Been away from Bitcoin and cryptos since 2015... What have I missed?

[Lorenzo]

Howdy! I knew about Bitcoin since 2011 but only became seriously interested in late 2013 just after the big price rise that happened prior to Mt. Gox going under. I was quite a frequent poster on these forums until the first half of 2015. Then I went to college and studies got in the way of posting so I kind of lost interest in Bitcoin for the most part.

I was pretty deeply involved with the cryptocurrency scene during those months. I bought coins through LocalBitcoins (which I still hold to this day ), gambled with them, ran my own faucets, traded altcoins, printed my own paper wallets, took part in signature campaigns, and mined with USB miners for fun. However, my knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies pretty much stops abruptly at around 2015.

So my question is this, what are some of the major developments that I've missed and should know about?

(For example, I remember learning about how GPUs were used to mine BTC in 2011 but that info was well out of date by 2013.)

[azguard]

What you missed?

Let say that for the first time bitcoin is worth more then physical gold (breaking news on all major papers and stock exchanges), new ATH, many scams coin were created in that time while youre were gone. Some coins try hard to take and be replacement for bitcoin.

So many to tell and so little time in this i suggest that you read some crypto related news to try to follow thing that happen in almost 18 month that is quite big period for research and to tell.

[Lorenzo]

What you missed?

Let say that for the first time bitcoin is worth more then physical gold (breaking news on all major papers and stock exchanges), new ATH, many scams coin were created in that time while youre were gone. Some coins try hard to take and be replacement for bitcoin.

So many to tell and so little time in this i suggest that you read some crypto related news to try to follow thing that happen in almost 18 month that is quite big period for research and to tell.

Yeah, it's the price rise that got be interested again. It's on the front page of BBC right now.

To be fair, Bitcoin did reach close to $1,200 in November 2013 but only very, very briefly. It was definitely not the sustained long term price trend that we're seeing now. If this upward trend continues past this region and into new territory then things are going to get very interesting very fast. For starters, a lot of people who left during the last bear market will probably be back.

[BigBoom3599]

Some things that you might need to know or everyone know :
1. Bitcoin price increased to $1.2K again
2. Mining reward now is 25BTC and regular people can't make profit by mining bitcoin
3. Slow transaction confirmation because block is full
3. Debate about SegWit, LN, BU, sidechain, etc
4. Many services accept bitcoin including microsoft, dell and steam. Check these links if you want to know services/merchants that accept bitcoin :
http://bitcoin.directory/
https://99bitcoins.com/who-accepts-bitcoins-payment-companies-stores-take-bitcoins/
5. Ponzi/scam investment and fail/scam altcoin investment become common
6. (Add if there's something that people must know)

You might also find more spammer/scammer and FUDs in this forum.

2. The mining reward is currently 12.5BTC not 25 
To add:

• Ethereum's DAO was hacked which resulted in millions of ether stolen. The Ethereum Foundation and community decided to fork to retrieve the funds, this created a minority fork, Ethereum Classic.
• You can look at coinmarketcap for current prices
• Bitcoin is in desperate need of a scaling solution, the current average tx fee is $0.50, with 75,000 unconfirmed transactions
• The decision for a Bitcoin ETF will be made on 11th of March

[Kemarit]

Howdy! I knew about Bitcoin since 2011 but only became seriously interested in late 2013 just after the big price rise that happened prior to Mt. Gox going under. I was quite a frequent poster on these forums until the first half of 2015. Then I went to college and studies got in the way of posting so I kind of lost interest in Bitcoin for the most part.

I was pretty deeply involved with the cryptocurrency scene during those months. I bought coins through LocalBitcoins (which I still hold to this day ), gambled with them, ran my own faucets, traded altcoins, printed my own paper wallets, took part in signature campaigns, and mined with USB miners for fun. However, my knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies pretty much stops abruptly at around 2015.

So my question is this, what are some of the major developments that I've missed and should know about?

(For example, I remember learning about how GPUs were used to mine BTC in 2011 but that info was well out of date by 2013.)

First welcome back and your are lucky not to have your account hacked.

1. Bitcoin gaining momentum as of now because of all the SEC decision looms on March 11
   so price is rising in anticipation of the decision.
2. Bitcoin transaction fees are rising. Blockchain is always clogged. As a result,
3. The whole BU and Segwit drama is still ongoing. Whether to do a hard fork or soft fork.
4. Online dice game is still there up and running and most likely earning a lot of money now.

That's only I can think of right now.
 

[Dmitry.Vastov]

Well, Though one year is really short. You have missed a lot things since you left.  Bitcoin reach the ATH and still kicking. In fact, we surpass gold's price. Just like that. We crashed at the middle of 2016 and recovered at the end of that year. And now the price is really high and could possibly rise up to $2000 if the ETF is approved by SEC. The rally is unstoppable.

[BTCmax24]

That's why bitcoin is very interesting a lot of surprises happened. 2015 when I used bitcoin for the first time which has a price of 500dollars per 1btc and didnt make a serious move to study the bitcoin until I came back and regained my interest but Im little bit late because from 500USD now it has 1200+USD,what a big surprised, I missed a lot too.

[faatipoke]

you missed the rally which exceeds gold price

[cpfreeplz]

A few people claimed to be satoshi, master-P (an escrow on this forum) scammed like 20BTC, and segwit didn't take off. Other than that uhmmm... normal forum drama LOL!

[LittleBitFunny]

You picked a very interesting time to come back since you're here during this huge increase in price (to over $1250 and, probably temporarily, over the gold price per ounce), and that might be why you came.  Part of the reason for it is the ETF, which people seem to be pretty excited about.

Since the halving in July 2016 mining is not profitable for any normal person who isn't part of a huge company - the mining is now mostly concentrated in the hands of a few companies, many of which are based in China.  There's also a couple of major cloud mining services like Hashnest but none of these new services are a good investment in my view and many of them are scams (Hashnest and a couple others are most likely not scams, just poor investments).  

Transactions are a big problem at the moment with thousands of transactions stuck in the mempool at any one time, even those with good transaction fees (I've been sending a small amount of Bitcoin with ~3 mBTC transaction fees for over 2 hours with no confirmations), but solutions to this are being developed, the most prominent of which are Segregated Witness and Bitcoin Unlimited, neither of which people can seem to agree on due to various dramatised issues.

As its own investment Bitcoin is definitely great right now due to its volatility caused by traders around a kind of safety net from its strong community.

[bohr]

You missed much, but probably these last months have been some of the most impressive in the history of bitcoin, bitcoin reached all time highs, surpassed the price of gold and it is likely it will go over 1300 very soon.

[NeuroticFish]

Most changes are already covered, I will try to add some extras:
* anonymous altcoins got more attention and traction (also quite a debate about which is better or if aren't they illegal)
* there are much more altcoin ICO IPO schemes, many are investing big money in promoting their new coins (harder to say which coins worth investing or not)
* there may be more opportunities to mine altcoins than in 2015 (ETH/ETC, XMR, ZEC, XZC, ... not only ETH)
* some coins rose a lot, including Bitcoin, some are even more forgotten, some are trying to draw more attention (SegWit in LTC)..

All in all there were quite a lot of changes

[Velkro]

Then I went to college and studies got in the way of posting so I kind of lost interest in Bitcoin for the most part.

In software matter, a lot have been upgraded. New features in core, segwit ready, pruning old blocks and many optimizations.
In price matter, its as you see, you get back on ATH so not best time to get back in term of investment.

[Bitcoin_Mafia_Me]

Hey Lorenzo,

You and I are in the same boat I was into digital currency pretty heavy in 2014 - 2015 and then life got in the
way and dragged me out of my happy little corner of the crypto 'verse. I am back again, though, and renewing
my goal of having at least part of my income come from bitcoin (and a handful of alts).

Cheers and welcome back!

Cynthia

[SALTLending]

Not much just a lot of arguing, the fun starts now! Especially if the ETF gets approved!

[Mihaylovic]

If you had enough money to invest in 2015 and if u knew how to trade you could be a millioner by now  .

[lovewiki]

It seems you missed Cryptsy's closure at the end of 2015 and if you really didn't hear about it, you are actually lucky you didn't get burnt.

I wish I was as lucky as you did.

[BitcoinBarrel]

I don't think you missed a whole lot other than Block-reward halving.

[wintermeasures]

Howdy! I knew about Bitcoin since 2011 but only became seriously interested in late 2013 just after the big price rise that happened prior to Mt. Gox going under. I was quite a frequent poster on these forums until the first half of 2015. Then I went to college and studies got in the way of posting so I kind of lost interest in Bitcoin for the most part.

I was pretty deeply involved with the cryptocurrency scene during those months. I bought coins through LocalBitcoins (which I still hold to this day ), gambled with them, ran my own faucets, traded altcoins, printed my own paper wallets, took part in signature campaigns, and mined with USB miners for fun. However, my knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies pretty much stops abruptly at around 2015.

So my question is this, what are some of the major developments that I've missed and should know about?

(For example, I remember learning about how GPUs were used to mine BTC in 2011 but that info was well out of date by 2013.)

You have Missed Many Important things about Bitcoin Like You Don't Enjoy the Bitcoin when it was Just Near About 200-300$ And You also Missed the Bitcoin Mining Because Now a Days Bitcoin Mining is Not Profitable Because Of the Block Reward is Halved Due to the Halving Passed Last Year......

[btcdiggingmaster]

You missed much, but probably these last months have been some of the most impressive in the history of bitcoin, bitcoin reached all time highs, surpassed the price of gold and it is likely it will go over 1300 very soon.

I hope he didn't miss much about bitcoin because in the year 2015 because the price bitcoin is low in the year 2015.
At that time if he can buy some bitcoin means now he will made some profit through bitcoin.
Yes, very soon the price of the bitcoin will reach to 1500$ it will surpass the gold in coming days.