You can most certainly up your price. The only question is how the market responds.
Miners have zero incentive to sell their bitcoins for less than the cost of producing them. Left to themselves, the price should approach the minimum cost of producing bitcoins (since they do have incentive to undercut each other as much as possible).
Speculators could respond to a price increase by miners by dumping their inventory on the market somewhere between the old break-even mining price and the new break-even mining price, undercutting the miners and lowering the price. This would go on until either the speculators exhausted their supply of cheap bitcoins, or the miners were all driven out of business.
The real question is how the supply of the miners compares to the supply of the (active) speculators. If the miners are the principal supply of new bitcoins, and speculators are by and large just holding their bitcoins until some future time when the price is even higher, then the miners could totally up the global price by upping their own prices.
saalweachter|12 years ago
Miners have zero incentive to sell their bitcoins for less than the cost of producing them. Left to themselves, the price should approach the minimum cost of producing bitcoins (since they do have incentive to undercut each other as much as possible).
Speculators could respond to a price increase by miners by dumping their inventory on the market somewhere between the old break-even mining price and the new break-even mining price, undercutting the miners and lowering the price. This would go on until either the speculators exhausted their supply of cheap bitcoins, or the miners were all driven out of business.
The real question is how the supply of the miners compares to the supply of the (active) speculators. If the miners are the principal supply of new bitcoins, and speculators are by and large just holding their bitcoins until some future time when the price is even higher, then the miners could totally up the global price by upping their own prices.
wmf|12 years ago
Unless bills are due and the credit card is already maxed out.