Fiat is unlimited, it's value is very close to zero. Ultimately it will have to come down to a battle for trade and trusted means of exchange and I can't see the money printing masters of the universe allowing that battle to not go their way, by hook or by crook. The only thing preventing a fiat close to zero value realisation now is the prosperity borrowed with increasingly colossal and insurmountable debts kicked forward to the future and the hyper-inflation being held back by corporate entities sitting on truly vast cash reserves.

There isn't a bubble, there is an expanding process. btc is currently an insignificance globally. That's obviously lost on those who eat, breath and sleep bitcoin but that's just the uncomfortable truth. At the moment it's mostly caught in a circle jerk propped up by mining, with hardware, energy and speculation driving prices up. Until it gets into real market places, globally, and a proper price discovery mechanism kicks in then it's anyone's guess what it's true value is.

What I find confusing is how some seem obsessed with measuring its "value" in filthy corrupt fiat. A symbol of the stinking cess pit of corporate corruption, captured government and their theft of public wealth the world over, using all but worthless bankster wealth transfer tickets trading on little more than a psychotic faith in an unsustainable, not quite broken (yet) system, and the obscene debt slavery to be imposed on all those unfortunate generations yet to come.

How can something like fiat ever be used to measure something as honest and untainted as btc. Obviously the measure is valid at any point in time, but is it really a meaningful indicator? I'd have to say that until btc and fiat start to go head to head and compete for the trust of the people in the same space, it's of little use knowing what they're "worth" other than for short term speculation that btc will ultimately fail.

What matters is that btc can at some point be used as a universally accepted means of exchange for things people really need, essential goods, food, fuel & shelter. I hope it gets there one day if not shut down by the global banksters and their captured government stooges protecting their fiat extortion racket. I can't see how btc, or some subordinate equivalent, can avoid becoming the primary means of exchange for those goods and services if it can survive. That said btc is a very, very long way from that day and until it manages to get there it's not, as a concept, really worth anything much at all to the public beyond being a bit of an expensive novelty.

I make no comment on the rest of the thread but on this comment I will say this...  don't get too chipper about your beloved btc, the inevitable fight to capture or destroy it hasn't even got started yet. The powers that be are only just starting to realise that bitcoin isn't going away and the threat it ultimately poses to their cleptocratic control of the masses via filthy fiat wealth transfer hasn't yet materialised. When it does start to materialise you can be sure the battle to destroy it will too.

That's fair comment, I don't see how anyone can really dispute that unless you're in the anti establishment, all else is forgiven, folk hero camp. In the final analysis whatever happens to him is largely self inflicted.

That said I do not support the false wars on some drugs and some terror, which in truth, are really about attacking what little freedom and liberty is left. All they really achieve is a tightening and extending of the power and control the structures of the state possess over everyone's life.

What we need is someone to beat them at their own game but that game is bent and that's where they have the advantage, the crooks are in charge and free thinking people need to figure out some way to get back what has been taken away from them by the banksters on wall street and their captured government puppets.

Your English is just fine and certainly better than some so called native speakers can manage, when I talk about misapprehension I mean that you seem to think any future hardware will somehow be different, or have a different effect, to the new hardware being produced now. New hardware comes out, everyone has the same idea, the difficulty rises, everything settles back into the status quo at a much higher difficulty and chasing fewer and fewer coins as the reward is halved each four years or so. The more you "invest" the more you need to recover.

What may happen is that smaller players are squeezed out of mining process at some point by the running costs and then the hashing power becomes concentrated in fewer hands but that itself is self defeating for the bitcoin concept, if people don't have btc they can't use them and if they aren't using btc then it really isn't worth anything much. It has no intrinsic value, the only value is that imputed by the people who use it to trade with.

In the very, very unlikely scenario that difficulty drops, those who had been forced to switch off will simply switch back on again because the difficulty has dropped and mining became viable again for them. It's also the reason many won't switch off in the first place and continue to pour real wealth into mining, basically speculating that one day they can recoup that investment with the btc generated. It's a huge gamble and one that people really ought to be making with their eyes wide open.

I'm not negative towards bitcoin at all but a lot of the talk around mining btc and making a "profit" is borderline psychotic imho.

The numbers aren't extreme, they are quite simply what they are.

You seem to be labouring under a few misapprehensions here, the only time anyone is going to stop mining is when it starts to cost more to run the mining equipment than it ever has a chance to recover, in other words when the rate of difficulty increase exceeds the ability to generate a btc payout and that point is still some considerable way off. Even at that point some will still continue to mine as there is a somewhat pervasive, almost religious belief that btc is somehow going to be worth thousands or even millions of fiat one day, and it seems to be rife. And as you alluded to, people think if they just keep going everyone else will stop which is just madness.

The difficulty won't reduce in any meaningful way at this stage, it is only the rate of difficulty increase that will fluctuate.

If you're looking for "profit" it's a very bad idea. The only people profiting are those selling the hardware. If you just want a new expensive hobby that gets you some tiny fractions of a btc along the way then go for it.

The only thing that will make bitcoin work is if people start to use it, hoarding just makes it a circle jerk. I'm not sure you understand the mining process, the better hardware is an irrelevance (unless you somehow have exclusive access). What matters is how many btc are available and what difficulty is being generated by everyone else doing exactly the same thing as you are. All this talk of "profit" just sounds wrong headed to me.

The FBI sucked at least $8.1 billion out of the US taxpayer in 2012. They have to make that look like money well spent and inflated headline figures get them the press they need, much like the inflated drug busts.

Until people can start to get paid for work done and pay their household bills and taxes in btc it's only ever going to be a bit of a novelty, that said every journey starts with a single step and the road travelled has already covered some distance.

I think the biggest problem by far is that bitcoin success to date has been motivated in the main by people simply seeking a fiat profit. In other words betting against bitcoin in the long run. Holding them isn't helping them. The only people who will ever deliver that success are those that use btc as currency by providing real world goods and services. Let's face it btc is a very long way from securing any success at all as anything other than a novelty and money pit right now.

** I'd caution against pouring any more than a token amount into them at this stage as any sort of investment.

None existent are the words you're looking for in relation to ROI. Mining has become the victim of its own success and although btc is nothing without it right now that won't always be the case. The solution, and far better for bitcoins future beyond mining, which is a no return endeavour, is to figure out some way to provide goods and services in exchange for them. Or just buy some btc if you just want to hold them.

Exactly, the same group that fear real democracy and real free markets, and somewhat paradoxically the same group that never stops bleating on about how they uphold those things. Of course you need to exert total power and control over everyone in order to provide them, isn't that right...

fixed that for you.


The only value bitcoin will ever have long terms is in its utility as a currency and medium of exchange. It isn't physical like gold so if no one is using it for anything other than eating into available hard drive storage space it rapidly becomes useless and worthless.

The irony is delicious.

How about taking back what was stolen by the most powerful, most criminal entity on the planet?

OK it's a very bad idea taking that btc back, but make no mistake the FBI has stolen that btc, it isn't silk roads or DPR's btc, it isn't "illegal" btc, it isn't even US btc in many cases, it's simply the btc held in user accounts on that server and the FBI need to show it has been either used or obtained illegally. They're at least as bad as those they claim to be taking down in many cases, the rule of law must apply equally, not only apply as they alone see fit, to the victims of their theft.

OK, but bitcoin was being tarred with that SR brush by those in the media who, for what ever reason had taken it on themselves to portray btc in that light and I think we can agree, or I would certainly hope, that public perception is very much influenced by media, particularly the lobotomising mainstream media.

That SR has been removed from the equation means that over time, the slur that was being used against btc as a legitimate currency will look increasingly ridiculous for those deriding btc in such a way. Obviously that doesn't mean btc can no longer be used to facilitate criminal exchange any less than filthy corrupt fiat can be also, but it's good that a lazy SR association used against btc has been removed in my opinion.

So not the same btc everyone else is mining/using then?

The only thing making mining increasingly unprofitable at his stage of the game is ever faster asics and companies like KnC actually delivering on time. There's a delicious irony to it all, that the success is defeating itself.

SR are just a distraction, I'd say it's a very healthy thing for the whole btc concept and scene that it is no longer going to be tarred with that SR brush, but ultimately SR had nothing much to do with (lack of) mining profitability as measured in fiat.

Not really, it depends entirely on how many of "those 28nm asics" are hashing on the network. Given the halving of the btc rewards available each four years or so and the ever diminishing returns compounded by more/better asics it's a hiding to nothing.

The only way this $1 scenario works is if you're the one who stays switched on and hashing and a lot of other people switch off.