Check out the last 3 difficulty increases.  The price did not move up and in fact fell after each move.


The weekend effect is now very weak.  Everyone expects it to happen, so by definition it won't happen the same way as it did before.  It also seems mondays have been lumped into the weekend too.  I wonder when Fridays and Tuesdays will become a part of it.

Maybe they're stating their honest opinion that bitcoins have few uses and so far have been used as a highly speculative investment by most users.  In times of trouble (USA/PIIGS at the moment) very risky assets get sold off while investors flock to safety.  If bitcoin truly is as good as gold (as is often claimed on these forums) it should be rocketing up in value right now.

There are no doubt many miners out there who bought equipment specifically for mining.  If their investments have not been paid off yet they may approach the "ah, stuff it!' point where they see the recouping of their costs drifting further into the distance while their hardware depreciates in value.  If enough cut their losses and run (sell up and dump BTCs) we may see a significant drop as I doubt there are enough cashed up investors on the other side to buy up all the coins.  Even the most ardent bitcoin booster must wonder whether if it's worth buying bitcoins today at US$12.85 when they could be US$11 tomorrow.

I sold a bunch of coins around US$18 to pay costs.  Looks like a pretty good decision at the moment.  BTC's value has been in a steady decline for almost a month.  It's not immune to the general shenanigans happening at the moment in the USA and PIIGS. 

The next new currency is likely to be the new Drachma, when Greece gets kicked out of the Euro.  We're likely to see new pesetas and new liras soon too :-)

As I write this, bitcoin's value is struggling to stay above US$13.  If you're wondering why bitcoin's value is slowly but surely deflating you only need to ask these questions:

1. What can I do with bitcoins?  What can I buy?
2. What can I buy that's easier with bitcoins than using a credit card?
3. How does the general public view bitcoins?  Do they see it as a get-rich-quick scheme?

The answer to all three questions does not bode well for bitcoin's short term value.

Bitcoin may indeed go to $2000 per coin, but if it's going to do that simply because the US dollar will dramatically reduce in value then we've gained nothing.  A BTC may be $2k, but a loaf of bread could be $200 for example.

I'll believe bitcoins will become a valid and long term store of value when Indians and Chinese are buying bitcoins at their markets instead of gold. 

People buy the following in times of financial panic:

1. Gold
2. Silver
3. Japanese Yen
4. Swiss Francs

Number 3 is a bit of a mystery as the bond yield absolutely stinks and the country has a long term debt time bomb ticking away in the government's coffers.  The Swiss make great cheese, timepieces, and will keep your dirty money safely ensconced in their banks.

I really doubt anyone is buying bitcoins because they believe the PIIGS will exit the Euro or that the Republicans and Democrats won't cease their playground antics.  Gold and silver have track records going back thousands of years.  No one heard of bitcoins before 2009.  The vast majority of people on this planet still haven't heard of them and would have no idea how to buy one or how to use one.

It's obviously the obscure penny stock he's bought a whole bunch of and is now looking to pump and dump.  It truly will be a life saving stock.  For him.

The Prisoner's Dilemma is all about potentially lessening punishment (with pitfalls) rather than seeking reward like with Bitcoin trading.  It's a similar problem but definately not the same.

Your post seems to suggest that people who are willing to sell bitcoins at $14 each are people who panic, are inexperienced, and are wrong to sell at such a cheap price.  Who says $14 is the wrong price?  Maybe it's as good as it gets for weeks, months, or even years?  I sold a bunch of bitcoins at $18 and $20.  Not such a bad trade, looking at the past few weeks of data.  In late April many people on this forum were advocating an exponential rise in bitcoin's price simply because of the difficulty rate.  I disagreed, and sold.  Glad I did.  But hey, maybe bitcoins will trade at $100 next year and I'll eat my words.

Cryptocurrencies would crash right along with fiat currencies.  The Internet's infrastructure is not funded by bitcoins.  It's funded by the same fiat currencies that some people deride as being essentially worthless.  Until you can buy Cisco routers with bitcoins, pay your ISP bill in bitcoins, and pay the power bill in bitcoins, the cryptocurrency is very much subject to the same flaws in the system as fiat currency.

The only 'currencies' that would remain are those that have value as assets.  Metal, (iron, copper, gold, silver), food, medicine, alcohol, shelter, weapons.

The only way US dollars could crash to zero is if the USA chooses to do so, so the question really needs to be reserved.

The USA could pay off the entire debt tomorrow.  Simply get the Federal Reserve to monetize all the debt.  That would crash bond prices (existing loans to the USA) and no one would want to lend money to the USA tomorrow, as they know the nation could wipe out the debt at any moment.  Imports into the USA would skyrocket in price by hundreds or thousands of percent overnight.  The USA would run out of oil within weeks, as the Middle East, Africa and Canada wouldn't fancy selling a real asset (oil) for worthless dollars.

It would be fun all around.

I get about US$1 profit per day on costs of US$1.25.  320Mhash/s.  I've cut back mining and sold most of my hardware on eBay while it was still worth something.

Solar power being installed soon, so I should make enough power with my 1.5kWh system to make mining costs nominally zero.  Thank you, tax payers of Australia :-)

As has been repeated on this forum many times, just because Bitcoins are difficult to get does not make them valuable.  I have a widget here which is one of a kind.  It should be worth a mint, right?  Yet it isn't, because rarity is one piece of the equation.  The other is desirability.  Is ownership of bitcoins desirable to speculators, investors, or the average person?  Only the latter creates true long term value and need.

Bitcoins had a higher dollar value 3 weeks ago when difficulty was less than half what it is today.  By simple logic the price of Bitcoins should be higher today than 3 weeks ago.  Probably double the price.  Yet, it isn't.  The last couple of difficulty increases have seen the price fail to move upwards.  Speculators do not care if you burned $9 of electricity to create a bitcoin worth $10.  To them it doesn't matter at all, as they never had to pay your bills.  There are already more than enough bitcoins around to satisfy speculator needs.

BitPiggy is out of funds whenever I load the site.  I've used it several times in the past and it has been reliable, but recently its been unavailable.  I guess far more Australians are selling BTCs than buying them.

I have 320Mhash/s going and make between 0.2 and 0.25 per day.  How do you get 0.4 with 100Mhash/s with today's difficulty level?

I'm getting beaten with both ends of a spiky stick here.

I'm in Australia and pay 0.25c/kWh.  That's nearly 27 US cents.  Bitcoins pay US$15 at the moment but that's less than AU$13 when I bring it home (weak US dollar and conversion costs).  I've cut down mining and just have one PC  eating 4.75kWh/day making 0.25 max BTC per day.  $3.25 income on $1.19 costs.  Take out income tax and it's a very exciting profit of around a buck fifty a day.  Woohoo.

And we have a carbon tax coming in soon, which will boost coal and gas fired power costs nicely.  No nuclear power here.

If they answer your questions, do you expect to hear the truth?  It's like a bunch of poker players at a table discussing a hand.  They're all telling lies to each other to get the upper hand.

I would tell anything to fulfill my trading goal.

You're missing the fact that some people don't pay for electricity directly.  They pay in other hidden, indirect ways, but as long they're not getting a bill for the kilowatt hours used per month they believe it's free.  Miners living with parents, or taking power from work are two examples.  They will continue to mine long after mining is unprofitable either due to a lack of interest in bitcoin or a more efficient technology being adopted (FPGAs, ASICs, etc).  If those that posses FPGA/ASIC boards choose not to share their toys they can make life for GPU miners very difficult.

Why do I use Bitcoin?  To make money from my PCs burning electricity.  Bitcoin currently has many negatives.  It's very slow to confirm transactions.  It needs to be seconds, not minutes/hours.  It can't be used to buy items online that I want to buy.  The software is cumbersome to use.  The exchange market into other currencies is almost totally dependent on MtGox.

I'm just here for the cash.

The future of mining is in FPGAs.  CPU mining was replaced by GPUs.  GPUs will be replaced by FPGAs.  FPGAs will be replaced by ASICs.  The latter will only happen if bitcoins manage to keep their value long term and more real world uses are found for bitcoins in general.  ASICs require a very large investment.