Bitcoin Forum

I really don't know why? I mean will we ever see $800 again... I doubt it for some reason

Edit: As of 28/09/2014 - Lowest so far 375$

speculation belongs in the speculation sub-forum.

Really. ?


Let me check it right away .

If its true , It will a very bad news for all Bitcoin Traders.

Don't think Bitcoin is crashing.  It actually looks like it's in a holding pattern of sorts:

https://i.imgur.com/9gfDqdy.png

"don't think bitcoin is crashing" - that made me LOL

It used to be $1200..

That is a slow slide. It happened after the June 2011 crash. I had like a year to buy in at $3--$5 (and failed to).

The reason is inflation. 25BTC are created every 10 minutes or so. At $450/coin, the works out to $1.62Million/day (25BTC/block*6blocks/hour*24hours/day*$450/BTC) that must be invested every day to keep the price up.

If that investment does not happen, the price falls. The block reward with halve again within about 2 years. I think by then Bitcoin will likely have a value of $5000/coin or more.

It's not so much an inflation, but an expense as result of PoW mining, everyday $1.5M is transferred from the Bitcoin eco-system, into the pockets of ASIC hardware vendors and electricity companies. Therefore, Bitcoin needs bigger and better news all the time, to bring in more than $1.5M new money per day and prop up the price, which the paypal news did for us, for a short time. Then once the news fades, we are back to slowly bleeding money until the next news hits, hopefully it'd be big enough to make the price go up.

I disagree: mining difficulty follows the price, not the other way around. If miners start to find it unprofitable, the hash-rate will drop. Less efficient miners drop first.

POW is important because it requires an attacker to expend scarce resources: something POS based currencies do not. The problem with POW is that we still do not know for certain it will work in the long-term. (It seems to inherently assume people are generally "good".) Bitcoin is still very much an experiment.

Wrong, it's extremely easy and cheap to attack PoW network, tons of PoW altcoin has been attacked to death.

Zero successful 51% attack on any PoS altcoin so far.

Because:
1. it's extremely expensive to acquire 51% stake
2. once you acquire 51% stake, why would you attack anymore? YOU are the majority stake holder, you want to attack yourself? and destroy the reputation and value of the coin you hold 51% stake in? why would you destroy your own wealth? it won't make any sense.

Look at where we were 1 year ago. Technically, yes bitcoin had a crash. But for the past 6 mo we have traded in a good range. We are at a low of that range now.

The 51% attack does not work on PoS coins because they are centralized. They use aggressive check-pointing. They also can not be "forged" securely (to an off-line wallet) since you need to keep the private key in memory (of a network-connected machine) to prove "stake".

Most famously, Vericoin (NxT) (https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/news/mintpal-gets-hacked-pos-vericoin-fork-result/2014/07/13) was rolled back after the Mintpal hack. (Another article talks about how Vericoin (https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/official-nxt-decision-blockchain-rollback/) was not rolled back after BETR was compromised: paying ransom instead).

Quite a bit of twisting of facts.

It's as "easy and cheap" to attack a PoW network as the cost of specialized hardware and electricity that goes into securing it. For alts, that's a real problem, agreed. For Bitcoin, this risk is becoming more and more hypothetical.

There are numerous reasons to prefer PoW over PoS, but I'm going to guess it'll be pointless to have this argument now. Preferring one or the other is a major point of divergent opinions, as far as I can tell.

it never was $1200, $1200 was just a peak, an all-time high. It was never stable at $1200

It was $120 or so a year ago for crying out loud.

If you only look at the highest value it has ever been compared to the current price, of course it's never going to be higher.

Like the €3400/coin ;)

Again, WRONG. All PoW has checkpointing, including Bitcoin, because it's so easy to attack a PoW network. Most pure PoS coin does not have checkpointing, because it's not needed. Peercoin is fading out checkpointing since the PoS portion has taken over the network now.

Vericoin roll back is due to hacking, not because of failure of PoS system, so what's the problem? if someone hacked 50% of all Bitcoin available, you can be pretty sure Bitcoin is going to hard fork and rollback the attacker's address too, otherwise the eco-system will fail. Or do you think if someone stole 50% of all USD available, the US government is just going to let it slide?

Yep lol the real ATH is 3400 euro, and considering its at <340 euro today, bitcoin is officially dead you guys!!

The cost to 51% attack Bitcoin is roughly 10% of Bitcoin marketcap, or around $500-$600 million, this is enough to buy more than enough hardware to vastly outnumber the current miners, agreed?

Now if Bitcoin is proof of stake, you need to buy 51% of all Bitcoin available. It's not going to cost you 10%, nor 100%, but more like 1000% or more of Bitcoin marketcap to purchase 51% of all Bitcoin available.

So how can you argue that compared to PoS, PoW is not cheap and easy to attack?

There's no real difference between Bitcoin and PoW altcoins, other than Bitcoin is far bigger. But still, if the attacker has large enough resources, he could attack Bitcoin. Just like current miners find it real cheap and easy to attack a smaller PoW altcoin. It's at least 100X more difficult to attack Bitcoin if Bitcoin was PoS, just like no one could attack even a tiny PoS altcoin, due to cost.

May I conclude that the OP is considered "weak hands" ?

BFLs lint is finally sparkling and when it blows there can be suckers dumping their coins in order to recoup their losses they suffered from BFL.

That would mean OP actually holds bitcoin and is willing to sell. Even if they are holding what is to say they aren't FUDing in an attempt at manipulation?

OP didn't even give legit bear claims, just sayin. If you are going to bear be an informed bear who can scare informed bulls. Prodhon is a good example. This thread is weak.

yes it actually fall for 10 times in just a month.

Alright, since you're not giving up, here's the rebuttal, in shorthand:

1) 51% attack against Bitcoin is infeasible, both by prohibitively high cost for any but the largest entities, lack of economic incentive (cost of attack > profit resulting from attack, because market value would drop as an effect of the attack), and the near-impossibility to secure and put online, in complete secrecy, the specialized hardware (regardless of the USD cost of the hardware). Don't care about PoW vs. PoS in alts.

2) PoS is inferior to PoW in three key regards: New coin distribution according to work is vastly preferred over distribution according to stake. Can't argue with human nature. Consensus forming in the case of competing chains is trivial for PoW, and bordering on impossible for PoS. The economic backing of PoW in the form of energy exerted provides a useful base valuation, because it provides the network with a well-grounded "bootstrap" value.

Questions?

if you invest $600M and have 51% then your chance to double spend is low. You could do better to mine bitcoins. :-)
How do you want to get 1 500 000 BTC (@ $400 each), to cover your $600M investment ? (I do not mention cost of eletricity, to keep your business running)

Why does their need to be a economic incentive to attack? if it is cheap and easy enough, someone will do it and just to say "I did it" or because they don't like Bitcoin, the cost is not very big for a determined and very well funded attacker, such as nation governments and large banks. On the other hand, if Bitcoin was PoS, the cost is pretty much astronomical, and success is not guaranteed even after spending  astronomical amount of resources, since not all coins are for sale for ideological reasons, they wouldn't even want to attempt it.

Where's your rebuttal? I don't see anything disputing the fact that PoS is much more expensive to attack against. You just keep saying Bitcoin is expensive to attack, that's your opinion, I don't believe $500m is expensive for a well funded and determined attacker, such as nation government or big banks.

Regarding your PoS is inferior 3 points:
1. PoW is a valid distribution method if you can't figure out a fair distribution with PoS, for example Peercoin started with PoW distribution and now majority of Peercoin blocks produced by PoS, how does this make PoS inferior if PoW is temporary(for distribution phase only) and PoS is the permanent solution?
2. Consensus, I don't see how it is "impossible" for PoS to form consensus, all the PoS altcoins can form consensus just fine, and does it better than any PoW altcoin that are easily 51% attacked, there goes your "trivial PoW consensus" argument.
3. PoW cost is NOT a value or backing, since you can't trade back and forth with it. It's an ongoing EXPENSE, it does not provide any "bootstrap" value, it sucks value out of the eco-system, and enriches the hardware vendors/electric companies. The reality has shown that PoS eco-system can have large amount of value without the need of a PoW mining network.

If you even invest 10 times more ($5B) then your attack is still almost worthless. You will have 90% of hash power and still you will not able to spend 1 of my satoshi. You will be able to double spend your money .. but who will trade with you ?

Exactly. Not only that, but his failed double spend would only be good for that one block. So yeah, pointless.

Yes, I will only accept bitcoins with 12 * 6 = 72 confirmation (12 hour ... "old" money)  so DOUBLE SPEND will NOT be possible with only 90% of hash power.

Yes, bitcoin is dead (again). 

This is probably the 100th time that bitcoin had been declared dead since it started in 2009.  Look at 2011 - 2013 for the long decline followed by the boom in March 2013. 

Are you kidding me? being able to prevent ANYONE from spending ANY Bitcoin, basically making the entire Bitcoin network useless, is worthless? They don't need to spend your money, they just want to make your Bitcoin worthless. Once it's publicly shown that Bitcoin PoW can be easily attacked, then Bitcoin is DONE, no there are no second chances, no the world will not wait for Bitcoin to implement PoS. A superior, secure, and mature PoS network will simply take over Bitcoin's position.

Stay calm.

Yes stay calm. Price was around here in April. No biggie.

a month? more like 15-20 seconds. it was a flash crash up on btc-e a week or two ago. some bot repeatedly bought up coins for thousands of euro for a few minutes then regained its composure.

How many zero-day vulnerabilities and network nodes do you think you can find with $500 million?

With PoW nodes, they have no reason to be storing a "hot wallet". With PoS nodes, every node has a "hot wallet" in order to prove "stake".

The implication is that a determined attacker may be able to control more than 50% of the "stake" for a lot less than $500Million. As a bonus, they would be using less than 1MW of power while attacking the network (assuming thousands of machines to get good connectivity/node isolation).


With >51% of the hash-power, an attacker can roll back transactions. With 90% of the hash-power, they can roll back 8 hours every hour (in secret until they release their fork).

The price was above $1000 for 1 week in 5 years... You can't really say that "it used to be" 1200...
It used to be 10$ and then 100$...

You guys do realize that until you come up with a better term than PoS no investor would take you seriously? :) "Yes I invested millions in some new PoS".

Seriously though, there is no pos currency with even 1% of bitcoin track record, and I don't see how one could emerge. No actual volume, no interest, means they are all very amateurish still, and at the first sign of actual interest or actual money going their way they will be hacked shitless, immediately.

http://gavintech.blogspot.ch/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html (http://gavintech.blogspot.ch/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html)

But that was spring not autumn.

I wish I was in btc a bit earlier, probably wouldnt have made such mistakes last year. just to learn how the highs never stay high for long. I am doing better now with selling on spikes.

The biggest problem for bitcoin is that it is old news. There aren't practically any people left who haven't heard about bitcoin and everyone has already made up their mind on what to think of it. It means that the market is exhausted and there aren't many new people left who could potentially enter the market. The old enthusiasts are playing with each other, while money is slowly dripping out of the market.
You have to offer the masses something new to get excited about, if you want to stimulate the crypto market. No one will get excited about old news..

this is the biggest problem of the human race, they always want something new, they can't live with the same thing for too long, they get bored too fast with everything, it's more our fault and not bitcoin one

b-but... but... but..  paypal... dollar collapsing..  bitcoin going to the moon... we'll all be rich. ... future currency..
 
you.. you must be a troll or a government shill

Bitcoin is up 3243% over two years. Have a little patience! If you want fast returns, your local casino is always open.

Hot wallet requirement is depend on the actual implementation, Peercoin needs hot wallets, Bitshares and NxT do not. It's incorrect to say PoS needs to run hot wallets.

Also I can't understand the logic of spending money = successfully hacking thousands of machines (especially if they are PoS hot wallets, which the owner probably took measures to properly secure their private computer, if these private computers are so easily hacked, then all web servers are doomed). I can think of several ways to make my hot wallet on my private computer unhackable from the outside. Usually people lose their hot wallet because they got phished, their dropbox backup got hacked, or installed some malware/keylogger. A LOT more Bitcoin hot wallets has been hacked, compared to Peercoin PoS miner hot wallet, I think so far ZERO peercoin PoS miner hotwallet has been hacked, the reality doesn't agree with your theory.

Ok, let's assume in the unlikely event a hacker does obtain 51% of all currency available, then the chain can still just rollback the attacker address. If someone hacked 51% of all Bitcoin, you can be pretty sure Bitcoin is rolling back the attacker's address too, otherwise the eco-system will fail immediately. So the only way to attack a PoS network, is to buy the stake legitimately. Then as soon as you do start to attack the PoS network, the community will find out and act upon the aggression, your address will be getting blocked immediately, and lose all your stake that you spent an astronomical amount of money to buy. You can be pretty sure that any potential attacker would know this, therefore they won't even attempt this attack. This is the reason ZERO PoS network has been 51% attacked so far. It's basically a nuke in the PoS network's arsenal, it can be used, so the attacker in fear of the nuke, won't even attempt the attack, which end up making the nuke never used. But it's good to know it's there.

But if an attacker obtain 51% mining power in a PoW network, there's nearly nothing you could do, other than go out and out-spend the attacker by buying more hardware and spending more on electricity. I'm sure the hardware vendor and electricity companies would love to see this happen. If no one step up and out-spend the attacker, the attacker with their vast amount of hardware can PERMANENTLY disable the Bitcoin PoW network, there's nothing you could do to stop them, other than... converting Bitcoin to PoS :).

Do you understand that solution is easy, and attacker will spend alot of money ?
If you refuse hi priority transactions then your block will become invalid and ignored by others. You have to accept bitcoin rules or hash your own empty alt-chain.

What a load of shit. 90% of the population doesn't know what bitcoin is.my girlfriend is a senior in college and is taking a class where her professor was talking about cryptocurrencies and bitcoin, besides her and the professor not one person had ever heard of bitcoin. I've talked about btc with hundreds of people in the world, not a single one of them knew any details about bitcoin other than it was some form of electronic money. Just because all the people on the bitcoin talk forum know about bitcoin, doesn't mean everyone already knows, the fact is 90% of people on the planet haven't a clue what it is.

I sort of disagree

IMO 40% of people if not more have heard of BTC.. might know it as "Illegal money.. or ponzie scheme etc"

.00001% of people actually decent idea of what BTC really is.

The point of having a 51% attack is because you can decide which chain is valid, and what transaction to include. These are straight from the bitcoin wiki:

An attacker that controls more than 50% of the network's computing power can, for the time that he is in control, exclude and modify the ordering of transactions. This allows him to:
    Reverse transactions that he sends while he's in control. This has the potential to double-spend transactions that previously had already been seen in the block chain.
    Prevent some or all transactions from gaining any confirmations
    Prevent some or all other miners from mining any valid blocks

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Weaknesses

Seriously? You think 3 billion people know what bitcoin is? I think even 1 billion is a huge stretch. I'd be very surprised, but I agree with the .00001 knowing what it actually is.

you guys understand that 0.00001% is exactly 70 people? :)

Using game theory, can you think of a reason anyone would bother trying this? Your logic skills will be tested.

Arghh, facts, I hate facts. Stop spreading factual information you'll hurt the troll science.

While i admit that was quite the hyperbole, I think your world population figures are off...  0.00001% of 7 million is 70. There are more than 7 billion people in the world.

Give it time. Geez. What, you think Bitcoin is some get-rich-quick scheme?

Did you read this ?
http://gavintech.blogspot.ch/2012/05/neutralizing-51-attack.html

It will bad, but defense exists
 - Attacker cannot keep up a transaction-denial-of-service attack for long time.  (his blocks will be ignored as spam)
 - I think, by requiring more confirmation we can prevent him from double spending.
 - it will expensive for him.

crashing ?   WHERE is crashing?
All i see is just a correction ....back to trend line
https://i.imgur.com/2rUlT8n.jpg

The bigger the bubble - the longer the correction time...
Worst scenario:   2-digit numbers (50-90 USD) by Easter time.
Then we might be in serious trouble. But certainly NOT NOW

The graph does look plausable $293 would be the absolute minimum which I hope we never see.
At $300 people should be buying like hell :)

Bitcoin's price depends on the perception of the people. If enough people consider bitcoin as a good storage of value, it might hype immensely and we will see $800 or even $1000 again in near future. But if they think instead "better live now and spend everything" BTC will go down, too.

When most people have given up on bitcoin, that is when it will start its upward trend.

Bitcoin CAN NOT be a good storage of value, because the PoW mining expense is way too high. By holding Bitcoin, you are basically charged a 10% tax each year. That's not a good storage of value. Bitcoin can become a good storage value if it converts to a Proof of Stake network.

It is my understanding that most PoS coins use PoW for initial coin distribution. Bitcoin is still not generally regarded a viable,  so the continued coin distribution is justified, IMO. The 10% tax will be reduced to a 5% tax within 3 years.

The "unfair" wealth of the "early adopters" is a common criticism I hear about Bitcoin. You appear to be arguing that the early adopters should control even more of the wealth.

 ::)

Except more than 60% of Bitcoins are already distributed, and still no plans in sight to fade out PoW.

The tax CAN NOT be reduced by halving, because the PoW network NEEDS to maintain 10% expense in order to not be laughably easy to 51% attack. Therefore it will reach a new equilibrium that rests at 10%, and continue to suck wealth out of the Bitcoin eco-system at that rate.

I don't see how does PoS is related to early adopter controlling more wealth (also, as you said PoW doesn't prevent it neither, Satoshi controls over 1M Bitcoin).  PoS can be distributed fairly, by using a mixture of PoW, development donation and proof of burn.

PoS benefits every single participant of the eco-system, wealth is re-invested in the eco-system instead of transferred out to hardware vendor/electricity company.

You lost me here. The halving will happen regardless of conditions. Over time, fees are supposed to replace the block subsidy.

Hash-power follows price. If Bitcoin is laughably easy to attack now: that is due to poor adoption. That implies that Bitcoin is not important enough to attack by well-funded actors. The hope is that by the time Bitcoin becomes a clear threat to well-funded actors, it will not be so cheap to attack.

Of course, in that case, a well-funded adversary can use the "hack every node" strategy I outlined for PoS coins. In a PoW system, it would be easier to recover from such a scenario: since the block-chain would still be largely trusted due to the proof-of-work it contains.

As I said in this post (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=570623.msg6236904#msg6236904):

Converting Bitcoin to PoS would invalidate the experimental results. I really am curious if Bitcoin will turn out to be the first secure networked application in the history of man-kind. The main thing that makes me doubtful is that today's computer systems are inherently insecure. Formal correctness proofs are generally limited to military applications where you want to be able to deploy special weapon modes in war-time without prior testing. Even safety-critical systems like automotives still use Ad-hoc debugging. This allows bugs to creep in.

with bitcoin you never know it can still rise and rise he already proved it a few times ;)

$400 will look real cheap in some time.

+1
It will look very very very cheap in some time.

"someone" did execute a better than 51% attack against the US dollar in 1937. Very effectively, and with complete success til the present.

Not a very good analogy, though your point is taken.

Short version, with the caveat that it has been two decades since I formally studied Games and Theory.

Bitcoin presents a clear and present danger to conventional banking and national fiat currencies. At the current level of adoption, this thread is more theoretical than real. However, should certain scenarios occur, such as wider adoption of bitcoin or the collapse of a major currency, then certain agencies (The US treasury being one of them) would have a vested interest in destroying or discrediting the digital currency.

I am presenting this with an understanding of the political process that may not be obvious to those who have never been a part of it, so I must digress for a moment to illustrate that while it is important to the political process to centralize and control a fiat currency, that currency IS NOT the one in which the political masters trade. They trade in power, and in most cases that is measured by the number of humans they control as pawns. In the West, where the main political paradigm is a pseudo-democracy, that is measured in votes. In more direct dictatorships, it is measured in actual controlled humans. In either case, that is the currency they most covet and most protect.

In the above scenario, it is likely that the ascendence of an decentralized and unregulated currency would threaten both their fiat and their franchise. In that case, it would make political sense for them to attempt such a thing, and while the resources were available. A big government could do it, in secret, and fairly quckly. They do not respect patents, and frankly there's nothing magical about ASIC chips. While uneconomic in the narrow sense, it would protect their monopoly, which they DO perceive as more important than anything else.

My conclusion, based on 45 years of living in the United States and watching just how rapacious it's government is, is that it will happen at some point. I am of the opinion that the bitcoin protocol and community are resilient enough to withstand it, but saying that it cannot happen or even that it's unlikely seems too complacent. But adoption will have to reach larger scales by quite a lot before they feel that threatened. Right now it's a diversion and cause for some concern to them. That can change. We want that to change. But we should NEVER be complacent when dealing with something that can potentially break a 500 plus year stranglehold on monetary exchange.

Used to be? Was at that price for like 3 days.

Anyway this bear phase is quite strong but given anyone is so pessimist I think it may be almost over. Not saying it won't drop further though.

I hope so. Another 50 bucks down and I can afford to buy a whole bitcoin and hold it :D

It's more fun looking at the United States as an outsider :)
I strongly believe that the United States is already working on a plan B and C to kill bitcoin.
Plan A is watch it kill itself and never become a currency.

Since P2P filesharing is hard to stop I don't think they can ever stop Bitcoin. Trying to stop it now would only make it more interesting.

Why kill bitcoin? We all know how the fiat situation of the USA is. Bitcoin would be like having an accounting firm checking your bookkeeping. There is no escape, your can't fake your books.
Printing money will no longer be possible and countries (incl. USA) would need to earn their money just like their citizens. Waging war would be a costly business so I also believe that the world might even become a better place.

I believe you. Watching it from the inside has been an exercise in frustration. It has become something monstrous and alien in just my lifetime. It doesn't even superficially resemble the country I became an adult in, and that's not a significant amount of time. To me, it looks much like Germany just before the collapse of the Weimar republic.

I also agree with your conclusions.

What makes you think it wasn't the US government that launched bitcoin?  We need a replacement/backup currency in place for when the US national debt reaches a level that the US dollar begins to collapse.  http://www.usdebtclock.org/ (http://www.usdebtclock.org/)

Rather than passing the global financial leadership position on to the next emerging economic leader you simply change the rules...

It has occured to me.

The reason I don't think so, though it would be a beautiful "black" op. is that when it comes to monetary policy, the USG has shown a truly remarkable lack of imagination since their great god J.M. Keynes found his "long run". Now I could see one of the "shadow" organizations within the USG doing it on their own, but it just seems a bit too elegant for their type.

But again, you can't discount the possibility. Especially since it has a counter effect of destabilizing OTHER fiat currencies to a greater degree (due to scale) than the dollar or Euro. It could actually strengthen the big boys by strangling the small ones.

I don't think it changed that much if at all. Just as you grew older you got less enamored with fairy tales that every government spreads to control their humans. Every government's monstrosity is in direct correlation with the power they hold, they, just like corporations, never actually care about individuals or environment or peace; the only thing on their agenda is monetary profit and control over resources, everything else are fairy tales of different depth, from the "I am god so do as I say" in North Korea to "We live in a free society and elect our president" in USA :)

If you're talking about it's nature, it hasn't changed significantly since 1917. (When the Senate was abolished in all but name). However, in it's actual presence in our lives and regulation of fucking EVERYTHING, it has accelerated significantly since I was young. When I was a young man, I could carry a rifle practically anywhere if I wasn't waiving it around. I could walk into a courthouse without being searched. I could walk at night without being accosted. I was never even ASKED to identify myself at random. And the police at least pretended to respect the laws they were hired to uphold.

Now, in most parts of the country (I've been to most of them), it's an open police state. They can, and do, kill with impunity. I could go on and on, but I think I make the point.

I never was all that enamored of the fairy tales, but I think the biggest wake up for me was how many of my friends went on vacation to other countries and never came back. When you hear those fairly tales for your whole life, but are able to hack into the networks and see the other side, it gets pretty hard to deny. When you can watch your nation tumbling headlong into the abyss at a pace that would have frightened Nero, then you really have to reassess. The vaunted dollar is worth about -3000% from the time I first entered the workforce. While it's rate of decline is not as bad as it was a couple of years ago, it's still ugly. Wages have not even come close to keeping up with inflation, and yet more dollars are made. I could again cite hundreds of examples, but you get the point.

Where am I claiming that the US government launched bitcoin? I'm merely stating that they aren't stopping it.

If the US debt reaches a level that the US dollar collapses they will invent a new currency like the US Yen and screw over all debtors.

You do realize that the wealth in US and other countries is superficially created?

If bitcoin would be the only currency wealth would have to be earned and not printed.
Governments would need to be efficient and have less tools to manipulate the economy.
If this is a good or bad thing you can decide.

Edit: I am pro bitcoin because I believe that governments should be efficient, and it might stop wars and bring peace :)

Good point.

Bitcoin could hit other economies harder and make more people invest in USD/Euro/BTC.
Maybe they we're even expecting China to get hit hard :)

I'm going to say something that may sound crazy to most people, but in this decades we could see governments become obsolete, if they aren't already, having a wide perspective of things. Corporations are and will be always more the center of our world, leading progress and innovation and it seems to me that already now it's just a matter of time until they have more power than governments. Just think how much progress in artificial intelligence will increase in the next decade, just take a look at some of the projects from IBM on smart cities or Watson, or Google with its translator and facial recognition alghoritms. These are just small pieces of what will become a big picture some day. Why should we need a government then?
And Bitcoin is one of those pieces. This could be the longest bear phase we seen so far, but I ultimately believe cryptos are part of the future. Bitcoin couldn't have come at a better time.

Being an anarchist, it don't seem all that crazy to me. But I don't really want to see a corporate oligarchy either, but rather decentralized enclaves of people voluntarily cooperating. Corporations in their current form are able to commit great abuses because they are legally considered a person via a state charter. Juridical persons should not exist. Without the State, Corporations lose that advantage, and must compete fairly, even given their scale. They cannot, for instance, maintain protected monopolies (which contrary to popular propaganda is one of the biggest reasons for a corporation to exist) nor prevent others from bringing innovative competing products to market. Ending the governments will level the playing field far more than any revolution or "reform" ever could.

And I totally agree with your last sentence :D

Yes, it came as a response to the inequalities of the current system. Without the continued abuse by govts etc, it may not have.

LMFAO! Yes, That pattern being a cliff drop!

I acknowledge that Bitcoin price is down for 2014, but compared to September of 2013, we're still up.

Let's see how we finish out the year first, before making unsupported statements.

Why does year end have to signify anything??? Do you have any idea what they do in illiquid markets like this?! They = huge wales... They literally roller coaster the thing all year & since no new money is really in this market, when they pull out it looks "flat" & the end of the year of course looks the same as the start(or at a loss) because there is literally no new money going into BTC. Stop getting fooled by venture capitalist who throw money into business that push out fiat currency to them! They're not buying or holding bitcoin!!! They're funding companies because they have insane profit margins right now and are largely unregulated. That's the only reason.

Maybe the market cap produced by the $800-900 price was just unsustainable and the bubble has just finally popped to a more reasonable level?

:D

We need some more good news in the press to boost buying confidence, any large merchants are also selling Bitcoin for Fiat as soon as they receive it, they don’t hold on to it long enough etc all contributing to the decline in value. Hopefully it will shoot up again as people predict but it will probably get worse before it gets better.

Yea....

A lot worse before it gets better means a new level regarding price! So when it gets back to $10 you can still hold and hope for that 1,000+

Perhaps you may be right!