Bitcoin Forum

I wasn't around at the time.

I believe, as I suppose most others do, that the current value is partly a result of speculation about future use value of bitcoin as money.

Now, it seems to me, should there be another disappointing public relation event, and the dollar price of a bitcoin should fall say 30%, I would not be worried. For instance if BFL should reveal itself as a scam, that could scare som potential new adopters, but I think this will reverse itself in a matter of months.

So the question, at the time of the MtGox event in june 2011, were people worried that the whole bitcoin system would fold? I mean not one or two, but a substantial number of people. How many were involved in bitcoin at the time? Was it mostly miners?

There where a lot more people intersted in bitcoin back than.

The blast of the bubble (or the bubble itself) did IMO some damage(maybe the wrong word, most of the people that dropped out, where probably speculators and get rich quick guys) to Bitcoin, that we still feel today.

Some stats for you:

Google search for the word Bitcoin:

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin&date=1%2F2011%2025m&cmpt=q

http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://anonymouse.org/cgi-bin/anon-www.cgi/http://img28.imageshack.us/img28/3125/googletrend1113.png

Most online on this forum:

2013-01-13 (Today) 763

2011-06-19 (highest ever): 3809

The idiots were. There are substantial amounts of idiots around these boards.

I was around, I wasn't worried about anything, I didn't sell so I haven't lost anything.
It was a bubble, meant to burst.

That might be true for potential new miners,
but why would potential new adopters care (or be scared) about a company selling mining-hardware or not?
If I think about using bitcoin or not, I don't really care about what hardware miners use, or what company fills miners needs, or just scams them. All I care about is if the system works and suits my needs.

Thank you guys.

I think that is mostly an illusion. Lots of people were becoming interested at the same time back then and there was so little content and infrastructure that they nearly all came here. The quality (in terms of average usefulness of a post) was much higher immediately before the explosion so it was a reasonable place to come. I think a lot of people left the boards, and maybe also came down from a bitcoin high, and certainly some decided bitcon wasn't interesting after all, but I think it is much more a matter of dispersal than disappearance.

I would not send someone new to the boards now, but it was the first place I'd mention 2 years ago.

I don't think they were interested in bitcoin so much as buying drugs online. Then, when the masses got hit with the prospect of their transactions potentially not being that anonymous they all backed out. It was the aftermath of the aftermath of the Gawker Silk Road article.

Those people bought bitcoins for a single purpose and when that purpose was a pain in the ass, they abandoned it. The people fuelling this growth in value I can't see as being anywhere near as shortsided as people who came to bitcoin in that big rush on the fad-wagon.

Some of the more recent local clients that I sell bitcoins too have been pretty nervous during the transaction, so I'm not sure it's a entirely different crowd.  However, thats only a couple out of a quickly growing population of local users.

It was crazy. Everyone was going nuts when the price spiked, and then again when it dropped. Summaries would be "TO THE MOON WE'RE ALL RICH" and "THE PRICE OF BITCOIN IS FALLING SELL SELL SELL!!!!!!1"

I guess it teaches that a horde of random people are not suitable to stabilize a market. So whenever Bitcoin prices or markets grow too fast, it might be wise to use caution.