Here on HN, we might have the unique opportunity to discuss the future among technical people who actually understand the concepts behind cryptography and blockchains.
Maybe it would be cool if everybody made a prediction and put down their reasoning behind it? Then in 10 years we can look back on it and see how close or far we were from reality.
The technology isn't relevant to the price. Your first point about psychology and the overall perception of Bitcoin is what really makes a difference to the price in 10 years. If someone is telling you that Bitcoin will be at price $x because of cryptography or the algorithms behind it, they're either clueless or they're selling you something (possibly both).
I've always thought than the price will be lower in the future and I've ended up being wrong over and over again. So this time I'll say that it will be higher (and still not buy any).
Maybe the unveiling and crackdown of the entire Tether scam will send it briefly lower than $10k to liquidate and wipe out all the gains made in recent years since 2021. Perhaps the next halving will make it skyrocket past $100k during that timeframe.
In general, Bitcoin has failed in being a peer-to-peer electronic cash system since 2017 and now it is a 'store of value' with no use other than a magnificent ponzi scheme for the history books. There are cryptocurrencies and stablecoins that are better than Bitcoin's original purpose.
Maybe a more useful cryptocurrency will surpass Bitcoin in 10 years.
Rationale: I think the world will have at least one big independent store of value next to the other big currencies like the Dollar, the Euro, the Yuan and Gold.
At the moment, Bitcoin is leading by a long shot. As it is the only independent (decentralized) store of value so far.
The "old school" stores of value all have a similar market cap. Somewhere in the order of 8 trillion each. To reach that, the Bitcoin price would have to increase 10 fold.
But it could also be that Bitcoin's use will dwindle like the use of FTP dwindled in favor of other prototols. I give that a 50% chance. So I cut that value in half => A five fold increase of todays price of ~ $40000. That is an annualized ROI of 17.5%.
Let's add 4% inflation to that => 21.5% annualized ROI. That would be a 7 fold increase. $40000x7=$280000.
To define "price of Bitcoin" let me add that Bitcoin might very well evolve or fork into something that is called differently. My cryteria is that if you hold 1 Bitcoin today and do not touch it for 10 years, your buying power will be $280,000.
I think it'll jump back up to $50k or maybe even above $100k on the next halving, but then on the halving after that settle down to $20k.