Bitcoin Forum

Just wondering how many people are ready to admit that it isn't gonna have main stream adoption?

I want to talk about why and what can be changed to fix bitcoin, but first we have to admit there is a problem.   

Why concede defeat when we've only just begun? The mainstream population needs more incentive to use bitcoin. Give it time. If you haven't noticed, the infrastructure is being built.

"Build it and they will come".

It's the decentralized thing we are talking about. Although there are groups advocating pos, i don't think we can implement it just like that. Plus not many would agree to pos. So how do we fix the decentralized issue and still maintain the hash rate

I personally think bitcoin has much more systemic issues than the way it is mined. I think you solve the decentralization issue by taking away the financial incentive to controlling the network and supply of coins. 

you know, it's kind of funny because most people talk about how bitcoin is going to save everyone from tyranny, but they're always talking about the price. it seems like people are looking for it to explode within a relatively short amount of time, and when that doesn't happen, it's a "failure." nevermind that we are getting tons and tons of venture capitalist money, or that we have some really big companies accepting bitcoin.

I think it is too early to expect wide adoption. Major change takes a generation or two.

Even if Bitcoin suddenly got wide adoption tomorrow: it would only really replace wire transfers. The reason is that every transaction is broadcast world-wide. With the 1MB block-limit, it has been estimated that the network can handle about 7 transactions per second. If widely adopted as-is, Bitcoin transactions would simply be too expensive for most every-day transactions.

Bitcoin is still an experiment. I am curious if the "proof of work" thing will survive another 5 years without a crippling attack.

I am not talking about its price I am talking about its lack of utility and a market price. I am also pointing out that BTC had its day in the sun and people dont want it, but why dont they want it? because it doesn't fix any problems in their lives. Bitcoin has nothing to offer.

This is a 5-10 year play. It's about the technology not price. Stop looking at price as indicator of progress. We all need to buckle down for the long haul and extend long term support

Bitcoin didn't have any day in the sun. Nothing more than a negative spark from clueless journalists and arrogant economists. People don't want it because there is no infrastructures yet. Bitcoin is still too young and has a lot to prove yet to be trusted by normal Joe. What are you expecting exactly?

The high cost and slow confirmation for small transactions is a big problem. Bitcoin ought to be the petty cash of the Internet, used for music tracks, in-game items, apps, and similar transactions in the $0.25 to $2.50 range. That hasn't happened.  This is a lack, because the Internet could use a petty cash system for small, casual purchases. There have been a number of centralized systems that tried: Beenz, CyberCoin, Facebook Credits, Microsoft Points, etc. All failed. Non-portable money is a pain.

There may be a successor to Bitcoin that scales better for small transactions. No sign of one yet, though.

(Yes, I've heard the "It's OK to accept unconfirmed transactions" line. Nah. If you do that, based on the track record of scams in the Bitcoin world, somebody will screw you.)

Wait until shit hits the fan in Syria, "home grown terrorists" conduct some attacks on Western soil, and govts impose even tighter population controls.  Then I bet you'll be singing a different tune about bitcoin.

PoS coins that have a large market cap will be centralized, it is just that no one will know until way after the fact of an attack. The fact that it costs nothing to mine PoS coins means that it cost nothing to attack the network.

People say that bitcoin mining is centralized because of pools however this argument is invalid because miners can easily remove their machines from a pool that is acting in an untrustworthy way

Bitcoin is not failure, but only not success

If it's about the technology, then it's already failed. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=766406.msg8724572#msg8724572) But price wise it can still recover and even go to its ATH @$1.1k-$1.2k by the end of 2015.

And that's why there are new merchants daily that are accepting btc?

I agree. Most transactions will be off chain to speed up the process. (super market purchase etc)

Agreed 100% - these people need to be weeded out, to much hype in investment and how it's going to be 10k each one day.

The concept is good and I personally use Bitcoin everywhere I can for online purchases but I know others who simply bought it waiting to cash in at a good price and to them I say: Sell now and never come back.

Yeah there is a problem... Almost noone uses bitcoin and bitcoin is valued at $400... Can you fix this sublime5447?

Bitcoin, like everything, have an up and down of its price. Guys, it needs times for the people to accept BTC in their lives.
When i say times i say generation, because try to explain BTC to a person 70-80 years old..

What on earth are you talking about ?

Adoption is accelerating faster than anyone could have imagined. It took Bitpay about 2-3 years to get 10,000 merchants and now within a few months they've got more than 30,000. Add to that several high profile names such as Overstock, Dell, Target, Cheapair, Newegg, Dish (most of whom just came on in the last 120 days) + Paypal imminent. By any definition, that rate of adoption qualifies as exponential.

Maybe you weren't around when people were laughing at the idea of booking an airline ticket on the web. It's not clear when web shopping reached "critical mass" but it if you were a "techy with vision" it felt exactly the same - like it was never going to happen. In fact it took about 10-15 years for eCommerce really to take hold from the point of inception of the web. Bitcoin is 6 years old.

Add to all that, the fact that there are press releases like this one coming out every other day now...

http://cointelegraph.com/news/112607/coinify-seals-multi-million-external-funding-backed-by-danish-govt

... and my only response to the OP can be "Get Real".

P.S. Here's another one where you have to put "2+2" together:

1st post: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/mar/28/bitcoin-payment-service-stripe

2nd post: http://www.thebitcoinchannel.com/archives/38479

...draw your own conclusions.

P.P.S. The reason the valuation hasn't reflected this is because there basically isn't any way for the regular Joe to buy Bitcoin yet. You can't just walk into a bank and say "I want to invest in Bitcoin". It's only a hardcore few who have the technological "bottle" to piss about with wallets, blockchain addresses and exchanges. This will all start to change with the arrival of the first publicly traded ETFs where anybody with a brokerage account can buy into it. From there lower tiers of exchange will start to emerge, each one bringing accessibility closer to the general public. It's exactly the same as the nineties and browsers. Remember that as late as 1993 Bill Gates was saying that he thought the internet was a "passing fad".

I don't think bitcoin can ever be seen as a failure even if it 'dies' out completely.

The concept itself is revolutionary and will lead to big changes in future. So even if bitcoin as it stands now fails, we are bound to see something new develop from it.

Personally I'm 100% behind it and believe that we are still in the starting blocks and that it will just gain more and more traction as we move ahead.

Alarm! Bitcoin is borken. Let's dump it.

Just wonder, how it survived until now?

Although I agree that it is not ideal, it is too big now to disappear suddenly.
However, it might be that all of us are just cells in The Matrix.

If you can call a cryptocurrency priced at hundreds of dollars a coin failure, I can't imagine what's NOT a failure in OP's mind

BTC is a success story so far.

The OP's username looks familiar. So i checked and now i remember why i ignored him:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=142379.0

The fcker came to this forum posting like an idiot (hijacking threads to sell btc for paypal, etc...). Hes never interested in bitcoin, he just wants to "broker" trading to make some money.

I'm surprised this dumb fck didnt leave already. Now he pretends like he cares to "fix the broken/failed bitcoin".

I think I will be ready to answer this question in 10 years when Bitcoin will be currency of the time.

So far, bitcoin has in fact successful enough, there are so many excellent enterprises to hug her.For example: Dell, etc.

I'm ready to admit anything if convincing arguments are presented that support the position in question.

So far, you did not bring up a single argument that supports your view. Regardless you pretend that you do not even need to bring up arguments, because it's not worth your time. Instead people should simply admit that your claim is right, so you can present your great theories that are based on your unproven claim.

I'd call this arrogance. What do you think?

ya.ya.yo!

actually you would have to buy over 51% of the coins which would cost an absolute fortune and gets more expensive the higher the marketcap. Then once you manage to get that many you have to be
Willing to degrade your 51% to a value of zero in turn losing you a shit lot of money... There's a reason there has never been a 51% attack on any pos coin but yet there have been loads done to pow coins.

To say that in 5 years, something has grown 20,000% or so, i think so, is incredible, bitcoin is not ending

The attacker can cut the loss if he can do short selling.

stop.. Just stop.. How the he'll could you expect anyone to short sell 51% of any currency? Selling 5% of any coin, maybe even bitcoin would crush the markets to zero.. Then you got everyone else selling too.. Don't be stupid if you tried that with nxt it would probably cost you more than the entire marketcap of nxt in loses. You would have to drive the price up by probably an order of magnitude and then dump it to zero.. No one in their right mind would do that or even have the money to do it. By the time pos is a threat to fiat it would probably be impossible for even the US government. Then you have to ask, would 51% even be up for sale? How do you know you could even acquire over 50% of staking coins?

Try explaining the internet, facebook, twitter, netflix, etc, to a person 70-80 years old..

No I cant but reality can and is the process of doing that now. It was 1200 10 months ago, it takes a while for reality to set in.

I know I am telling the congregation that Jesus was just a man.. when I say bitcoin is a failure in this forum, but was hoping there would be a few people who could see the light.

There is nothing free about the bitcoin market and if people wanted a change from the status quo bitcoin cant offer that. Bitcoin is the status quo and its model has been the status quo for thousands of years.. There is no difference between bitcoin and the USD.  They dont change because it has nothing to offer, just another controlled money regime. It doesnt even have a market price! It violates the regression theorem! it's not currency!   

Two Kinds of Money

1.The Scarcity Model: A single uniform quantity in limited supply made valuable by its own scarcity.
In other words, the value of this type of money depends on the supply of, and demand for, the money commodity itself. Conventional definitions of money define money only in terms of this model, a "medium of exchange". Examples are: cowries, gold and silver, fiat cash and coins, bank credit, and now, in the model's purest and most spectacularly speculative form, Bitcoin.

2. The Abundance Model. A promise of something specific from someone specific made valuable by its redemption in real production. The value of this type of money is defined by the promised redemption in goods and/or services. As such, this type of money is promises of an indefinite number of non-uniform commodities in indefinite supply and, unlike the limited quantity "coin" concept of money, the total quantity of these credits in circulation does not affect their value, because the value of a credit is defined by what its issuer will redeem it for in real goods and/or services. Examples are: business-to-business barter credits, customer rewards, travel points, discount coupons, mutual credit systems.

I cannot see any failure

https://i.imgur.com/eFd27ae.png

First, I agree with you that Jesus was just a man. Just a regular religious jew in fact who adhere to judaism that led a movement to overthrow the Roman empire that somehow turned into what we know now as christianity but has never in his entire lifetime preached christianity or even know what the heck is christianity but judaism which is his original religion and nothing more. But I digress. Something that is a failure means no one wants anything to do with and would likely be forgotten and buried and moved on to other things. Apple Lisa was a failure. Microsoft Zune was a failure. Nokia N-gage was a failure. THQ uDraw was a failure. Bitcoin? Infrastructure is expanding, merchants are adopting, VCs are investing, people are buying, how can that be possibly be categorized as a failure?

Bitcoin isn't a failure... at least not yet. It's still growing and merchants are coming on board weekly sp we don't have to admit there's a problem because there isn't one. Mainstream adoption will not come over night but be a gradual process.

"Infrastructure is expanding, merchants are adopting, VCs are investing, people are buying, how can that be possibly be categorized as a failure?"

 Merchants adopt to get the press coverage but their sales are pathetic, VC are not investing at least not for the last 10 months those guys make money not through it down a hole, Fools might be buying but I doubt it no one wants an asset that loses 60 percent of its value in a few months

   https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd?timespan=all&showDataPoints=false&daysAverageString=1&show_header=true&scale=0&address=

There are other ways to acquire a lot of coins. Imagine what would happen if one or two large exchanges decided to attack a pos coin?
The chance of successful attack can be small, but that doesn't mean we can ignore it.

BTW you've no idea how the coins are distributed among people, have a look at this :
http://bitinfocharts.com/en/top-100-richest-ppcoin-addresses.html

The top 26 addresses have 42% of all ppc, and we don't know whether they belong to 26 people.  What if someday they decided that ppc is not good enough for them? They can easily destroy ppc.

For pos coins, coins == power, the rich guys make the rules and you obey. You want to participate in the game? PAY THEM to get more coins.
In the case of POW coins, you never need to pay the rich guys to participate in the game.

So to be honest, I tend to take POS 'coins' as shares, POW coins are real coins.

If you read the proposal it is fungible.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyWfUqEyIZc

http://www.moneyasdebt.net/

Money Power In You
E.C Riegel, Private Enterprise Money, 1944

"There is a treasure buried in your consciousness. If you will dig it up from the debris of superstition and fear that covers it you will gain a freedom and self-mastery that will lift your life to a higher plane. This is the money power in you.

The power to create money with which to purchase wealth, health and happiness actually lies dormant within you. You have thought of the money power as something remote from you and beyond your grasp. You have dreamed of the good you could and would do if you had money power. You have blamed others for not accomplishing this good. You have blamed them for evil economic and political conditions; for unemployment, for poverty, for crime, for war.

It is quite logical to blame these maladies upon the malfunction of the money power, but you have not suspected that the money power resides in you and because of your failure to exert it the world is afflicted with miseries. You have the power; you have the responsibility. The power and responsibility to banish poverty, unemployment, insecurity, misery and war rests entirely with you.

You, in cooperation with other intelligent persons, can drive economic and political evils further and further from the area of your life and ultimately they may be driven from the face of the earth. You can do this by the money power in you, expressed first in your own prosperity and happiness, and radiating to others. You can do it and you must do it. There is no power outside of you that can bring these blessings to you.

Petitioning the Government is like writing to Santa Claus. You need no laws — there is a law, a natural law that governs your money power. You need no government aid. You need only cooperation with and from persons who, like you, have resolved to exert the money power inherent in us all. This power in each of us needs only the recognition and respect of our fellows to spring forth and exert its blessings.

We need not petition Congress and we need not waste time to denounce bankers, for they can neither help nor hinder our natural right to extend credit to each other, and this is the perfect basis for a money system."

Considering the price was just $124 exactly one year ago  it has gained almost 325% I don't know how you can call that losing. You must be a troll

"You can kill a man,(Satoshi -Bitcoin) but you can't kill an idea."

If a coin has both PoS and PoW, is it more difficult to attack?

bitcoin not working.
it will work when people need it ...

i'm not the people.
i read the law and read information from my country.

so ?
when people migrate to bitcoin ... well, i'm transform in an early adopter.

and trust me, P2P system is not complicated.
people, after 5 years known the term utorrent or emule ... napster, kazaa, morpheus, vuze, bitcomet, etcs ... like click on Mozilla Firefox.

people evolve by hard and fast process : the hole of lack of help.
when banks crashs ... they will evolve.

 8)

Well bitcoin is not failing, the use of bitcoin is currently problematic.

1. Merchants accept bitcoin as payment option, but include no incentive for consumers to adopt it. Whatever BTC they get are converted to fiat.
2. Bitcoin hoarders go on spending spree's to support new merchants adopting the currency and flood the exchanges, pushing the price down.
3. In most countries it's too difficult to buy bitcoins. {ATM's only availlable in big cities}
4. Most of the mayor bitcoin buying, that can push the price up, are not done on exchanges. {The price of bitcoin are determined on exchanges}

So making small changes, can make a huge difference.

1. Merchants accepting BTC only have to start introducing discounts on products that are in high demand. {People would start to use bitcoin for lower prices}
2. Hoarders should do what they do best... "Hoard" and resist buying things on impulse.
3. Consumers should be able to buy BTC anywhere. {Build technology into POS systems, so that people can buy BTC at shop counters at the till, like they buy airtime}
4. People should not avoid exchanges. {Yes the requirement to validate your identity at the exchange is ridiculous, but at some point, you should push some coins there}

This will have a mayor influence.
 

I'm ready to admit it.

I agree with this statement.

I've not considered that before...but my first reaction is no;)

everything is perfect protocol and code wise. 

we just need the central authority and the global ID system, then it's totally complete.

we can call the Central authority something, something "consensus" 

ID system will be a "safety verification system"  to protect kids from pedophiles etc,

who doesn't want to do that?

basically if you don't support the verification system you support pedophiles.



* only sick people would want to support and protect pedophiles.

you realize Quark solved all of this 12 months ago don't you?

test my tiny knowledge on this, i don't have to write as its conveniently been written a 100 times.

I found this chart to be the best description of bitcoin's use so far, everyone would understand without difficulty

http://imgsrc.baidu.com/forum/pic/item/2d55fbc451da81cb3a0e98c75166d0160824318e.jpg

100% wrong.  There is nothing about a deflationary currency that guarantees anything about the price.

Only sick people use technology to judge and kill.
Named now : the drones.
Other word is genocid.

The dollar being shit isnt a defense of bitcoin being shit. Do the same chart over the last 10 months, fuck do it over the last 2 months, The dollar is up and bitcoin is way down.

Just to clear this up, deflationary currency is worth more vs goods over time, that's the definition. 2014 has been an inflationary year for bitcoin. Increasing money supply does not in and of itself guarantee inflation, and neither does having a fixed supply guarantee deflation.

a failure?
you kidding?
there is a technology in betatest which is expanding really fast
no failure I think

Smarter than most around here. Realizes that inflation/deflation is a function of both supply and DEMAND!

OP is an idiot. Just look at the price and volume a year ago compared to today.

Volume is down compared to a year ago price will be down shortly.

 https://blockchain.info/charts/estimated-transaction-volume-usd   

Where were all the naysayers when bitcoin went from 35 dollars to 2 dollars in 4 months? then sat at 4 dollars for like 6 months... I think too many people are too anxious and want mass adoption yesterday. this will take time, I personally think its ahead of schedule..

I know exactly what the problem is: people want to get rich quick and get annoyed and antsy when they've suddenly not become a millionaire overnight, let alone in a year.

I love how threads like this appear around any time the price has dropped considerably. Likewise you see it on reddit and other tech sites too. When the price drops mining is suddenly worthless, small software bugs become network-threatening or simply "the death of bitcoin", and everyone who's ever known anything about bitcoin is someone who you should feel sorry for.

But wait until the next price boom and wow, suddenly bitcoin is the #1 cool thing to have: the most trendy geek possession imaginable ("make MONEY with your GTX99999 COD-Renderer after your parents have sent you to bed"). Bitcoin becomes once again the magical internet money system that news anchors struggle to understand or explain. After all, how are those basement dwellers printing money on their computers and buying their parents house with their profits? It's again what the non-tech-savvy read about whilst starry eyed about how this new thing will let them retire at 35, or buy that Italian power yacht before they develop arthritis. And of course, if you don't have at least whole-integers of bitcoin in your possession during a boom phase, well, why haven't you bought more yet?

When I started mining bitcoin they were worth <$0.30 USD each. I once sold over 400 of them to help pay part of my power bill. Back then bitcoin was a novelty to throw unused computer resources at, not many people would have expected them to reach a high value in the near future. Now only a few years later and they're worth $400. They were worth (gox-manipulation-vs-real-value-of-the-coins arguments aside) >$1000 for a while. Most people now have heard of bitcoin, thanks in part to conventional media. Every now and then I come across someone who I find out is a miner or who actually has some bitcoins or altcoins. I assume there are more who do not wish to share this information with me, and good on them, it's a smart move. Bitcoin has some challenges, especially with adoption by non-tech savvy (My cat pulled the cable from the Wi-fry thing again, Now Mozilla says something about a page? Should I buy a new laptop?), and those who simply do not care about their money. So I consider bitcoin to not be a failure.

I am a naysayer at any price, Bitcoin is a failure no matter the manipulated value.

Fine, if you, being a hero member of this forum, now believe that Bitcoin is failure then what a hell you are doing here? Leave us alone, let us stay in our delusion.

There is something in this. Something s wrong since last year. It is very simple, BTC price goes down since BTC supply is greater then BTC demand. We ve been listening about companies starting to accept BTC, about IPOs, about this and that and the price keeps going down. This means demand is still not sufficient.

Even more, this is a classic vicious circle effect, the more the price goes down, this weakens demand even more. Who wants to buy coin which loses its value constantly.

I think the biggest problem with BTC is its unregulated nature. It alows tons and tons and tons of lowlifes and scammers to take advantage of this lack of regulation and scam people which do not intent to come back once they get scammed. This weakens demand and it might end BTC.

Well if it was a failure some digits on a computer wouldn't be worth around 400$ as of writing this  ;)

Closer to $300 till this time tomorrow, if this current trend continues.

The reason so many people want overnight success like this is because many people did become rich almost overnight. Last November the price of bitcoin went up 10x in the span of less then a month. People that invested only a few thousand dollars in bitcoin in late 2012 would have become a millionaire. People that invested much less only months earlier would have now make millions. People are hoping to have the same success.  

Do not forget that in about 1 month, BTC price will be negative compared to the same period of the last year. What about people who bought BTC in November, December last year? We need that push and we need it fast. Sick and tired with speculators and bots tradin $1 of BTC or less at a time to manipulate the price.

Market manipulation will continue unless we get an officially registered and look after market (most likely centralised)

I am here because I want to remove the money power from the state and return it to the people. That has always been my motivation, if you stay delusional we cant move forward on a concept that will work. 

Not quite, but very close.

There's a difference between 'deflation' and a 'deflationary currency,' and unfortunately even Wikipedia doesn't do much to clarify the difference.

The definition of 'deflation' is a relative decrease in the price of goods and services in the marketplace.  On the other hand, a 'deflationary currency' is a direct reference to certain properties of the currency in question, and not about price (otherwise, the term 'deflationary currency' would lose all of its practical meaning).  If the term 'deflationary currency' only references the relative price of a given currency to goods and services available in the marketplace, then we would call BTC deflationary any time a buy order is executed, and inflationary any time a sell order is executed.  We would therefore need to apply the same logic to fiat currencies (e.g. by labeling the US dollar as deflationary since its relative value has increased in recent months).

I also do not want to invest unwisely or let fund managers to manage my money as if I do not do that, my money will devalue quickly due to inflation.

It's impossible to say bitcoin is a failure when it has always been number 1 and no signs of stopping

is the total failure to rally and continual selling pressure not a sign? or the continual centralization of miner power? whether people like it or not, superior technology is going to supplant bitcoin at some stage. sooner is more likely than later.

I think it is important to have threads like this as it allows users a way to continually challenge their perceptions about bitcoin and how it is working for them, or not working for them, as a unit of currency or as a medium of investment. As you can see from the three or four statements I have quoted above, there's different viewpoints driving the participants responses and that is only natural as we'd expect to see a wide spectrum of viewpoints, irrespective of what the matter being discussed is, especially with such a non-defined and broad thread topic as, "Ready to admit bitcoin is a failure?"

If your idea of success is that bitcoin is widely adopted, we can say, 'We're not there yet,' optimists will think that at some point in the future critical mass will be reached, pessimists think it won't.

If your idea of success is that bitcoin is a unit of currency that allow you to buy a complete range of goods and services in your everyday life, well, again we can say, 'We're not here yet,' as no doubt some goods and services can be bought with bitcoin, but not all. Sure, some food supply stores may accept bitcoin, but you don't rock down to your local supermarket usually and pay with bitcoins.

If your idea of success is that bitcoin will somehow "remove the money power from the state and return it to the people" there we're definitely not there yet and such decentralised/anarchist/libertarian thinking tends to overlook the fact that money is a collective construct, usually with an authoritative reinforcement to backstop its value.

If your idea of success is that bitcoin is a viable alternative investment then it depends on your investment thesis, timeframe and desired investment outcome. Like bullion, direct investments into bitcoin don't yield any income but may over time may provide spectacular capital growth or severe destruction of capital, it's perhaps too early to tell. If your are investing substantial capital into a data centre sized mining operation then bitcoin (and fiat) gains are to be had, however if you're investing a lazy $1000, it's unlikely that your bitcoins can find a suitable home to provide a reasonable level of return and/or some protection against inflation devaluation.

So work out what your idea of success looks like, think about it long and hard and if you're confident, optimistic and are prepared to risk bitcoin, fiat or time, it doesn't really matter how other people answer the question, "Ready to admit bitcoin is a failure?" it only really matters how you answer it.

;)

YUP +1

Pure shill FUD by OP.

The question really is, if Bitcoin doesn't go mainstream then what is the problem?

Bitcoin has issues, the main one being that it can't handle 10,000 tx per second which is a base requirement for a worldwide network. However we are obviously not testing that limitation so then what else can be the problem?

The worst possible case is that the world at large does not have an interest in a worldwide decentralized currency/network, and that the Bitcoin experiment (and all other cryptocurrencies) will be always be reserved for the niche geek underground.

This is hard for me to understand, as I see Bitcoin bringing financial freedom to so many parts of the world, I just cannot see this not taking off, if not bitcoin but cryptocurrency in general.

I feel that many people on this forum share this same view, that Bitcoin is amazing and will keep rising in popularity. However we might all be blind to a simple sad truth, that the world doesn't want what Bitcoin has to offer.

I am facing problem with BTC mining but on the trading section I am still lucky.

the solution to bitcoins transaction issue is the same as banks wire transfer issue.
in short, the solution for small scale consumer transactions is credit cards/offchain transactions. whilst leaving bitcoin-core nodes to be the equvelent to goldman sachs, HSBC big money movers in the background

we are getting PP now.. so id say mass adoption is coming

"If you build it, they will come" Do not wait for something to be developed for the community go out and fucking do it yourself you do not need permission.

Please describe how a currency might be such superior and how it will take off faster than bitcoin's network effect.

It looks like you might already know, seems that you are familiar with a lot of paul grignons works I am sure you have heard of his proposal for a digital currency right?

His proposal wont grow as quickly because there is no gain beyond using an honest form of currency.

http://www.moneyasdebt.net/

He wanted to do a film about Bitcoin. Whatever happened to that?

Well I judge a lot by the network difficulty.

I don't see that it dropped recently.

It would have to drop several times in a row weeks or months before I would say bitcoin is in trouble.

Over the long term (10 years or longer) certainly I think by the next time the reward halves to 12.5 btc a block I would expect a price boost.

More places and people are using bitcoin now than ever before.

That needs to continue to happen. 

Complaining because it is on sale makes no sense to me at all !!

(Unless you bought btc at $600 as an investment or something then like any investement take your lumps and go home)

For true believers in all the good things cryptocurrency can bring to the world I would say everything is doing just fine.

For people who bought in at whatever price hoping to retire this year you should have known that was not going to happen anyway.

I can see mass bankruptsy of small miners in the chart below.
In the previous years the difficulty was clearly following the price of Bitcoin, now they have detached. The difficulty keeps growing as a result of massive investments by large mining farms, but the price keeps going down or sideways at best forcing small miners to switch off their equipment. You don't need to be a genius to understand what that implies. The pattern is not the same as in previous years, no matter what they tell you.

https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FNqJCRyU.png&t=544&c=HqS__4tvWzi3eg

Uhm. Bitcoin was just integrated into PayPal's Merchants Hub. A failure you say? gtfo

There is no causal relationship between hashing and price. Any correlational relationship is purely coincidental. The price people are trading on is based on risky exchanges that people don't trust anymore after Mt Gox. You can claim anything you want, but your dataset is too small. Using the term "bankruptcy" is purely inflammatory.

When you base your predictions for future price patterns ("Bitcoin went from $32 to $2 and then to $1000 so it will recover again and go to $5000"), somehow the dataset is not too small, but in this chart the dataset is not enough, although it covers all of Bitcoin's history. Makes perfect sense :)

I don't subscribe to TA. There are many other predictive vectors like VC investment, technology development, politics, etc.

If he did want to do a video about bitcoin it wouldnt have anything favorable to say. This is from Paul.

"1.The Scarcity Model: A single uniform quantity in limited supply made valuable by its own scarcity.
In other words, the value of this type of money depends on the supply of, and demand for, the money commodity itself. Conventional definitions of money define money only in terms of this model, a "medium of exchange". Examples are: cowries, gold and silver, fiat cash and coins, bank credit, and now, in the model's purest and most spectacularly speculative form, Bitcoin.

2. The Abundance Model. A promise of something specific from someone specific made valuable by its redemption in real production. The value of this type of money is defined by the promised redemption in goods and/or services. As such, this type of money is promises of an indefinite number of non-uniform commodities in indefinite supply and, unlike the limited quantity "coin" concept of money, the total quantity of these credits in circulation does not affect their value, because the value of a credit is defined by what its issuer will redeem it for in real goods and/or services. Examples are: business-to-business barter credits, customer rewards, travel points, discount coupons, mutual credit systems."

It wont fail because its open source

Bitcoin fits both models. I hope he isn't implying that someone will dictate what is the best money for the whole world. That would simply be sophomoric.

Bitcoin does not fit both models its value is a product of supply and demand, and no he isnt implying someone will dictate the best form of money, but what he does imply is the the scarcity model leads to control and manipulation.

lol, and everybody like open source ;D
and bitcoin become mainstream ;D

I hate to break it to you guys, but most crypto currencies are open source. Yeah, I know it will sound a surpise to you :)

That is bitcoin the currency, not Bitcoin the protocol. Colored coins like Mastercoin or Damnedcoin are not restricted by known scarcity limitations. Scarcity is required for money, whether it's gold or quality services. That abundance model is defined by and relative to what consesus deems to have value. Colored coins can define those.

You know what I notice? I've been trading in Altcoins in January, February, March.

EVERY SINGLE ALTCOIN that has risen came down at some point. And it feels like Bitcoin is following the same pattern. Just slower. And NO Altcoin ever rose to old hights again.

who the hell he is? can fix rate BTC lmao

Surprised this thread was created by a Hero member, to be honest.

most likely a bought account

So why are you still here man? Not yet ready to admit that its a failure?

i do not think its a failure yet,Bitcoin like any other "change,or era" needs awareness,with the way bitcoin is so technological and even some tech savvy people out there out still fail to accept it,what  more the normal Jane..the world needs time and to be educated about bitcoin.

The problem is most people CANT AFFORD IT and they see no benefits in risking their FIAT money into it, that plus the hassle that is getting verified in an exchange and what not to obtain them.

they can buy some small amount of satoshi instead

Nothing needs to be changed to fix Bitcoin.  If there is something about Bitcoin that one doesn't like, all they have to do is use a different currency that they do like or create a new currency with the features that they want.

We don't all drive the same kind of vehicle.  We each drive a vehicle of our choosing with the features that we want.  It would be pretty ridiculous to think that everyone has to drive the same type of vehicle wouldn't it?  If we lived in a society that insisted that there can only be one kind of automobile, then some people would say that this vehicle has to be electrically powered, others would say it has to be a four wheel drive truck, others would insist that it be a motorcycle, others would say it has to be a van with lots of passenger space.  The arguing and bickering over what features that vehicle should have would never end.  The best option is to just let people choose for themselves what vehicle best meets their needs.  The same concept applies to currencies.

Or they can buy an altcoin and not feel like losers having to buy expensive crypto if they can buy a cheaper one with about the same, or one could argue, a higher potential utility.

Ready to admit those expensive Chinese bitcoin mines might just need to pay back their loans?

Chill. The lower the price the more bitcoin they need to sell to meet their debt obligations, the lower the price the more they need to sell. Downward circle, but temporary phenomena. Take advantage of it while you can.

Correct.

Merchants report lower and lower BTC sales. Number and size of actual Bitcoin transactions (not bots sending satoshis to other bots) is shrinking. User adoption is shrinking. Increased merchant "adoption" creates too much sell pressure, thus pushing down the price. Miners selling to pay their bills, pushes down the price even further.

In short: Bitcoin has entered its twilight years. With Markus and Willybot gone, there's nothing that can drive price higher. So we'll continue falling.

bitcoin is not an altcoin

Huh? I never said it was. What's your point?

Btc is open src its one of the main things to keep it going. This doesnt necessarily apply to altcoins the fact thatthey are opensrc doesnt help them much in context of being a clone.

There are enough altcoins that are not clones of Bitcoin and are open source.

Then they arent altcoins and open src only helps but i still think the open src and knowledge era has begun.

What would you call them? Alt = alternative, alternative to Bitcoin. alt doesn't mean it's a clone of Bitcoin, it's just "not Bitcoin", that's all.

altcoin should have its own word lol we all know what it really means and it differs from literal definition. Alt form of currency maybe.

Bitcoin price is a failure, not Bitcoin itself.
It's very hard to estimate the real value of something as revolutionary as Bitcoin.
In the early 90's internet domains were practically worthless and nobody expected some of them would be worth millions just a decade later. ;)

I don't know what you mean? There is more adoption going on right now than in the history of bitcoin. Wait, are you looking at the price again?

When you have main-street adoption, like Newegg, Overstock, etc., you'll have a lot of coins being passed from business to exchanges.   I think this is why the price is going down steadily this year.  Don't get me wrong, it's a good thing people are spending their coins.  However, you have to expect businesses to move them to fiat as soon as they get them, which puts more coins on the market at market (or below) rates.  We're just not keeping coins between "us" anymore.

Answer may be, at least for me, is to buy back every Bitcoin you spent this year.  I'm getting gold at like 50% off, Gyft cards at 60% off.  

Actually after some practice, Bitpay or Coinbase will discover that they earn more by building their reserve to not sell coin when exchange rate is low, that will also calm down the volatility

Bitcoin market capital is still relatively small, it is not difficult for a single entity (for example Bitpay) to maintain a stable exchange rate if they have a large fiat money reserve (The downside risk is known but upside poential is unknown). However, if one bitcoin worth millions of dollars, then no one could manage the volatility alone. Or maybe, by that time, Bitpay already accumulated huge amount of fiat/bitcoin reserve, thus still in control

Yes, the recent growth is stunning:
Bitcoin is already a huge success, and the future is very bright.

These views focus on the current and future properties of money, a credit money always have a risk of default, so the value of it worth much less than value-already-paid money

From my view, there are only two kinds of money: Monopolistic money which are forced to be used, and free money which people use voluntarily

When central bank have monopole on money creation, they could create what ever theory to support their money and there will be no one knows if they are true. But if there are competitors, people will find out by themselves

Just like gold, it does not matter even central bank controls large amount of the gold, as long as the production cost energy/resource, the money is honest, means they are no different than goods/services produced by the same amount of energy/resource

Labor does not necessary create value, but the least amount of labor required to produce sth. makes it feels difficult, its this difficulty make other people recognize that effort and are willing to exchange goods/services produced by the same effort

Many gold were acquired centuries ago with a very low cost, but it does not power the early adopters or state/banks, since it is always a fair trade at any time

price is continuing to fall which means 1 of 2 things:

bear trap

bitcoin dying

either one is as likely to be the truth at this point.

hmmm, beartrap?

This is one of those threads that you necro in a few months to see if the OP is still around, or if they feel the same way.   :D

These reactionary threads always provide great entertainment after the inevitable spike up.

So, where is your evidence that bitcoin failure.  Why does mainstream adoption or the lack thereof means that bitcoin is a failure?  Please cite proof

Why the ppl think always to convert btc>usd  , btc>eur ?  Think only to BTC !

I posted this in another thread but I think you should be aware of this as well. 'Circle,' a new firm that lets people link bank accounts to bitcoin cloud wallets with 100% deposit insurance was launched. This could actually mean Bitcoin volumes will surge, which could lift the price higher. I saw an interesting piece on this, https://www.ddmarkets.com/bitcoin-technical-analysis-moderate-gains-are-due/

Bitcoin to $100!

Agreed its decentralized for a reason.

I developed my view point after at least 1200 transactions most p2p and while the price was around 122 on the way 1200 and have maintained it since. I sold off my 12k dollar LTC mining operation and all of my BTC and LTC.. I also took the bitcoin bumper sticker off my car. My mind is made up. My only real goal is to replace the dollar and bitcoin cant do that and if it did we would just be replacing one centrally controlled monetary system for another.

Because the dollar has a market price and does not violate the regression theorem. Bitcoin has no price you cant say what a bitcoin is, I can say a dollar is a mic chicken is a 2 liter, is a 1/3 of a gallon of gas.. people dont think in bitcoin because you cant say what is worth it can be anything!    Bitcoin is just a transfer mechanism for USD. 

As an alternative to the fiat currently used by ordinary high street shoppers, it's clearly a failure. As a decentralized currency, it's beginning to show signs of failure, or at least strain. As a currency with a genuine free-market value, it's also currently a failure. As supposedly rapidly evolving, dynamically responsive piece of software, it's failing.

But as the "Model T" of altcurrencies, and as the harbinger of a global economic, social and political revolution, it is already a massive success;
it is The CyberChrist   :)

Dude I dont know what you dont get about it? There is no such thing as value already paid money all money is a debt! I freaks me out that you think when you get bitcoin you have been paid. The only way that is true is if what you wanted was bitcoin.

A $5 Billion failure... think I'll keep playing tyvm.

Nice incendiary title btw.

...Soon to be $4 Billion

bitcoin is not widely enough used and accepted so that many things are priced in terms of bitcoin. It is also generally considered to be a speculative asset that people hope will increase in value

Is it not too early to call this great experiment in virtual currency, null and void?

For sure, I am not saying that digital currency is a failure, I am saying we have not made a digital currency we have made a digital asset. Virtual currency is thousands of years old the first currency was virtual in the form of a promise to pay.

Still feeling the pain of not buying in at $19 ?

I think everybody in the forum is insane it takes time. If the first users of bitcoin had the kind of attitude I hear in the forum bitcoin would never have gotten off the ground. For heaven sakes its a whole new currency, and it is had huge success over just a few years, give it time for god sakes.

The one with perfect system which can't be replaced of any other coin is the product made by many engineers. We should not call it a failure at any time, though it is in low. For speculators, there is no success or failure of Bitcoin, any condition is just the low point or high point for them to consider if buy and sell or not.

Yes , you're right . It is a fail only for the speculators not for the 99% of the ppl ( that believe in the bitcoin protocol) .

Not having "main stream adoption" does not make it a failure in my eyes..
and how do you clarify that ?
seems to me it already does have it.

Buttcoin magic beans is a failure as a currency, had it been created for that purpose.

Buttoinc is pathological gamblers' worst nightmare

Buttoinc is scamers' and hackers' dream.

Buttoinc had the potential to be a international money transfer alternative for individuals and tiny amounts (< $ 10k/month, ie salary transfer without taxes, resulting in m/b-illions of $ losses for the countries involved).

With more regulations (=limiting its use), with less (honest!) exchanges and with more and more scams, and also thanks to price dropping, buttcoin will fade away : market cap $ 100M (2% of current) one year from now. But number of transaction etc will remain more or less the same for indefinite period of time.

Eventually if not already it will be used only for gambling and scamming.

So yeah, bitcoin is a failure except for a few hundred people:
- early hoarders / miners
- scammers/hackers

I spent so much on international bank wire fees in my lifetime, but fortunatelly I dont anymore because of Bitcoin. But I agree, most people dont have any incentive to use Bitcoin, but for the minority who has, Bitcoin has a lot to offer

how low can it go...

I had a buddy who passed away before BTC ..but he would have loved this stuff...worked for NASA.....

bums me out he is not around.....for the ride....he woulda hoarded this stuff till the last guy standing ...I've absolutely no doubt...

so I will HODL so to speak....he surely would have and dragging me along would have made this bet anyway and probably with me saying the usual "hey this is dumb"

he'd have been amused if it went 'beanie baby' and/or btc does well...the amusement factor in either direction would be a constant....

so anyway.....with that in mind....riding it all the way down or all the way up...chump or champ are the only outcomes...

WTF ...a guy has to keep this all in perspective ..so to his memory....one last ride with this in mind.....I don't do enough stupid stuff anymore anyway....

(we had a computer biz together...ran a large bbs game server....roommates in univ....again WTF...at least I'm doing something daring again....)

damn.....reality sucks.....but I am damn sure of the above....sure miss getting talked into stupid endeavors....

so this either works well or I am gonna have alot of 'virtual $$$" only worth 'virtual anything" to me lol :)

Your signature is a confirmation of all you said, is it? Are you a gambling addict or a scammer/hacker?

It can go to zero, or very close to that... but I doubt it will get even into double figures any time soon. I'm conflicted with bitcoin. I believe in it, but the price constantly dropping is very disheartening. It's hard for me to invest money into it when this keeps happening.

I think Bitcoin adoption is slow because the internet is still relatively new and there is a vast majority of people who do not have access to the internet. When considering developed nations, there are still a lot of functional members of society who were born at a time when there was no internet. A lot of those people have not successfully integrated the internet into their lives. Since Bitcoin is internet dependent at this time, it shouldn't be surprising that it's not spreading that fast. If we were in 2034 right now, I bet BTC would've already spread like wild fire across the world.

What? The internet is not relatively new. Even in developing nations they have access to the internet somewhere and this is becoming more and more accessible every week. Bitcoin doesn't even need developing nations anyway as it can function and thrive greatly everywhere else, but developing nations will likely get involved at a later date once they see the benefits.

This isn't so much a response to you, cbeast, but rather at everyone in general because I'm getting tired of seeing the same (wrong) assertion put forth over and over.

There absolutely is, and always has been, a causal relationship between difficulty (not exactly hashing, but close enough) and price.  It's a bidirectional relationship.   Difficulty affects price and vice versa.  It is not now, nor will it ever be, a one-way function.

Apparently bitcoin is a failure if it failed to make us rich? Bitcoin is actually a computer protocol that is now more widely accepted than ever. It also does not care about us and our desires for money.

I said 'relatively new' meaning it depends on how big a picture you're looking at. 25 years ago, the internet was almost unheard of. This means that all the kids who grew up with the internet have parents from the pre-internet era. When the majority of 5 five year olds are able to say that their grandparents started using the internet while in their teens, the internet will be an already well-established element of society because at least 1 full generation would've lived with it.

Sadly this is what most people who are getting into bitcoin think. They suddenly didn't become millionaires over night and now bitcoin has failed them.

This is one joke of a post coming from a "Hero Member".

No I never had a profit motive, I only want to profit when I provide value to other people. I did buy in at 12 dollars each and many many other prices, but I only bought and sold coins. I wanted to make money by providing a service (liquidity). I made 12k profit buying and selling coins and I also grew my credit score by financing a mining rig and paying it off.   

Bitcointalk didn't change much over the years. It's the same trollfest as it was.

Even BTC was already years old, I think it is still early to say that there will be no mass adoption. Anyting can happen for the next years in terms of technology and currency. IMO

I see a lot of others are all in and going down with the ship, any descent is treason... I support digital currency in fact I think it is the most important thing that we could achieve in our life times.. That is why I hate to see so much wasted time and effort on a concept that cant work. I dont have a profit motive.. I know that is unfathomable around here but I am not in digital currency for personal enrichment. I dont say it is a failure because it hasn't made me rich, I say it is a failure because it cant replace government issued fiat.  

Bitcoin price dropping is not a signal of its failure.

Bitcoin price crashing ALONG WITH every single bitcoin business closing down, throwing in the towel - coinbase, the exchanges, blockchain, the bitcoin cons, wallet services, mining services - all that shit signals the end of bitcoin - at least as far as mainstream...but it's unlikely to ever fully be gone because it's too useful and solves real world problems.

Bitcoin price dropping over warped shit in the news...just consider it a Sale and go shopping.

I'll admit it's a failure when it actually fails. At the moment it seems to be working perfectly fine for me.

Is it working perfectly fine as a store of value for you? how about anyone else who bought or was paid for labor in the last 10 months with bitcoin?

It's stored it's value perfectly. I bought several 1 bitcoin and I still have 1 bitcoin. Whatever you paid for it is your problem and the fiat worth of it has nothing to do with bitcoin itself. I suggest you invest in fiat money or something if you're worried about this stuff. Don't buy any stocks and shares either.

What the hell?  The fact that 1 BTC = 1 BTC now and forever says nothing about value.   All that 1 BTC = 1 BTC means is that bitcoins are fungible.  USD is also fungible since $1 USD = $1 USD.

So far, Bitcoin sucks as a store of value in the sense that it's highly unpredictable.  A year from now, if I asked you to predict the purchasing power of both BTC and USD, you will find it easy to make a reasonable prediction about USD but not BTC.  Just look at the threads on this forum predicting that the value of a bitcoin will range from $0 to >$10,000 in a year's time.  If there's that much difference of opinion, then right now it's fair to conclude that, at least right now, BTC is anything but a safe haven for your purchasing power.

I've seen this so many times here. Bitcoin isn't working for you therefore it isn't working. There are so many different reasons to use Bitcoin. Speculators want volitility for profit, some early most late adopters want to see a massive increase in price for profit, antiestablishment types want to see it replace fiat to end government misuse of funds, humanitarians want it used in Africa to end oppressive control of the poor, exchanges want to reap their steady profit, businesses want to accept it to increase their sales, criminals want to use it as a new method of stealing from simpletons, gamblers want to use it to skirt around local gambling laws and so on and so on. The truth is it will never work for everyone forever. If you're one of the antiestablishment types you may never get your wish but that doesn't make it a failure for everyone.

But I don't think that has ever been on the table. No responsible government is going to risk their economy on bitcoin. Maybe in 20 years, but I can't see it happening anytime soon.

I dont plan on asking the government if it gives a fuck if i take away its control mechanism. The government can suck a dick. I am not asking for permission to change the world. Did napster ask the music industry what it thought about file sharing? did Uber ask the government if it could avoid its burdensome regulations?.. the governments dont fear bitcoin because it cant change the status quo. I am talking about giving them something to fear.   

LOL! Too true!  :D

At the beginning of this thread, there were mostly just superficial one line responses to the incendiary topic title and then it started to heat up and move toward the usual slugfest. Not sure what anyone else thinks but I always prefer thread evolution to slugfest rather than crappy one liners.

;)

BTC is a success so far. You can buy more things with it.

Its NOT a failure! $444AUD Per coin is not a failure even $200 per coin isnt

We should stop measuring success or failure in terms of the market price.  :)

Agreed. The simple fact 100k plus real world businesses and growing are developing infrastructure for it, governments have held hearings on it, fbi has auctioned it, that more and more consumers are learning about it and buying it - that's success if there ever was any.

Failure?

Unless and until bitcoin is doing worse than myspace, don't write it off just yet. There's more to bictcoin tech than whether or not some sleazy market trader gets to jack with the market price. Speculation was never bitcoin's purpose so if the day traders lose, tough shit.

I would still say it's very hard to predict what is going to happen 5 or 6 months down the road even for a short period. Anything can still happen. The price might just collapse into the dumpster or very well shoot beyond expectation leaving everybody crying out in awe "i should have bought more". Anyway lets see what is going to happen before making a conclusion right now when things are still moving very very fast

You could not be MORE wrong!!

At the moment Bitcoin as a whole is failing.

Bitcoin  as financial transaction is not failing at all. It is actually thriving, it does exactly what it is supposed to do. It is a wonderful adaptation to our current transaction processes. If more and more people keep adopting its usage, it can only grow stronger.

The value of bitcoin however is failing drastically.

Why is the value so important? and how does this effect the overall success of bitcoin?

Very simple

Miners need a good value to make mining profitable, ( unless you know an electric company who accepts bitcoins as payments they need cash to pay the bills)  if the value of the coin becomes so low it is no longer profitable to mine, BOOM instant failure, no miners means no transactions getting processed , if no one is processing transaction the coin fails.

So you see the value is just as important as the structure behind the transaction protocol :)

Allow me to help you, by the end of December price will be below 100 dollars USD a coin, ( because of the bi-weekly merchant dumps that have been happening over the past 5+ months) at this point a your transactions will become much slower as a lot of the miners will have turned their machines off. This price will attract some of the idiot high dollar investors and by February we will be back close to 300 dollars again if we are lucky, at which time miners will begin to turn their machines back on.

Unfortunately this process will not fair well for bitcoin, if transaction times become longer it will begin to deter new users from keeping the coin after adopting it. It will give the coin a bad reputation and all this work people are putting in to getting the coin adopted by more merchants will be futile. This is not 5 years ago, Bitcoin is no longer in its infancy, this is the determining stages of the coins future. Difficulty is to high to play the same games the developers have played the past 5 years, if they dont get their heads out of their asses we are all going to lose.

Lets put more concentration on creating a real demand for the coin and not worry about more coin dumping merchants picking it up right now. If there is a true honest demand for the coin people are going to buy it faster than if they want a computer from dell who takes both cash or BTC. merchants do not secure its success, creating transactions can only go so far. having something no one else has and having to use bitcoins to get it, now thats a demand that makes people have to get bitcoins :)

bitcoin isn't a failure, it was an idea which will lead to decentralization from government control.
right now the only problem with bitcoin is the PoW mining, this needs to be changed or altered so no entity can have control over the mining.

even if bitcoin fails, another 2.0 will take its place, so its still a success if the idea worked.

OP: Ready to admit you obviously dont understand Bitcoin at all?!
The problem doesnt lie w/ Bitcoin, it lies with; human nature & how weve all been brainwashed by current monetary systems that have been in place for a hundred years.

Just because its price is going lower due to pure speculation driving it, does not mean its a failure.
Last I checked the blockchain is ticking away, it doesnt care about price or speculation ... it just fucking works, BEAUTIFULLY. So nothing w/ Bitcoin has failed.

Bitcoin still functions as to move value around the internet(around the world) at blistering speeds weve never seen in any currency(completely decentralized), no matter its price point. Well, long as it aint $0.0000000000000...
Its true price point will be determined by how many people actually want to use it for doing just that.



Wait till key world monetary systems start crumbling.... people might actually wake the fuck up and realize theres been something better for years and use it.

There are variety of asic miners mining all with different cost of mining - so thinking all of sudden at least half of them turn off the miner is pretty unrealistic. Unless the price crash to single digit this year it is safe to assume no retarging difficulty decrease will be over 30% (the same 30%, but increase we saw this year). So still 11-13 minutes of average confirmation time (based on difficulty decrease), no instant failure at all!

It takes time for BTC enter main stream. In the mean while the price will go down as well as up.

lol, what about all the major retailers that are accepting Bitcoin? And Paypal slowly integrating it?

I'm still seeing a 10 minute average blocks per hour and not expecting any slowdown. Miners still want fresh coins. Market volume doesn't reflect any trend in selling. A few are selling, but most are holding. The ones that are selling desperately need the cash and the rest of us know that when the market comes back it will be impossible to get the coins back cheap.

Exchanges and brokers are placing buy and sell limits to how many coins can be exchanged. DDOS attacks tend to hurt panic buyers. It's just not worth worrying about someone dumping coins because it will be their loss in the long run. Regulated markets can be gamed this way, but Bitcoin will burn anyone trying to game the system because it is unregulated. We are seeing a wealth transfer from the speculators to the long term investors.

I really do not understand who are these morons who dump such amounts every few hours. By now, all weak hands should be out of the game so the ones who sell are only large, probably Chinese, farmers dumping every day to recover their costs. I would go and dismantle their farms with a fork if I could. One really needs to be DUMB to sell at these prices. But I mean really dumb.

One of the smaller of the chinese farms (as you call them) averages 280,000 dollars worth of bitcoins a month with a 60,000 dollar electric bill. most of these farms you seek to destroy are not farms at all they are the people manufacturing or re-selling the mining equipment. they are manufacturing the equipment and then  they test it allright, they put that shit right to work mining for them until someone buys the machine. They keep it all in the chinese hands too they mine in a chinese pool and sell thier coins daily, why? Because they can!! pure and simple, they have no costs in the equipment they are mining with. all the machines they are mining with have been paid for by miners who purchased equipment on its release, thus no equipment costs, they dont care about bitcoin or me or you, they just want the cash. so they dump dump and more dump. to them it doesnt matter if the coin is worth 600 dollarts or 50 dollars they are bringing in over 700 coins a month even at 50 dollars a coin they are making bank. Especially when you base that on the CHY and not the USD value. :)

True. But do not forget they are able to do this cause they are funded by naive buyers from the Western hemisphere paying for their pre-orders and never reaching ROI. With these prices, nobody ll be ordering more miners and as a result they ll have no market to sell their primary products. If you take a look at the last BTC difficulty growth, you ll get  an idea about this price killing industry of miners production. Only total idiot can order a miner now. So, in essence, these Chinese dumpers are sabotaging their own primary source of income which is not BTC but production of mining hardware. This is really smart move. Nobel prize move.

Still, any seller who purchased in the last year and selling now is LOSING money. Bots or no bots, somebody needs to opt to sell and this means this person is either weak handed or a total MORON. All this under condition BTC sold are purchased at one point and not mined. If they are mined, then take a look at my previous comment.

aslong as tx/sec are rising its succeeding

In theory this is not accurate.

If miners pull out the difficulty will re-target. One of the brilliant things about bitcoin is the variable difficulty.

The more miners the higher the difficulty goes.

If the number of miners (combined hashrate) is reduced then difficulty will go down.

The end result being, on average, the same block times no matter how many miners there are.

If a large percentage of miners dropped out at once that would be different, but that is very very unlikely to happen.

Exactly, it's not a question of "dumb". The idea that someone is dumb just because someone on a forum somewhere says so is indeed the height of egocentric, ethnocentric ignorance. The bitcoin market is young, maybe the commentator of the 'dumb remarks' is also young, the point being that whilst all other markets do tend to move in cyclical patterns over the medium to long term, there is the open-ended assumption that the bitcoin market will continue and recover. It probably will, but bitcoin isn't like copper, cotton, gold or gasoline, it's a new commodity/currency and despite what the protagonists declare, there just isn't any 'need' for bitcoin, it's not a raw material that converts to or produces anything else, arguably it's an alternative vehicle of investment or exchange.

Although it's supposedly completely different, to many people unfamiliar with crypto, there's no reason to suggest that the lifetime of bitcoin might not look like these DVC values which tend towards zero when graphed:

http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/dvc/btc/crypto-trade/alltime

Maybe it will, maybe it won't, but attempting to label someone as dumb without knowing a damn thing about their circumstances or motivations to trade is simply ignorance.

 >:(

First, do not underestimate people you discuss here, especially after posting this kind of shallow post. Second, to suggest that "there just isn't any 'need' for bitcoin" is probably the statement of the century. Being sarcastic again. I am not even try to argue with you about BTC demand, after this sentence,you have said it all. Unless you consider only tangible goods as being the one with identifiable demand. There is no real purpose for bunch of financial derivatives or securities being bough and sold every day on global financial markets besides the one sole use - to make money. Yet, there is HUGE demand for these everywhere. Stating there s no need for BTC and being in this forum is......arghhhhh.
Also, I have already explained how Chinese ASIC producers and dumpers sabotage their own business by this mindless dumping cause they kill directly kill their own demand. Who is going to buy ASIC from them after seeing BTC crash from 600 to 360 in two months. Maybe someone with balls of steel but not me.

Thx for your a very educational post, I have learned a lot.

Just to add, speculators definitely play significant role in all this, taking advantage of the weak hands and newbies.

For example, current Bitstamp order book, over 7000 BTC asks and 3790 bids. This means people try to buy 7000 BTC and only 3790 are being offered for sale cause majority of sellers obviously are not ready to sell at these prices. However, the price still goes down. Somebody with more TA knowledge, pls explain this. How is it possible the price to go down when demand for BTC is 2x of current supply on one of major European exchanges. China, right.

You have it opposite.... 7000 btc asking to be sold and 3800 btc bidding to be bought.. causing percieved bear market... but bear bull markets are seen as those that buy or sell at market and right now market is being bought regardless of order book.

somehow i think it is going to make it,

seems to have the right connections,

going to take a long time,

it's ok

I am a patient woman

It is the other way around. Bid = buy.
It also depends on the price people are willing to buy/sell at. It doesn't help if a lot of people are willing to buy bitcoin at $100. That isn't going to push the price up.

Bitcoin may be a failure and thats why I would divest at least part of my BTC in Bitshares and maybe a little bit in NXT.

The energy consumption required by Bitcoin as the market price grows up is like some weird dark comedy.  Ok, lets overthrow the bad oppressor money people with a plan whose success means gobbling up tons of power until the block production rate is small enough relative to the market cap.

i prefer bitshares

i prefer nem.. :)