes to more than $1m."

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​4 Chandler Guo - Earlly angel investor in bitcoin. One of the biggest miners in China. In a few years when bitcoin becomes the basis of the world GDP like Guo envisions, bitcoin will most likely reach a market cap of trillions of dollars. This is not far off Rick Falkvinge's prediciton if you consider the total money in circulation is estimated to be $60 trillion. GWP as estimated by CIA is approximately $78 trillion as of 2014.

​Who am I missing? The requirement for this list is some early contribution or track record in bitcoin or elsewhere.

The further I progress the more I end up going back to try to understand core concepts that I have tried to skip over. One of the reasons for this is that if a definition doesn't make sense to me, my instinct is to plough on. A better system may be to take more time trying to define each concept in a way that I understand. To describe it in different terms. Sometimes I'll try write it out with a pen, then transcribe it to word text to see if I understood it. It's a slow process.

I started with the Rails Guides for each core Rails folder and then began my definition search. Here is a typical rabbit hole.

Bin - "Contains the rails script that starts your app and can contain other scripts you use to setup, update, deploy or run your application." What is the definition of a script though?

Script -  A script or scripting language is a computer language with a series of commands within a file that is capable of being executed without being compiled." Why would file need to be execute without being compiled?

Compile - Compile is the process of creating an executable program from code written in a compiled programming language. Compiling allows the computer to run and understand the program without the need of the programming software used to create it.

This can go on forever and so for me the best thing is to try to grasp the core concept of the more common terms, before peeling the onion any further. In the first section of the guide this is the table in section 3.2:

Back to Bin described in my terms - 'A Folder containing the rails scripting language that starts your app'.
It does more than this but I wouldn't recommend going too deep at this stage if you're a beginner like me.

Config - 'Short for "configure your routes and database".' 'Allows you to adjust the general behavior of the application'. I tried looking further than this and quickly got lost, moving on.

Config.ru - Used for Rack configuration. What is a Rack? Its a Rack of servers.

DB - Contains database schema and migrations. The Schema basically describes how your data is organised. Its is a skeleton structure that describes the logic of the database. Also provides constraints.
Migrations are "incremental, reversible changes to relational database schemas. Took me a while to digest both of these concepts.

And then stop. This is enough for one session. ​

 As ICO's grow in popularity for functions ranging from Games to smart contracts, the scope for potential scams grows wider. The DAO hack was widely publicised, but it was never a clear proposition. Buying a share in a game is much easier in principle to understand. The temptation to 'get in at the start' of a promising game may prove to be overwhelming for some people. The marketing video for the Augmentorgame.com ICO, which launches in 2 days, is illustrative:

"As the sale progresses, databits will become more expensive"
" As a backer of the game you will have a once in  lifetime opportunity"
"This unique opportunity will never be repeated"
"Destined to put you ahead of all the other gamers in the battle to be the best of the best"

It mixes gaming terms with lots of well known sales tricks, which those familiar with Robert Cialdinis book "Influence" will recognise. There is no mention of investments.

I'm not saying that Augmentorsgame is a scam. In fact bits of it look promising and is less likely to be one due to the Shark Tank publicity. I also think that ICO's have lots of potential once industry standards develop. But there are no warnings about how much money you could lose, which normally accompanies regulated financial products. What many founders have realised is that this is a much easier way to raise $1m than going out to venture capitalists.

My guess is that the full ICO speculative frenzy is yet to come. When a mainstream, game, singer, artist or film raises money with a coin that appreciates rapidly in value, it will be more widely reported. This could open the floodgates. So how might you avoid this?

I suspect that those who succeed in scamming will cash out early into bitcoin. Those who succeed due to legitimate ventures which bring some decentralised success, will also cash out at least partially into Bitcoin. 

So if and when the speculative ICO frenzy comes, it might be worth avoiding the temptation to think you can predict the future and just leave your money in Bitcoin. Even if the BTC value drops precipitously after an ICO 'crash', remittances and other use cases might save it. It's hard to see the same outcome with the more narrowly focused coins.  But I could be completely wrong, and my suggestion could lead you to lose all your money. At least I'm willing to admit that.

This is not investment advice. Speak to an investment advisor before speculating on anything.

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Is it possible to predict what the future value of bition will be? The temptation is to look towards the well known thought leaders, or find people who said the value would go up before it happened. There is some merit in this if the predictions were specific and measurable. What is more difficult to find, and possibly more useful, is predictors who took a measured approach to future value, in a time of irrational exhuberance.

Industry participants survey

A measured approach to the future is one of the characteristics of 'Superforcasters' according to Philip Tetlock. In the following article 50 people were asked what the value of BTC would be in 12 months time. It was about $500 at the time. This is a useful survey because it is so specific. Out of the 50 asked, very few showed a measured analysis. Many prefaced their comments by saying its very tough to predict, but still predicted at least a doubling. One of the key factors may have been confirmation bias, in that their businesses would massively benefit from a big uptick in the price. Only one person predicted the right range. By simply saying they didn't know, the other two were more accurate than all of the other bullish predictions.

Alexander Lawn - Don't know 
Frederick Thenault - - Don't Know 

Alena Vranova - Trezor- Range from $50 to $10,000

Miner Surveys

Another interesting angle is surveys of miners. The full data isn't public  so needs to be taken with a pinch of salt. http://blog.genesis-mining.com/customer-survey-results. Here are some of the conclusions:

1. Altcoins will catch up to Bitcoin in 2018
2. Ease of use, fast payments and privacy were top priorites.
3. Good mix of spending. From Hoarding to High Frequency use.

Do these provide any predictive value? A survey doesn't typically involve much skin in the game but these people are mining customers so that would imply more commitment than a random survey. The problem is that the questions aren't specific enough to produce useful answers. The phrase 'catch up' could mean to close the gap in altcoin vs bitcoin total market cap by 5% or 100%. Or or it could mean catch  up in terms of features. Betting markets might provide more useful answers.

Betting

You can short bitcion on the some of the exchanges at any time, giving an indication of the bull vs bear split in a market. But being able to bet on a public, specific outcome in a prediction market gives a weighting of where certain people see the price over a specifc time frame. On https://fairlay.com/market/bitcoin-to-top-1200-before-mar-2017/ There is a 25% chance at the time of writing that bitcoin will surpass $1200 by March 2017 months according to those willing to risk their money on it. There isn't much liquidity in the market though so its hard to say how accurate this will be.

Of the 3 methods, the first and third are useful but the second is not. Suffice to say that I will now look to Alena Vranovas Twitter in times of bitcoin euphoria.



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 After building my first ZCash mining Node I decided to do some sentiment research on Bitcoin. Particularly to try and find dissenting voices among technologists with a strong track record. I found a number of skeptics among economists but not many technologists. If anyone knows of any please let me know. Also any changes in stance would be interesting. By strong track record here I mean they have made large public, successful bets on technology. Usually this is in the form of their own companies or investments but I would also take a longbets, or any other bet.


Positive Outcome

Marc Andreesen - Created first web browser, Netscape. Early investor in Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Github.

“There have been 3 paradigm big changes in technology.
Personal computers in 1975, the Internet in 1993, and – I believe – Bitcoin in 2014.”
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/01/21/why-bitcoin-matters/

Peter Thiel - Founded Paypal.  Owned 10% of facebook at IPO which he bought for $500,000 in 2005. Early investor in LinkedIn Yelp and Stripe.

http://www.coindesk.com/peter-thiel-claims-bitcoin-potential-change-world/
“I do think bitcoin is the first...encrypted money…. that has the potential to ...change the world

Paul Graham - Founded Y Combinator, first investor in Airbnb and Dropbox.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5402513
“ I am very intrigued by Bitcoin.  It has all the signs of a Paradigm shift, hackers love it, yet it's derided as a toy.  Just like microcomputers.”

John Collison Stripe.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JngiPEKOPiU
“Genuinely a technological breakthrough, the fully decentralised nature of it is a phenomenal accomplishment.” Patrick Collison “ I really like bitcoin” http://bit.ly/1jqFUKp

Naval Ravikant - Early investor in Twitter. Founded Angellist.
http://startupboy.com/2013/11/07/bitcoin-the-internet-of-money/
“Bitcoin will eventually be recognized as a platform for building new financial services…..Silicon Valley knows a platform when it sees it, and is aflame with Bitcoin. Teams of brilliant young programmers, entranced by the opportunity, are working on [ideas]”

Chris Dixon - Early investor in Skype and Kickstarter

http://cdixon.org/2013/12/31/why-im-interested-in-bitcoin/
“Bitcoin is a serious proposal for dramatically improving the payments industry. There are plenty of open questions but I think it’s an experiment worth running.”

Richard Branson "Virgin Galactic is a company looking into the future, so is Bitcoin,"

Milton Friedman on Ecash in 1999 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MnQJFEVY7s
Reid Hoffman.

“Bitcoin has the potential to be a massively disruptive technology,” “It is the leading digital currency and it’s growing fast.”
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/244859

Wences Casares - Sold first fintech startup for $750m
“I think it will take time, just like the internet took time. But it may have more impact than the internet.” http://uk.businessinsider.com/how-bitcoin-may-have-more-impact-than-the-internet-2015-2?r=US&IR=T


Mixed/Neutral

Ketih Rabois - Dec 2013

I don’t  have a strong perspective , I don’t know how bitcoin will play out. The underlying primitives are fascinating. …. There is no chance that bitcoin will suceed in the US. If someone in DC wants to make them illegal, it will be easy. Do I think bitcoin can suceed outside the US? Absolutely. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ia1bqXuOg04

Bill Gates

"I think it's a technical tour de force but that it is an area where governments are going to maintain a dominant role."

Paul Buchheit “Bitcoin may be the TCP/IP of money"


Negative

In the interest of balance I will include some well known detractors below. Except for Buffett none are succesful tech entrpreneurs or have made big, successful, public bets on future technology. 

Warren Buffett

"Bitcoin is a mirage" - Slightly dissapointly compares it to cheques and calls it anonymous. The interviewers also were unable to challenge his view.  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewMYbX47-IE

Paul Krugman - Nobel Laureate

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/28/bitcoin-is-evil/

when I try to get them to explain to me why BitCoin is a reliable store of value, they always seem to come back with explanations about how it’s a terrific medium of exchange

Robert Shiller - Nobel Laureate

http://business.financialpost.com/2014/01/24/bitcoin-is-an-amazing-example-of-a-bubble-robert-shiller/

Bitcoin is a bubble

Glenn Fleishmann - Writer/ Entrepreneur
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glenn_Fleishman

https://medium.com/the-magazine/23e551c67a6
Andreessen attempts to draw a parallel between the birth of the personal-computing era and the explosion of the publicly accessible Internet and Bitcoin. These are fundamentally flawed analogies

Matthew O’Brien of the Atlantic calls it, “the ultimate dotcom stock,”  a bubble that will burst

Mathhew Ingrham - GigaOM writer
“Bitcoin can’t track the thief or reverse transactions”http://gigaom.com/author/mathewingram/inevitably burst?

Naval Ravikant "Winding up and Winding down are the unique challenges of our time"

Winding Up "Getting into a focused zone of productivity"
Winding Down " Going from that focused zone into relaxation"

Those who are naturally good at winding up seem more anxious. Driven by irrational but useful factors such as competition, work success, more money and status.

Its more obvious that those who are naturally good at winding down are more predisposed to be calm. More driven by work/life balance. They avoid over long work days and big swings in mood. Nobody gets the balance right.

Tim Ferriss is a good example of someone who has identified himself as a natural winding up guy who now spends a lot of time learning how to winding down. His podcasts address sleep, meditation, self reflection and he identifies himself as a highly driven, A Type personality.

When I think of a Winding Spectrum. I feel I'm 60/40 winding down vs winding up. And so I need systems to get good at winding up. For me these include, as many classes and mentoring sessions as possible. Often they force me to do some revision out of embarrassment and a feeling of wasting money. 

I don't think the end goal is trying to get to 50/50. There are times when it might be worth sacrificing calm to get a project finished. Worth sacrificing sleep for an important public speaking gig. We often need a weeks holidays to counteract these periods of heightened stress.

My sense it that there is now more focus on winding down due the relentless distraction of smartphones. Meditation, yoga and other mindfulness practices have become more popular in the last 10 years. https://www.google.ie/trends/explore?date=all&q=mindfulness

Winding up well seems to be less explored and worth exploring.

Paul Graham and DHH often talk about the importance of long blocks of free time in order to fully engage in a programming problem. Both seem to be particularly good at not only blocking out these times but also resisting distraction during them.  

I have heard it said that Hacker News is successful because procrastination is a constant problem for programmers. So if you do get a free block how do you get into a state of distraction free programming? If like me you aren't naturally good at blocking distraction, there is a system that has worked for me.

Naval Ravikant has identified on the Tim Ferris Podcast that winding up and winding down is one of the unique challenges of our time. His prescription is meditation and while I agree, I think the format is key. When I am working through a problem, I, like many people get that sudden urge to check and email, twitter etc . So the most important programming habit I have developed so far is how I react to that feeling.

Initially I tried meditating but got quickly distracted from it by the level of anxiety I was feeling about not getting anything done. What I eventually realised is that I was starting the meditation too late. The second the urge to break starts, its time to close the eyes and breathe and engage in a type of short term meditation for 5-10 minutes.

I now do this regularly during programming and although initially it felt like I was losing time, it has led to much greater productivity. Very unscientifically, the best indicator that I am relaxing well, is my eyes start darting under my  closed lids. It feels like REM but could be unique to me or imagined.

In terms of winding up, I actually think it is a misnomer. For me, Winding up is getting into a productive 'zone', which is a habit built over time. And so to get good at winding up, I had to slowly build my consistency from 10 mins of programming up. The best way to do this was to join a class, or get a mentor who will automatically worked with me for an hour. From there I began to extend either side of the class.

​The same thing has applied to winding down. It didn't work, felt frustrating and seemed pointless at first, until I set my expectations lower and just aimed for consistency over outcome. Getting good at longer meditation sessions seems to have helped me 'drop' into a useful 10 minute session pretty quickly.

And so managing my expectation for meditation has been the best way for me to improve programming concentration. It doesn't always work, but has certainly helped.

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