coinjar.io is currently having some technical difficulty - they are taking money but not issuing BTC, they sent an email out last night apologizing for all the transactions sitting in limbo but here we are 1 day later and they still have taken the deposited $$ and have issued no BTC - They sent affected users a $2 voucher - which is nice, but I wish they would just fix their core operation.

My thought is that the people - Spending, hoarding, investing (or anything else) ARE the miners, and when the miners disappear, so does the general activity of the currency.

If anyone reading this forum is an: Investor, Spender, Hoarder BUT has never mined (or didn't get started due to the "mining bug") jump into the conversation.

Hi all,

I've been thinking about Bitcoins for the past few months and a question I can't seem to find the answer to, (or much opinion on) is whether or not Bitcoin transactions (sales using bitcoins as the payment medium) will fall, falter or stall as the mining difficulty rises.

Something inside my small brain is making me think that the whole "Bitcoin Phenomenon" is being driven by say 100,000 to 200,000 nerds world wide (myself included) who are actually mining these things, buying coins on exchanges and propagating their use in the community because we generally think they are cool.

Will Bitcoin still be cool when 95% of the average nerd population mining them now on GPU's realises they don't really love Bitcoin enough to invest in dedicated ASIC gear and they hang up their miners hats?

Will enthusiasm die as the number of "miners" decrease as the hash capacity of the network increases and is held by a smaller and smaller number of mega miners ?

I certainly hope not !

Anyone else ever thought of this ?