Bitcoin Forum

It's gone below 4 USD today and it's gown down at a steady pace. Does anyone else feel something's wrong and at this pace, BTC will lose all it's value by maybe next year?

It's going to be really difficult to break even with your initial investment in mining (GPU + other hardware + electricity).

While this IS true, so is the fact that you can BUY them cheaper than many can mine them!

3-4$ is just fine to buy and hold them. remeber: there is a maximum of 21 million. what does that mean?! even if we just have 10 million users of BTC, that means there is on average only 2 BTCs, which means i am now (with my laughable 26BTC) 13x as rich as the future-average user.

--> worth WILL go up. as it did before.
the only risk that this will not happen is simply YOU ALL 'selffullfilling-prophency'-shortselling BTC to death.
So just don't panic.

Worldeconomy and traditional fiat-currencies have much bigger troubles now. i REALLY consider BTC a much secure (!!) investment than e.g. currencies like dollar or euro (they show a high volatiliy and inflation currently, but nobody ever thought of counting that into there bitcoin calculations?!)

example: $ is about 1/5 of the worth is was when george bush senior entered government! THINK of this! this is the normality! inflation hits you hard in $!!


.. my enthusiastic thoughts.

18459SEouNz2LuoZWLAKnrjKfBvNUcYjCu

^THIS. I'm gonna have to sell off my mining gear and start buying them at this price.

They're going back up now :)

>$4

Keep drinking the Kool Aid my friend. Prices bound to go <$1

Spend 'em if you got 'em.

drop short term, buyers will come. should sit at $5, but yes spend, spend, spend

I'm mining and holding at this point.  Don't need to cash out for any reason, so I just keep holding. 

$-chart of the last days looks pretty as if there is strong resistance at 3.85, 3.95. and 4.10

http://img851.imageshack.us/img851/4252/mtgoxs.jpg

BUY!

Just keep in mind that as a "currency" based on absolutely nothing (by design), the value of BitCoin is defined by how important it is for people to be holding coins.

I think the proposition of "money grows on trees" caused an explosion of popularity earlier this year and caused the perceived value to skyrocket.  But then the difficulty skyrocketed as well and suddenly the people that were creating a couple BTC each day found out they were getting absolutely nothing (and suddenly getting auto-banned for CPU-mining).

Something like this happened with SecondLife a couple years back I think, were people were suddenly talking about getting super-rich by playing a video game (also note that the SecondLife currency L$ ended up getting tied up in some pretty severe anti-money-laundering requirements and there is now only one valid major exchange).

Popularity has been dipping ( http://bitcoin.sipa.be/ (http://bitcoin.sipa.be/) ) and with it the price.  I'm guessing that once we separate out the people that want to be in BitCoin because of its properties from those that want to be in BitCoin to make free money we should settle down to a less-than-popular-but-stable description of what value it holds.

I think they will go back in few more days. I hope so :)

i'm holding onto mine.
won't sell them till they are worth at least $100 each.

I'm still mining on 3 rigs. The only reason why I am doing this is because the rigs are at work (with my company's permission - we have many systems running 24/7).

I personally think that BTC will drop to $2-$3 for a while before rising back up.

agree that bitcoins will drop to 2-3$... right now its heating my house so the offset of cost of electricity isn't to bad...
but unless more E merchants start accepting bitcoins... it may just end up beeing a nitch currency that will without more use may fall away into the void

E merchants will only accept bitcoin en-masse once the currency becomes stable, and once there is a trusted and regulated exchange which can guarantee to transfer fiat funds without any problems.

There is not a trusted exchange yet. MtGox have many issues and are a law unto themselves. Tradehill is too new. Bitcoin7 has been hacked or it was a scam. Trade-BTC was found out to be run by teenagers.

I'm only 50% sure that BTC will eventually become a viable currency. It is a fun hobby in the meantime though :)

Don't put more into Bitcoin than you can afford to loose.

Having said that, I don't think it makes any difference how far Bitcoins fall in the exchange rates.  In the long run, Bitcoins will become a viable currency and have much more value than they do now.

why do you think so?

Dollar is better, gold is falling and BTC alike
BTC has no new impulses for  rising, everybody is mining and exch it out
not many things to buy better for BTC besides some illegal stuff

Not true.

There are several merchants (including myself) who offer products and services that are 100% legal for BitCoin.

New merchants are still arriving on the scene regularly and the technologies supporting BitCoin commerce are steadily moving forward.

I can sell some inexpensives things that you only can buy on Argentine for someone that need something...

Warnig: we don't sell our beautifulls argentinian ladies :D

and what could that be?!?

give some example, maybe you convince me and we make business :)

Seems to actually be stabilizing pretty well considering all the exchange frauds and the speculation bubble a couple of months back. The fact that it is above parity to USD is a good sign.

I wouldn't call it stabilised yet. It still needs to drop to $2-$3 per BTC before things stabilise imho.

What is your reasons for picking $2-3?

BTC's were slowly rising from $1-$2/$3 before the artificially induced bubble. My belief is that $2-$3 is the true value of BTC's at this time.

What is your evidence that the bubble was artificially induced?

I was there?

The bubble was mainly due to media hype - national and global media reporting about silkroad etc. However, this is just my opinion ;)

Ok, it sounded like you were implying that it was willfully artificially induced, not just natural hype surrounding a new technology.

Ah right, sorry about that ;)

Yeah, I wasn't trying to imply that there was a conspiracy. The bubble was just hype mixed with greed.

The sky is falling the pools are drying up! time to move on IRL?

The problem is that I don't see any new mainstream adoption occurring.  What increase in demand exists to drive their price up?  We have an increasing supply, but a stagnant demand.  Economics 101 says the price will keep falling without something changing.

Have you heard, a few people are unhappy with the banking oligarchy! A few others are unhappy with the very concept of central, institutionalized fractional reserve banking.

I think a few of them might like Bitcoin. Give it time.

It was up to $9 before the silk road article.  The crash from $30 was caused by a combination of the Allinvain BS and Mt.Gox hack.

Get real, it's been 4+ months now, and you are still blaming the falling prices on it?  There just isn't enough demand, and the libertarian faction have helped scare off normal people.  Now what's left?  An exchange which is getting more flaky by the day, a few merchants that sell the same things as everyone except for an additional markup, and a bunch of scammers all tryin to scam each other.  I call 1.50-2 by December. 

No...those incidents started the trend...there have been many other incidents/selloffs/FUD to aid in the decline, not to mention very clear market manipulation (I assume multiple entities, I do not believe in a single manipulator).  I don't really care either way...if BTC value was $1 it would still be more useful than a dollar in some ways.  If Bitcoin failed today I would be out no money, I mine and have already cleared my costs.

Just people like you being here to spread FUD further proves my point.  There is a disproportionate amount of fear and misinformation being spread by people in this forum who have no interest in anything except seeing BTC fail.  If it has no value it will fail on its own without your help.   

anyone with knowledge of chartanalysis will tell you: the current price is VERY likely to be a bottom. Look at stock-charts. it is really nothing incommon to drop in worth for 4 months. this is in fact very normal. the intra-day movements are what is really interesting:

http://img824.imageshack.us/img824/782/unbenanntulu.jpg

again: BUY now

(i think i don't have to mark the strong bullish outbreaks, you can see them yourself i guess; but just in case: it are the long green candles just after the deepest bottom price: signalling that there is strong bullish-buyer resistance at this price.)

i really can suggest this trading blog with a lot of very good charts:

http://www.bitcoinbullbear.com/index.html

i don't read there premium tradingletter, thought..

Another risk is people won't use bitcoin

prices went up today from 3.9 to 4.1!  It may sound small but its good difference for some people.  You just never know when its going to fall or go up, pretty much an gambling except we have control over it. 

People will use it, once a huge mulch-national like eBay or Skype gets behind it watch out. it won't be Google prices but I can see $5-$10 average being the baseline

Woo yes! I would love to see a Skype type service, or any VOIP accepting bitcoins.

Prices falling and climbing has happened a lot this year, it's normal.

My question remains is why haven't we told occupy wall street about bitcoins? Beyond that, the lorn and gambling industry would definitely help us flourish again.

They do know about it, some of them are taking donations in it, they just aren't interested in it beyond that, like the majority of the world. 

Bruce is there every day talking to the 21 year olds about bitcoins.

just like the stock market you need to control your emotions when you see the prices going up and down.

This is actually around the price that I've expected bitcoin to be at.  That is, around $3 to $5 USD.  I don't think that any reasonable, critically thinking person ever expected them to stay at $20+ per bitcoin this early in its existence.  The fact that there are fluctuations around this price point really isn't concerning to me, because currencies fluctuate all the time.

What I do like is seeing are the new merchants pop up, like BitBrew and BitMunchies, in addition to online services like AirVPN using the BitCoins.  This keeps people spending, mining, and the services growing.  This is a good sign, in my opinion, that bitcoin is a healthy currency.

I was reminded about BitCoin at Occupy Vancouver yesterday, perhaps there will be another bump in interest now that Occupy has gone global.  Also, according to Option Stalker (link below), prices seem to be stabilizing. Of course that's really over a period of 7-8 days.

It's stable enough that I'll be offering statistical consulting for BitCoins in the next week, I hope.

http://optionstalker.com/index.php?range=672 (I looked at this graph 12:30am GMT -8, in case it shows something different now).

Exactly, even if it is difficult to predict the exact low short term, long term bitcoin prices are still in an uptrend.

And prices are the leading indicator, not news. this means prices will move up BEFORE you see more positive news. Regarding Occupy X, the people who got interested still first need to move funds to the exchanges, and this takes some time. The ones who are already having funds on bitcoin exchanges have an advantage.

I still don't think that the occupy movement will do much (if anything) to bitcoin in the long run.

The more the merrier. It would be more people to spread the word about BitCoin, that may be good considering the occupy movement seems to consist of people that are mainly active within their movement, so therefore this can benefit similar like minded movements. It just depends whether the occupy movement would see BitCoin as a similar and like minded movement, I believe they would.

In my opinion it is healthy that the bitcoin is falling down because...

1. Some of the big speculators will kicked out of the market.
2. Some of the big bitcoinholder must be sold because the most of the small bitcoinholder bought bitcoins for a higher price than the current price and won´t sell the bitcoins and make loss.
3. The people who have no bitcoins have now a good chance to buy bitcoins for a better price.
4. The bottom of the pricecrash is near! Here an example,
1BTC => 1$ would mean that only 7.5mio.$ is needed to buy all bitcoins
OR
1000 people need only 7500$ to buy all bitcoins
OR
10000 peope need only 750$
;-)

I think that the high pessimism is the best condition for a next run of bitcoins and prices above 30$

My target for the next 2 years is 100$ per BTC in minimum becaus i believe that the bitcoin will be successful as facebook, twitter oder google.
 

The problem I see now is a vicious circle with miners shutting down due to the falling prices and new $$$ not coming in also because of the falling prices.

If you look at Bitcoins as a microcosm of a country and its currency you can see the parallels:

1) A country has a Fiat currency (with no backing)
2) The country has natural resources (Lets say bananas)
3) The world has a demand for bananas so they buy from the country
4) The currency is worth something due to the mercantile exchange (in this case trade)

In Bitcoins the same can be said.  The demand for the currency must be based on some type of mercantile exchange.  We mine the coins like you would gold or silver but you also need a reason for people to trade with us.

Everyone should be looking at how to provide "something" as part of the exchange if you want to see this work.  There are a great many merchants using BTC but we cannot let them walk away because of the unstable pricing or a feeling or loss of value.  If we were a real country the solution would be either to pin the value of BTC to another currency (like China does with the USD) or back BTC with something like gold or silver to stabilize the value.

The ultimate answer is to come up with a "killer app".  This would be something you would REQUIRE Bitcoins to do or purchase and no other options are available.

The example here is oil.  Oil is traded with USD only (even though that is starting to change now).  Since you can only buy with USD, that creates a built in demand for USD.

I would say the killer app in the case of BTC would be something which requires anonymous financial transactions due to any number of reasons.  (Not just the illegal ones)

@BrimStone

I understand you but i think that the independence of banks in combination with the human desire are the garantuee of success.

Look into the history of the web and new technologies for example...

Facebook (the first social network)
Google (on of the first searchmachine and the first simple-made searchmachine)
iTunes by apple (the first portal to buy mp3-music)
and a lot of more...

I think that the bitcoin has similar potential because the people of the world are searching for financial independence and an alternative to the old money and bank system.
In my opinion the bitcoin is only the beginning of a new financial system and a lot of more national regional similar systems will be born.

I see the future not in one two or three currencies in the world but in a lot of smaller local currencies which can exchange in other currencies as the bitcoin.

@johnj

i mean that facebook is the first social network which hit the nerve of the time.
google is similar because google is the first engine which had only a text box without link lists and a lot of banner and pictures.

In my opinion mining will go CPU for a while now until someone gets the new algorithms working on GPUs. CPU mining is cheaper and uses less power.

umm... we are already doing mining by GPU because CPU is to slow...
care to elaborate on this

A product that could only be purchased by BTC would be great for the currency, but would it be good for the product? Unless, as you mentioned, it would be something in which anonymous purchase was integral or an advantage already, it could cost the product maker a lot of sales by restricting its market.

One hazy idea I have is patent (or other IP) insurance. Patent applications can be expensive and time-consuming, and insurance that someone else doesn't beat you to it may not be ideal if you don't want to reveal that you have something.  I can see engineers wanting something like this if they were worried about lawsuits with their employers about IP rights.

How about an app, something popular and fun like Tower Defence, Angry Birds or Snood, that brings in some sort of dollar revenue. In return, it gives back some of that revenue as BTC for completing in game challenges. It works as a kind of in game currency for bonuses or upgrades or hats things like that. For the person that doesn't care, BTC can just be like points. They don't need a wallet or anything it's just a score, or a game money for them. For the person that is really into the game, they might want to purchase external BTC to buy more in game upgrades. They could buy these from other players or on the open market. Sound feasible?

Actually, it does sound feasible.  I can see there being a draw in being able to spend 'game money' on real services. Still though.. it would take a lot of time to work out the in-game mechanics so that you're not doling out huge amounts of BTC for little cash. Perhaps if the player had the option of becoming a miner for BTC in their in-game account? Then you could give item drops (to use an MMORPG term) in a structure that paid an expected value slightly less than the BTC value of their mining.

On the other hand, if the game got popular, mining value could go down the toilet.

Not so simple after all.

I think the Occupy movement first needs to decide what it's protesting for/against. I went to my local protest just to look around and there were people protesting everything from marijuana legalization, to tax rates, to 9/11 conspiracies, to wealth inequality.

Seems like a lot of people who are pissed about a bunch of stuff. Spreading the word about Bitcoin is fine but it looks like they have other issues they want to deal with first.

They're all related, unfortunately many don't realize that the problem is government, just one of the symptoms is corporations.

Bitcoin (or the concept of decentralized currency anyway) is one of many cures.

I think that the Occupy movements are actually a whole bunch of different, smaller movements rolled into one to gain a larger presence than if they were all separate.  There's no reason why BitCoin couldn't be added to the mix, especially if other members of the Occupy movement began to accept donations in it.  ;)

It usually takes years for something like this to catch on, it took Paypal years even with ebays help to grow and this is much more complex since it is not just a way of making payments but a form of payment itself.

It's not going to be void. Currency going up and donw all the time.

At this point mining is great if you like destroying the environment and spending a fortune on electricity whilst not even getting enough compensation to help pay half the electric bill.

Regarding a use for Bitcoin that could give it real traction, I imagine that if online porn sites began to offer Bitcoin as an option it would soon have a lot of users. Bitcoin transactions may not be totally anonymous, but they're a lot easier to hide from the wife or gf than a credit card.

You actually make a good point here.  It's a selling point for both the porn market _and_ BitCoins.  ;-)

I suspect that it's also pretty great if you plan to keep your mined coins for a few years and sell them for megabucks.

I suspect that it's also pretty great if you plan to keep your mined coins for a few years and sell them for megabucks.
[/quote]

No it's not. If mining costs you more than the market price of bitcoins, then you can just spend the money you save from your electricity bill on buying bitcoins. You would end up with more coins and still be able to sell them for megabucks down the road.

Buy, just buy.

Now that BTCs are below 3 bucks, someone hacked my TH account and stole 17 BTCs by withdrawing them to his address.. WHY? It would have made sense at $15/BTC or more...

I am not so sure about electric companies accepting bitcoins for payment...I hope that comes true one day and that bitcoin stabilizes at all...There are many interesting created against bitcoin currency. Big players won't allow people to take control over currencies so easily. Power make persons greddy

agree

I've only been around the btc scene a couple of months but we seem to be on or about a decent resistance point after the price collapse of the last fortnight. If I had any money to invest, I also would buy buy buy!

Personally, I think that we're going to have a linear growth from this point out, at least for a while.  I am curious as to what's going to happen next year when the number of bitcoins you gain per block gets halved.

kiyote

The BTC price sucks now :(
I have been holding off selling mine at $17 and $15 hoping it would go back up to $30, now I feel so screwed :(

I did the same...
in the end i traded my bitcoins for more video cards.

nice

BTC price now push up ;-))) time to make money

Lol? Great chart. Remind me of The Wall Street.

miscalculation happens

don't treat bc as a investment, treat it as a hobby and you will find it enjoyable. ~fab

A great idea and it has been suggested before.  Of course, one problem is that porn users usually want their porn on demand.  Who wants to wait around for more than an hour for a Bitcoin transaction to be verified.  But this can be worked out and developers are working on this issue.  In the mean time, we need more creative suggestions like this.

Don't people that pay for porn do it with monthly fees?

edit:of course i'm talking about porn sites, not about ordering DVDs and such

I feel that prices are going to just going to stay between $2 and $5 changing every couple of days. But prices seem to of gone up today and has made a nice change from the $2 area.

there just needs to be another story about something people want but can't easily get (eg SR), bc will go up, we all sell, bc will go down... its a vicious cycle my friends!

Looks like its going back up! Buy Buy Buy!  :P

Last Price: 3.55312 High:3.82717 Low: 3.136

yeah past few days it seems to be creeping up again... i think most people that were gonna jump ship have done so already

mining and holding here also :)

btw i think the comment about only illegal stuff to buy is nonsense, there are some really good looking precious metals for sale among the masses of mining equipment you can buy with BTC

the one bad thing is now bitcoin prices have dropped low its frustratingly far away for me to be able to afford even a tiny bit of silver bar just from my mining lol
thats why this is a hobby and not an investment (although i admittedly turned away from nvidia cards thanks to btc)

There is no need for confirmations in low value transactions.  The risk of double spend is very low.  Is someone going to spend $80M to generate a 51% attack in order to get an hours worth of free porn?

I am sure current porn sites lose a significant amount to fees/fraud/chargeback.  Bitcoin doesn't need to be perfect, just better.  I mean say you are a porn site operator and someone does manage to double spend attack you.  At most you are going to find out in an hour or two and then you ban the account.  What is the actual loss?  Not that RIAA BS where you take 100% of full retail price * # of piracies but actual loss.  If someone is trying that hard to steal an hours worth of free porn then likely they weren't going to pay anyways.  So the site is out a couple pennies worth of bandwidth.  A lot better than a $35 charge back fee.

Not sure what you mean by double spend... Would you care to enlighten me please? Or should I go do my own research? Hehe not sure how newbie friendly this community is... Don't want to start off asking stupid questions but...

The reason for waiting on confirmations is protection against an attack known as a double spend.

A double spend works like this:
1) I spent some bitcoins
2) I then immediately somewhere else spend same bitcoins to another merchant.
3) Only one of those spends will be included in the next block.

If you are a victim of a double spend you have a 50% chance of getting coins.  Luck of the draw.  Once a transaction is in a block that is 1 confirmation.  The ony way that could be undone is a theoretical attack known as a "51% attack" which is very expensive.

After 6 confirms the likelihood that all 6 blocks could be undone by a longer chain in an extended 51% attack is very remote.

So 0 confirms = risk
1 confirms = much lower risk
6 confirms = essentially no risk

Now I just said 0 confirms is risky so how could a business take 0 confirm transactions?  Well if you are moving $20M in irrevocable bearer bonds you better not skip waiting for 6 (or maybe 20) confirms. 

However if it is access to a porn website (or a $3 burger) the risk of a double spend is very small and the potential loss to the business is very little.  There really is no need to wait for 1+ confirms.  No business need to avoid 100% of fraud just keep fraud at a low level.  CC, checks and cash are still used despite billions of dollars a year in fraud.

Many people think I must have 6 confirms or "ultra risky".  Just pointing out that risk is all relative.  0 confirms is lkely less risky (based on what we have observed so far) than accepting a credit card for small transactions.

My bad.

Time to pull the plug or switch to something more profitable
FPGA could be a nice idea

solar or free source of electricity generator is also a good one
im starting a project on building my own DIY solar electricity plant
starting a blog here

tell me what you guys think

http://mycheapenergy.blogspot.com/2011/11/episode-2-gathering-source.html

Get 'im.

There is no need to wait.

Performing a non-Finney 0-confirm double spend attack is extremely difficult and merchant will detect it within minutes (seconds is more likely).  If it ever became a problem merchants could adopt better double spend detection methods and make it almost impossible.

Porn merchants current lose magnitudes more by using credit cards then they ever would with 0-confirm sales.