Bitcoin Forum

http://news.google.com/news/more?q=bitcoin&hl=en&client=ubuntu&hs=FgY&channel=fs&prmd=imvnsl&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.,cf.osb&biw=1366&bih=563&um=1&ie=UTF-8&ncl=dXqLm7jYQ9qJ4_M_U-BYFQco_2LzM&ei=SLCdTuONDOzXiALsh-XNCQ&sa=X&oi=news_result&ct=more-results&resnum=1&ved=0CCsQqgIwAA

Forbes,  Wired,  Ars,  all of them saying it's toast.

:(

Bitcoin is P2P.  It can't die.  It can drop in value, but unlike a company or central authority it can't go away.  I don't think they understand this.

If people uninstall the client then it's done.

I like the "End of Bitcoin PART II"

I find it odd that so many people who were once into bitcoin are now saying that it's dead. The bubble burst. That's all. Get over it.
Bitcoin is stronger now than it's ever been.

Further, after skimming those articles, the only one who seems to declare it 'dead' is the same one who declared it 'dead' months ago, which doesn't lend to credibility.

Side note: I can't help but notice the editorializing in the OP's Topic Header.  Why all the negativity lately, founder?

These articles aren't too bad.


In fact, they're mostly right.


Bitcoin is imploding and for good, natural reason.  As a free economic market, we need to collaborate to build a sturdy, solid infrastructure that will pave the way for all digital currencies.  The alternative block chains and Bitcoin novelty items have the consequent effect of grouping Bitcoin in with novelty...but not in an ingenious way -- more like a faddish way.

This isn't to say the bad PR and hacks and scams all that jazz didn't have an impact.  It did, but the weak infrastructure was a catalyst to these problems.

We need a Bitcoin Bank.  A good one.  One that has assets to back up our BTC.  It needs to be reputable and subject to prosecution.

I think the community has made a mistake in going overboard with decentralization.  Just because you have a free market doesn't mean you can't collaborate and have checks and balances.  Centralization can act decentralized if it's truly governed by the people.

We need unity, and right now, there is very little evidence of any unity in this community, other than we are apparently united in our desires for individual gain.

There is absolutely nothing to say it is stronger now than it was 1 month ago.

When the media announces a booming new industry, that industry is at its peak. When the media announces a dead industry, that's likely the bottom.

I don't understand why everyone is so concerned with the market price... people treat it like a stock, and ascribe the health of Bitcoin to the market (or share) price.

It belies an fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of Bitcoin. It's a protocol, not a company.

Actually, it is. Those of us involved in the projects are aware of this.

Troll detected

and

Everyone know that forbes and wired are very important for bitcoin and they know a lot of it. We totally depend on them

Oh well golly gee, as long as you say so.  Everybody just go about your business! Nothing to see here!

Don't you know? Forbes and wired command us. They declared bitcoin done, so it is done.

The Guardian article can't even get their numbers right; it never fell to btwn $1-2.

when its in your own best interest to get things wrong, you'll get them wrong.

Ah, nice, the final nails coming in.  

;D  (btw, do all these writers just copy/paste each other?)

Yeah stupid me I thought maybe it had dipped to <$2 and looked at some of my buy orders and then the trade history.  Nope.  Guardian was just full of shit.  I should have expected that.

60000 people running the Bitcoin client daily != dead.
9.5 terahashes/s of mining != dead.
454326 Bitcoins sent/spent in the last 24 hours != dead.
~60k of BTC/$200,000 traded daily on currency exchanges != dead.
34 code pull requests in the last three days != dead.

Somebody is not checking their facts. An inflationary phase is good to get the bitcoins moving!

Sure it's not a stock, but comparing numbers is what any sane person would do. "Why turn my X into Y, when Y is going down so hard?".

Sure, the blockchain is great.  But the purchasing power is going down, fast, as most merchants pin bitcoins to fiat.  Purchasing power is different than the blockchain.

There have been many 'one hit wonders', and many technologies which weren't adopted until dozens of years after the initial discovery.

For the record (Edit) - I haven't sold. (end edit). I honestly think the initial distribution was so focused on a handful of non-economic folk, that these massive sell offs 1) don't make sense, and 2) are primarily panics.  The initial distribution (unlike 'actual' stocks) weren't to people who know better, they were to the conspiracy nut who has his head way too far into his tinfoil hat, or the gamer who found a way to pay of his leet warcraft rig.  I think these are the people getting out.  Further investors will be those who invest in Bitcoin for the blockchain - which I think has a wonderful future ahead.

Because it's the only way to donate to wikileaks and occupy wall street. Paypal happily blocked the donations to them.

Great point - and I think that's where the blockchain shines.  Once this ability 'sets in' with people, it'll be interesting to see how the world reacts.

You (genral 'you') gotta admit, the whole thing was kinda hard to wrap your head around at first. And the more you learned, the more that set in on how unique the blockchain is.  That takes time.  The OWS thing is huge as far as displaying the utility of Bitcoin.  It just needs it's own vendors who trade and refill stock IN bitcoin.  Dang,once that happens... watch out.  But will Bitcoin get there.

Wow! If Forbes or Wired is saying it then it must be true. Wait a minute......what exactly does Forbes or Wired has to do with Bitcoin?

And last time I checked Bitcoin is more than twice as valuable as the dollar. Beside that, its decentralized, so how exactly can it die if there is no central authority that can crush or become insolvent? People get it in your heads, you cannot place the same terms on Bitcoin as you can with fiat money. This is something new, now please find other ways to describe it rather than stating its dead which is impossible unless all clients are uninstalled.

More news that equates Bitcoin's success with its price.
That's misleading.

For a currency that is peer to peer and that is grass root sponsored, I would have to say that it is doing EXTREMELY well.
The sooner this crash finishes and we can reach prices that are sustainable the better.

It goes to show (in my opinion), that the number one weakness of any currency of this nature is big money causing a pump and dump type scenario. We've been pumped and we've been dumped! And the media has helped out big time by giving us a lot of positive coverage on the upside and a lot of negative coverage on the down side. The best we can do is learn from this experience and profit on the next wave (upside and downside) if it happens (second generation of early adopters) which will help such a scenario not to be as severe.

The media will never get behind this in a long term positive way. They have an agenda.
Government, banks, and BIG media are all one big happy marriage and it wants nothing to do with our project of freedom.

Bitcoin adjusts itself nicely via difficulty. It creates its own stability. The BTC exchange rate has been falling heavily lately, but the current exchange rate is higher than it was 6 months ago. For goodness's sake, the Bitcoin network has been up and running since 2009 when the BTC to dollar exchange rate was at a few cents and it was business as usual.

Just bring high inflation to the US or Europe and Bitcoin will be back as a safe haven against Quantitative Easing. Just bring political instability, bank runs and "corralitos", and Bitcoin will be treated as it deserves to be treated, a scarce commodity with unbeatable international value transfer capabilities.

Hey, if Bank of America can go from $54 to $3 and still not be done, why can't Bitcoin?

Oh, sure, 1BTC is currently worth $2.5.  Of course, that's no comfort at all the vast majority of people who initially bought bitcoins after May.  In that case they have less value now than they spent.

Where can I find out about this?  Haven't seen anything really earth-shattering in the bitcoin development mailing list...

Those involved int he development mailing list are primarily working on the core protocol and client. There are myriad groups building various projects, some private and some public. The best ones are generally private, as the profit motive is involved.

The decentralized nature of Bitcoin means that it's a bit difficult for any person or group to get a full picture of everything going on. I pay quite a bit of attention, but only know a fraction of the people working on the big projects, and only still in English. I have no idea what's going on in other languages. Hundreds (thousands?) of entrepreneurs are building right now, they'll be getting rich with their creations, not with the speculation on current spot price of a Bitcoin.

I predict that a year from now there will be new articles about bitcoin's death. I mean, how long ago did god die? and you still hear about her all the time.

Sounds lovely, but ironically your whole post is telling us to speculate if anything.

There's hardly a reason to uninstall it, bitterness is one.

For those who do uninstall it, they can still re-install it. Its not like bulldozing a bank, software is cool that way.

Bitcoin can't go away. Its impossible even if 75% of the user base uninstalled their clients.

I cashed out of mine-and-hold long ago because I recognized that bitcoin was overvalued and underutilized. But that's not a permanent thing. to me, bitcoin had little chance to grow when it was 5-20$ per coin. Now that it has settled down, i think its use is going to pick up due to new users who see the tremendous potential. Online poker is one way that could happen. I've personally made a bitcoin transaction in order to fund a merge network poker site just a few days ago. I believe Bitcoin will be back in a big way with online transactions. The price might stay flat for a long time, but price is not the point of bitcoin. Profiting in bitcoin is a bonus and has nothing to do with its usefulness.

They understand right well...  Its propaganda.  They're trying to drive a nail into the coffin.  Only problem, coffin is empty!

Not for everyone...

mining difficulty going down is a wonderful thing

I've noticed the journalism around bitcoin often seems pretty incestuous that way.
It looks like in this slew of articles, it might have been Adrianne Jeffries' little snippet in Betabeat that set the tone;
the reddit user's quote she used has ended up in a few articles.

Why some random redditors quote is newsworthy I don't know.  

How will they get rich if everyone is ditching Bitcoin like it's diseased?

Same way Bank of America managemet got rich after BoA stock went from $54 to 3$ (WORSE drop than Bitcoin)

Because the entire BofA is working to increase profits....so its an unknown whether or not they will survive(I hope not but thats another story). Bitcoin....imagine 90%+ of an organization's employees not working, nor can they be forced to work. If the 10% want to work for the other 90%, then thats fine with the 90%. The 90% have proven(by taking a 99% decline) that they arent going to work. They certainly dont care if bitcoin goes to 1 penny or even zero.

The only thing bitcoiners can do is to fight the hoarders as much as they can. Dont use MtGox and bitcoinica and send a message to the hoarders.

LOL! :D

You have Solidcoin salivating and planning his revenge over and over with the doublespend attack when the network power drops to that level.

Fight the hoarders? Is the money I worked hard to earn, which I then put into the bitcoin economy in order to boost is value and get some bitcoin to hoard, not worth anything? Sure, I may not be working directly for bitcoin, but it's not as if I just pulled my hoarded bitcoin, or the money used to buy it with, right out of my ass.

And the U.S. housing and stock markets? Are those "done" too?

Self-entitled Bitcoin User: We won't stand for you having all those Bitcoins. Redistribute your wealth or we'll...

Hoarder: ...do what?

Self-entitled Bitcoin User: We won't use Bitcoins!

Hoarder: What about your weed, Jimmy? Aren't you on house probation?

Self-entitled Bitcoin User: ...

Hoarder: That's what I thought.

It's not newsworthy, it's useful...poke around a forum long enough and you'll find someone that's says something that serves your agenda...then you quote it.  And, of course, if can't find what you're looking for, you just register under a pseudonym and post something that serves your agenda...then you quote it.

one person wrote each of those articles and another person (probably) approved them.... yay for looking letting someone else make decisions about what you think

http://bitcoinstatus.rowit.co.uk/

LOL!  that clown?  you gotta be kidding me.  he has enough of his own troubles picking up the remnants of Solidcoin which didn't turn out to be so solid afterall.

Interesting link and graphs - it does show some declines, but it also says it is far from saturation (pessimism and optimism).

So because I only occasionally open my wallet, I'm responsible for the fall?

Excellent news.

For those of you that do not understand this yet: These (mainstream) media (by "mainstream" i mean forbes, i don't know about ars & wired) are our enemies as they support the current (banking) system. Anything they say cannot be taken seriously as it is hostile propaganda. They also were getting us a lot of unneeded attention from large speculators, which could even more destabilize BTC market (again) if they entered it too early.

The sooner large media lose their interest in us and stop affecting our economy, the better.

When they (finally) leave us alone, we will flourish. What we need is stable, progressive, slow development, not insane speed and insane bubbles (what we just witnessed).

I now keep my wallet closed most of the time because of Comcast's 250gig monthly limit. Bitcoin app alone can sometimes use up 7gigs in one day sharing the blockchain. Beginning of the month I try to keep it open more.

I empathize with you, since there is no decent way to lend or invest unused money for the average joe....if one holds 50 bitcoins and then donates 50% to programming efforts, it wont do squat when Mt gorilla Gox sits still.

I just keep saving away USD in case things improve....hoarders get no bailout from me. Its either spend,sell, or die....and the more you get rid of the ability to 'sell', the better of it is right now. I dont know about the merchants....an exchange that just allows merchants to sell into USD;D

You still have monthly bandwidth limits ?
OMG, and people say that my country is so called "developing world".

Currently i have 6Mbit at home & 20Mbit at work, no B/W caps at all.

But speeds up to 50 or even 100Mbit (uncapped of course) are avaiable in different regions of the city.

For the first few years after Wikipedia was launched, it was widely ridiculed. It was written off by many journalists as something that could never possibly work.

Many journalists have a very short attention span. Ten years from now they'll be using Bitcoin daily and will have forgotten that they ever dissed it. Just like with Wikipedia.

I'm pretty sure the bitcoin black markets wont die out soon.


That would drive governments up the wall for the better (less government) or worse (more government to counteract bitcoin).

Not "still," the bandwidth limits here in US is a new thing, just one or two years old. Our web and cell providers didn't used to have those...

... difficulty is the only thing that secures BTC. I don't mind if BTC falls into a 10 years slumber of low rates. I would mind though if some competing chain or banking cartel would destroy and control our block chain.

That what they want people to believe.
Remember some of these organisations (at least Forbes and Guardian) support the current system and Bitcoin is a threat to the system.

Furthermore look at this quote from geekosystem!:
http://www.geekosystem.com/price-bitcoin-falls-below-mining/
So using Bitcoins is only worthwhile if they are more worth than 1$ ???
:D :D :D

Here is a fun list of things that also died along with Bitcoin...

http://technologizer.com/2010/08/18/the-tragic-death-of-practically-everything/ (http://technologizer.com/2010/08/18/the-tragic-death-of-practically-everything/)

you have to remember that Bitcoin is MORE of a threat to the current system than even gold or silver.  why?  because the monetary task masters do not have any Bitcoin, at least that we know of.  at least the Fed has what they report they have of gold in Fort Knox which supposedly is the largest stash in the world.  with Bitcoin they don't even have a foot in the game which is why its SO threatening.

You know, I've gone way past Comcast's supposed "limit" every month for the past year, and never had a problem.  One month, even had more than 1TB of upload.  Most months it's 500-750GB.  I honestly wouldn't sweat it unless they give you a warning.

I dis-agree.  If "they" wanted a foot in the game, they'd have one for chump change.  The whole economy is now, what, $20 mill?  Taking a position would undoubtedly increase that somewhat even if they were careful, but we are still talking about a tiny tiny amount of money here.  Probably the cost of running just the US's military for a matter of seconds.

Reports coming in today that the US Dollar is dead due to >90% loss of value in the last 100+ years.

another aspect of what i just said is that if the central banks ever got the sense that Bitcoin was unstoppable, heaven knows what they'd do to actually get a foot in the game.

which is precisely why i feel they are doing everything they can to try and prevent that from happening such as forum trolling despite what some of you believe.

Pffft, if anything they're just lookin at tips on how to print so much so fast ;)

no, step one would be to try and kill Bitcoin before it got off the ground.  that way they wouldn't have to put any money into Bitcoin at all which could paradoxically help legitimize it by making the price go up.

to this day no one has explained why the mtgox hacker would drive the price to zero without lifting his withdrawal limits ahead of time.

Banks actually make a ton of money chasing weaker hands between gold and fiat currency...just when you think things are about to collapse, they slam on the brakes to the money printing machine and send gold plummeting.  Of course, they are well aware of this ahead of time and can front run.  They can certainly do this with bitcoin and with anything else.  As long as they control the supply of dollars and as long as the dollar has a significant value relative to everything else in the economy, they'll be able to keep doing it.

As long as that have the armies and weapons.

I do indeed hope you are right.  I've got a big bet on that happening eventually and working out in my favor.  But I consider it a long-shot.


My sense is that about half the people in these forums are to some extent, trolls (including myself), but I can detect very little evidence that there is any coordination here.

---

To follow-up on your next post, I doubt that 'they' are under the illusion that they could 'kill' Bitcoin dead or even drive the price to to a significantly low level (the designers were to clever for that.)  A good policy would actually be to keep it cranking along on life support if need be even, monitor and catalog the participants, and generally study it for weaknesses and exploits.  That may (or may not) be the phase we are in now.  I'm undecided.

I'm mildly skeptical, mildly hopeful.  Wish all those clever folks the best from me.

Heh.  It is indeed helpful to keep things on the private side when the motivation is to profit...especially when the design is to profit by ripping people off.

Developments out of the Bitcoin community generally are far and away the most closed source I've been mildly involved with and also the most scam infested.  But the 'free market' tends to correct for such things...and we are down to $2.36/BTC as I tap this out.