Bitcoin bust or boom in 2014?

It is rather fashionable to make predictions on all manner of things at the start of the year, unfortunately such predictions mostly seem laughable when next year rolls around. However, that doesn't seem to dissuade people from continuing to make such predictions. So we at Decrypter have decided to partake in this silly ritual of sorts and make our predictions on bitcoin for 2014. Before we make our humble predictions on bitcoin, we first present our audience the opinion of Byron Wien, the vice chariman of the Blackstone Advisory Committee. For those not in the loop, Blackstone is a private equity investment bank which  is valued at over $30 Billion USD.

Blackstone's Byron Wien predicts that BTC will collapse in 2014, in his own words:

2.      In 2½ years the price of a Bitcoin has increased from $25 to $975.  The supply of Bitcoins is fixed at 21 million with 11.5 million in circulation.  Bitcoins lack gold’s position as a store of value over time.  During the year Bitcoin’s acceptance collapses as investors realize that it cannot be used as collateral in financial transactions and its principal utility is for illegal business dealings where anonymity is important.

Mr. Wien is entitled to his opinion of bitcoin, and we will not address any of his concerns or criticisms regarding bitcoin in this particular post. We will however provide our users with the undeniable fact that Mr. Wien's predictions were only 24% accurate for last year.

Our own predictions are not nearly as grim as that of the sagacious Mr. Wiener. We take into consideration that overstock.com will start accepting bitcoin this year, as well as Zynga. We anticipate more retailers to start accepting bitcoin in 2014 and increased broader acceptance. Our most conservative expectation is that bitcoin will surpass 2000 USD this year and will touch 3000 but will retreat from that high and hover somewhere in the mid 2000 value range. We have no doubt that our users will mark their calendars and dutifully check and track the accuracy of our prediction; making sure to remind us how wrong we were when 2015 is rung in. Best of luck trading!