Bitcoin Forum

I sold all my bitcoins when it was $13. I made a profit of $600 but now it's not economical to mine anymore. I am selling all of my equipment(or refunding) for the amount I placed into the investment. This was a good run but bitcoin is falling apart on many fronts. I will keep 67btc in my wallet for now but im done.

Maybe I haven't understood anything yet, but to me it seemed that bitcoin was supposed to be a means of payment, an electronic form of money.

You are treating it like it was an investment, some financial product that is somehow miraculously supposed to grow.

Those two uses of money are actually incompatible. When money is used for payment, it needs to circulate. When it's used for investment, it needs to be fixed. Money can't do both at the same time.

Exactly, I got into bitcoins only for the mining however. I had no intention to trade it like stocks.

To be honest, I hope more people will stop mining now, that'll leave the rest of us more BTC to mine at the current difficulty  ;)

Why even keep 67 BTC? If bitcoin becomes a global phenomenon, then only 1 BTC will make you wealthy. I came in too late to acquire many, but I am still very optimistic about the efficacy of the technology.

Sure. But the problem is vast amount of miners who mining BTC in order to exchange for traditional currencies and there is much less ask for BTC. In other words, most people is mining BTC to get fast money and make bitcoin weaken.

Pack it boys. Yer finished  8)

It makes perfect sense that the price is dropping. Mining became super popular recently. If everyone starts mining to get USD, then that's a huge increase in bitcoin supply. There was no new increase in demand (in fact, maybe a decrease, due to all the security scandals lately), so that translates into a big price drop like what you're seeing now.

If only you could have shorted BTC, then I would have been able to make a profit. :) And many people wouldn't have wasted so much money buying mining equipment, because the price would have never gotten so high, and would have steadily decreased as the mining pool increased, instead of crashing rapidly like it is now.

This is why shorting is good for the market. :)

Good. We don't need targii like you mining just to make USD.  Also means more future BTC for me.  Can I have you stuff?

Bitcoin mining has become unprofitable for many due to electricity costs.  So, purchasing hardware solely for mining at this point is completely speculative. 

Looks like I was right on time. Price dropped rapidly.

sell your rig... buy more coin, I have a feeling that 67 BTC wont be enough

Everybody should start buying again :s

I'll Buy it!

As someone that has been using Bitcoin for a month or so, I would double down and buy more if I had some cash on an exchange. If I thought it would still be sitting at ~$7 in a week, I'd mail a check today.

Sure, I lost some value of my BitCoin, but it isn't like I had put my retirement funds in it and it serves too valuable of a service to completely give up.

It's far from over.

Sorry, do not pass go. Do not collect 200 BTC. Please google "bitcoin difficulty".

Over? Shit's just gettin' started!

+1. just barely getting started

All these people who keep saying "bitcoin is over" never define their terms..
What do you mean by "over"? It certainly couldn't be that the network has crashed, or that people have stopped using them (neither of those is true.)
Or by what standard was it "not over" previously, that has now changed?
It just doesn't make any sense to declare a distributed electronic currency like this "over." It almost can't be over.

Bitcoin still has a long way to go and if it survives and becomes mature it might be one of the next big things in internetland. Anyways I think it's interesting to follow and maybe to invest some in this project because even if it fails someday it will certainly leave it's tracks. But I have high hopes!

Is it too far away to think about free heat in the winter

Yes, good, pack up your miner. Only then will your journey to the darkside be complete.

Sold all my mining equipment. Net profit is $600 over 1 month.

Seems like its too late to get into mining now because it lost the profitability. But I like to mine because I want bitcoin to be the future, at the same time, I do not want to send $ buying it because who knows what happens next. Mining is risk free investment I think.

Whats over?

He's over, tired i guess.

mmh, I though the goal of BC is not to mine and make profit but to create some real value and trade.
good that miners drop out then, good for the BC market saturation.

It sure is hard to continue mining @ ~ USD7/btc and I totally understand the OP's feelings. I'm still mining at this point; but I don't think it'll be profitable at any point in time. Whatever your reasons are for getting btc (usd, trade, etc), I don't see it going anywhere. I'm still mining because I hope I'm wrong. HOPE ...

BTC/USD prices has been going down since the $30 high. Those early adopters that sold at $30 have profitted and left the game, probably. Or they are playing with the market with the enormous amount of btc. Bringing the price down with the over-supply, make people leave, then bring the price back up for a profit. Who knows?

Trade - It's just not enough businesses that know, not to mention adopted btc as payment. I recently had an experience with a handyman (got some work done to my house); to me, he's a very technical person for a handyman. He's got an Iphone and responds to his emails pretty frequently. He's well represented in the web (his own website, etc), and got his rankings taken care in multiple sites. And he accepts checks, credit cards, cash, gold and silver. He is the kind of person that I though would know about btc (because of his acceptance of gold and silver). But he has never even heard of it when I spoke to him about it.

it's looking for a resistance, the price went up too fast, the growth of community very quick... now we need to see how many people stays and how many people leave! Consistency will pay back and what this community be challenge is the TRUST factor
it will take almost 5 years before BTC become of public domain. BTC still too technical!
there is only of 6MLN BTC  of 21MLN think about there is not enough currency yet to cover a potential market... too much greed, not enough market to be spend it and not too many other currency accept it! BTC will be perfect to exchange between other currency like USD-BTC-EUR... BTW GOLD is up to $100 right now! It could be BTC instead gold in the future! Banks in the international exchange have the own currency to facilitate the transaction and don't lose the value!

The beauty of all of this if people leave the difficulty factor will adjust, it will be more easy to earn them as mining and thinks keep moving. Mean also when some one have a lot of them eventually will be as situation where will have BTC speculate for good purpose like create service exchange, goods and not necessary for greed

I think the whole concept is very interesting to many people. To my casual probing however the biggest obstacles seem to be getting honest trades and fair deals with people who are not seeking to simply steal your money. Once you get the bitcoins it is not as simple as sticking them in the bank or even the old fashion redneck way...bury that cash in mason jars....LOL

This will keep a lot of mainstream types from pursuing building the trade and "buying" aspect of this currency. The recent attacks on so called credible places to acquire, store and exchange this currency is not helping to settle things down. In ther current market many of us are searching for alternatives to the good old USD...However, opening myself up with wires and bank transfers and the other accepted types of funding accounts to do anything is daunting.

Mining is a whole aspect of the game that I am not understanding completely. It does seem to water down the pool though....

I don't think you can have people selling BTC for USD and hope to have BTC be a currency in any real sense.

Well, at least you earned some money, eh?

If you're mining bitcoin in order to make a lot of USD, you're doing it wrong (arguably, of course).

The point of Bitcoin is not to turn them into USD, it's to trade them for goods and services.  Buy things with your BTC, sell things for BTC -- this is the way you add real value to the community.

ya I know

There it is, the gem of the post.  it's going to take time.

I can think I missed the early 2011 opportunity because I had a stack of GPUs doing something else, and have come in late, paid for a few hundred coins and having a bit of fun trading.

BUT

The people I see who are genuinely wealthy have invested many years on ventures.  I got some money out of a high risk venture after working on it for eight years and I'm not expecting bitcoin to be months rather than years. 

Here we go again.

All this would require is a service where you can borrow Bitcoins, right? Does a service like this not exist right now?
I guess the problem is that it's hard to enforce over the internet, when you lend Bitcoins to someone. What if they don't pay you back?

Breaking the SHA-256 hash function would make it over. Or at least the current incarnation of Bitcoins would be.

I recently started mining and plan to add a few rigs over the coming year. My whole reason for mining is to SAVE money by paying for services (that I already use) with BTC. I think that is the only rational reason to mine. If you are in it to make USD and speculate, you are just setting yourself up for heartache.

If you already use services like web servers, virtual hosting etc like I do for web hosting and game servers or any other service that takes BTC, then mining is for you. If you just want to cash out every few weeks for USD, that ride is just going to be too damn wild for a foreseeable future, for me anyway.

I'm thinking about selling off my mining rig also, only so that I can buy BTC with it. I'm in it for the long run. We'll see how things turn out :3

Honestly, as long as things like Silk Road exist there will always be a market for a completely anonymous currency if only as a means of transfer of funds.
Bitcoin's anonymity will eventually collide with the trustworthiness needed to make something like what you've proposed work.

there's no way bitcoin is over! It's the currency of the future. Sure some kinks need to be ironed out, but i'm sure thats once they are bc will be stronger for it.

everyday people are joining the bc phenomenon, new businesses are accepting bc, and soon bc is sure to be a household name. It's because of this FACT that I'm working on implementing a way to accept bc for my space program. once the haters are gone we'll be able to really get things ramped up. keep your eyes open people, this thing can only go up from here!

There are new alt-chains you can make money off of. But if you're out, you're out.

Summary of topic, people aren't using bitcoin as a currency just as a scheme to make (insert your current federal denomination here).

The only thing thats over is the early spec bubble. Once Bitcoins become more useful for your average (stupid) user to make purchases they'll regain traction. Hard to say when they'll bottom out though.

I just need bitcoin to be stable for a few hours while I accept payments. Customer sends me payment, I cash out instantly and usually don't lose any money, sometimes gain a little which covers BTC to LR or cash costs. So hasn't 'failed' for me, although better stability would be good for escrow.

Could care less about speculating rackets or HYIPs

Its not over

It's funny that there is such a loud cry of cynicism on this forum...bitcoins are doomed, turn off your rigs, never make any money, no hope for a vibrant economy...and yet the network hashrate has hardly budged (so far at least). 12.5 Th/s says this ain't done yet.

I mine for the fun of it, so it is not too bad for me.  But I feel that currency trading can be avoided, but we should all encourage the use of bitcoin whenever we can?

Seems to be working just fine for me...

Still going :)

The second wind is coming. Wait for it.

What BitCoin needs now is rapid growth of the number of services and goods one can buy with BTC. Without that, it's impossible for BTC to fulfill it's purpose.

Exactly!

while that would be good, i also think simply having another speculative bubble would show people it's not over yet.

^ agreed

What's not over? Speculation? BitCoin is good when it costs $30, and it's good when it costs $0.5. The only ones that care about value are those, who care about $$$, not BTC. The only problem with the current price is it's huge instability, and the only way to solve that is to expand BitCoin economy.

One of the best things about BTC is it's huge instability.

If you don't like it, don't use it unplug & sell your mining rig. :P

Problem is, what happens when the price goes back down again, and everyone who would buy them just because they are cheap, have already bought them? No interested buyers left and the price stagnates and continues to drop.  You'll see a few rallies, which will be sold into hard and killed by people who bought too early/miners who want to sell before the price drops again.   

I think naturally the price of a bitcoin will settle around the cost of the electricity to mine them. Coincidentally it costs more to produce a bitcoin than it is worth right now so I think eventually it should settle out around $5/BTC. Of course if the new ATI 7xxx series performs as well as the current 6xxx series for mining with half the electricity costs it might be at its stabilized value now. Electricity costs have zero effect on my willingness to mine since I live in an apartment and my landlord recently decided to jack my rent by $40 instead of the $8 which was prescribed for this year. If I can spend an extra $60/month on mining purely out of spite I will.

The cost of electricity is pretty irrelevant to the price, especially since a lot of miners aren't paying their electricity bills.  Also, look at the FPGA miners people are working on, would mean electricity cost would be way lower than it is now, thus forcing non FPGA miners out of the market, and driving the prices even lower.  I wish I could be as optimistic as some of you, but everywhere I look things are not looking good. 

I'm pumping out 18 GH/s and only averaging $250 a month for the whole house,,, 3,000 sq/ft.

100% true. Botnets also. Stolen coins also. Price is going down.

The number of new bitcoins entering the market remains constant. Botnet operators may not hoard... err... speculate and will make the market price lower, but that just helps stop artificial bubbles. In 60k blocks or so the flow of bitcoins entering the market will be cut in half and then again in a few years after that. Mining is not the only way to get bitcoins and hasn't been the best way for quite some time. Buy them on an exchange. Trade some goods or services for them.

Most who treat bitcoins as an investment will probably end up disappointed.

So long as everything doesn't completely collapse. Everyone who thinks of bitcoin as a pseudonymous decentralized medium of exchange will be satisfied.

Not being a slave has value not comparable to USD.

Looks like OP made a big mistake... ;D

This thread is awesome! Good find.  ;D

I wish I'd got in on the speculating sooner, but bitcoin seems pretty robust overall and it won't stop being used just because only ASIC users can mine it and the value fluctuates insanely

I regret this so much...

Got me $300 last year, was proud of it and still am proud. Unfortunately I didn't recognize that investments need to be long-term to get the maximum benefits.

Dude you missed out on $100 000   ;D

I am very tempted to just blow $22k on a certain miner because I now know what bitcoin is capable of.

We are all on a journey and who knows where it will take us so you shouldn't feel bad Sir. Even if this bitcoin experiment simply helps to loosen the grip the parasitic banksters have over us then every cent spent and lost is worth it.

67 BTC is an insane amount to have. I am sure that a lot of that is profit so you did have a good run with BTC.