Face reality. Or don't, idk your choice. This is kinda long. Why not. Fun is spelled F U N.
Look at all of the news in the past few months. The IRS classified Bitcoin as property(the judgement everyone was waiting for to see if it was legal or not officially) Check, its there now.
You can buy almost anything you want with BTC now(might have to convert to Gyft for some things).
Some countries have banned it some haven't.
China is basically going to ban it and cause a new price crash on April 15th(Or so I have heard and it really looks to be the case from my own research).
At this point, can anyone really say there is something that will catapult Bitcoin straight up like happened months ago?(no you can't and the comments below prove you can't even form sentences to this question). I will change my mind if someone really gives a good argument for a huge sharp rise in a short period. But I don't see one(comments below show no arguments yet).
Long term, another coin will beat it out, or something better will be invented. It's no secret mining is a completely stupid way of verifying a transaction because all that happens is that tons of computers/gpus/servers/rigs are guessing random numbers until they line up with what is needed. This eventually will cause a tremendous amount of energy waste(right now I am pretty sure all miners are losing money if they are converting into USD right away).
Just because there is a limited supply doesn't mean anything, the demand also comes in somewhere no? Look at the demand right now, price dropped from a high of I dunno 1,135 USD something(not MTGOX inflated prices) now it is at 445 USD. A lot of people got invested into this when it was going up in price, ever wonder why you only see 3,000 people signed on BTC-E anymore and not 15,000 like they were getting? Demand is dropping, supply doesn't matter if no one wants it.
That being said, if you are one of these people who "put all of their life savings in BTC/Alt coins" I think it is time for a reality check(at least in the short term).
Oh but the Network effect you all scream like babies, tell that to MySpace rofl. Or AIM, or Yahoo, or any other person who held the network majority, its called competition(google it).
Personally, I lost all of my BTC, originally had 5 BTC, turned it into 7 BTC, lost some on a bad trade, lost 45% of my BTC on Cex.io adding "futures options", which I had no idea they were doing(my fault I know). Then I accidentally did a max bet on Just dice and lost most of it, got like .2 BTC left right, then coinex gets hacked rofl... so im down to abotu .05 BTC total.
For reference, my friend put 3,000 bucks into stock at his company and bought in at 43 bucks per, had to hold for a lil while, then sold it at 60 bucks. Kinda wishing I never did this whole BTC thing, it helps people, but it's definitely a super minority of people this helps(for now). I agree it might help poorer countries, but "Ain't nobody got time for that" over there, they are like you know, farming and stealing to eat and survive. So #ya.
Edit 1: Let me also add, BTC it is not very user friendly for the majority of any population. You have to verify a bank account where your Fiat comes from and get a fee charged on you (but Bitcoin itself can have no fees I understand that) So you still have fees for now, so that doesn't exactly help. Fees need to be eliminated or driven down really really low, then you got a fee to withdraw into Fiat also. I understand you can just keep it in BTC, but heres the problem you run into. Say you have 1 BTC, you spend all of it, guess what? Time to pony up and pay more fees to get BTC, now you have to keep track of the flucuations of BTC according to the IRS ruling. Every time you buy or sell any coins for any reason ever, you have to keep track of it, no thanks rofl.
If Obama can win a majority of a country of 300 million + and get a second term based on ideas and no substance, how do you expect Bitcoin which is based on substance and some Ideology to win over morons? It won't. Also, the repubbies'cans say the same thing for the past 8 years, they presented their ideas and didn't win anything but the House. Might get Senate this time because Obama lies a lot and ppl get madzzz.
Edit 2: Personally, I incur 0% fees per year on my credit cards. All of them have no annual fee, no fees for bank transfers ever on my cards, no late payment fees ever for an unlimited amount of times, 1 and 2% cash back on everything(one of my cards is 1% but it is MasterCard I have to sometimes use), I get 5% cash back on purchases in the rotating 3 month categories(I have 4 credit cards all linked to one b ank account, and whichever card has the 5% off of whatever I am buying I use that). So it becomes extremely wrong to advocate Bitcoin be used for rich/middle/lower middle class people. I only make 47,000 a year Salary, I am 24 years old, 2 years out of college and I am at my first "REAL" job, to tell me to use Bitcoin and get some fees converting from Fiat to BTC, then I spend the BTC, then guess what??? I need more BTC, lets incur more fees converting from Fiat to BTC. Don't you see BTC is really for poor people? If poor people only use BTC back and forth between each other it would be wonderful, but that isn't going to happen for a long long long time, 10s of years later maybe, MAYBE people will all be tech savvy. MAYBE. But BTC doesn't solve any problems for the majority of people and you know it.
You would have been better off putting your 7 btc into cold wallet and the HODL m8