So now that bitcoin price seems stable, will there be money to be made?

[mizike29]

I built this guy his computer some months back and he said it was for bitcoins.  I did not know what that was at the time, and that is when I started looking into it.  He made some coins but had also bought a 1000 coins at 86 cents each.  He then sold them when they hit 30 bux each and made a freaking killing.  Now when I jumped in I only have made 15 coins from mining and its getting harder and harder to make, so I figure I am going to buy them today at 14 bux a coin.  What are the chances of that kind of profit ever occuring again?  It seems very improbable and seems that its either going to fail completely or your talking staying in the 30 to 40 dollar range for a bitcoin even after a year or so, which is no type of major profit.  It seems the only people that will make real money on this were those that jumped in super early and those that sold right at the bubble?

[grid]

It's anybody's guess really. As with anything if you want to make money you have to take a risk. Buy some hardware, mine bitcoins, wait for the price to go up and profit! Mining will get harder and harder, that's a given. When/If the price goes up - who knows!

Consider starting a BTC business - that's an area that is still open to early adopters. Mining for BTC is already past that stage.

[Elwar]

Bitcoins will not take off until they come up with a way to put a bitcoin in a stripper's G-string.

[mizike29]

Well I am mining but 1.5 bitcoins every 2 days isnt going to get me anywhere and its only going to get harder to mine, so makes sense that it needs to be treated like a stock, and invest and buy low bitcoins price which I am at 14 bux, but then pray it gets up to a 100 bux a coin in the near future to make some type of profit like my friend did, which not sure if that will happen, seems I missed that bubble of profit.  I believe in bitcoins and am hoping that is what is going to happen.  Wish I could figure out how to open a bitcoin business.

[Yeti]

Stable? You mean because after one week of suspended trading on the major exchange that does like 99% of BTC/USD volume the price does not rise or fall on average that the price of Bitcoin is stable? Far from it ...

[mizike29]

No as in the theory was when MTGOX opened back up the thought of me and many others were people would withdrawl there money, selll ther bitcoins, prices would drop to 5 to 9 bux, and we dedicated bitcoiners could buy plenty up cheap and then when they get back to 30 to 35 bux each actually make a good profit.  What actually happened was MTGOX opened back up and just like they said, it opened around 17 and has stayed stable around 17, so the big hack, disaster for bitcoin, death of bitcoin was actually survived pretty well and didnt do much to the market beyond the original crash.

[Elwar]

so I figure I am going to buy them today at 14 bux a coin.  What are the chances of that kind of profit ever occuring again? 

Where are you getting them for $14 a coin?

[MrSam]

Well I am mining but 1.5 bitcoins every 2 days isnt going to get me anywhere and its only going to get harder to mine, so makes sense that it needs to be treated like a stock, and invest and buy low bitcoins price which I am at 14 bux, but then pray it gets up to a 100 bux a coin in the near future to make some type of profit like my friend did, which not sure if that will happen, seems I missed that bubble of profit.  I believe in bitcoins and am hoping that is what is going to happen.  Wish I could figure out how to open a bitcoin business.

If you join a smaller pool you would make up to 7,8 BTC every few days.

About the price : The harder it is going to be, the higher the price will go

[Yeti]

No as in the theory was when MTGOX opened back up the thought of me and many others were people would withdrawl there money, selll ther bitcoins, prices would drop to 5 to 9 bux, and we dedicated bitcoiners could buy plenty up cheap and then when they get back to 30 to 35 bux each actually make a good profit.

Yeah, but that was only the end-of-the-world-prophets like AngelusWebDesign proclaiming that the sky is falling or small numbers of random dudes that posted "Mt. Gox is done! I'm pulling all my money out!" when all the while we reasonable people were still keeping our calm and waiting for the dust to settle.

Actually, the sight of an untouched balance, even after there was chaos on Mt. Gox with the big sellof and even after seeing my user data on pastebin, was quite something. I still got all my Bitcoins so what's with all the panic?! I bet most of the 60,000 users were not even aware of any hack or suspended trading. Actually the people that wanted their money out of Mt. Gox did so in the time between withdrawal of funds was possible and trading re-opened. And even then the price on TradeHill only dropped to $15. That's even less of a plunge than one of these recent "regular" plunges that brought the value down to $12 with "pure" speculation (no hacks or anything).

That being said, all it takes for another crazy-wild-ride-rally is news reports that bring in flocks of newbies and tons of new "OMG!" threads.

[mizike29]

yeah thats what I meant, there was so much drama surrounding the stolen bitcoins, then the MTGOX hack and misinformation you just new that so many would sell, pull there money out, move to another exchange and the price would drop like a brick then come back up and stabilize, of course this was speculation but so many forums were saying the same thing, bitcoin is done, mtgox is done, people using it for drugs, laundering blah blah blah, so I like many others were hoping it was going to drop down, I couldnt believe my friend made 28k in profit with his freaking bitcoins I was so pissed that I got in late when I knew about bitcoins when they were worth pennies and built his first bitcoin mining rig. 

Oh I snagged some off of tradehill for 14 bux the other day, think they went to like 15 and some change for a bit too.

[Existence]

Of course there will be money to be made! If bitcoins have some sort of value, some sort of money will be made.

[noob_jul11]

Call me a pessimist but I just don't see the future in BTC. My disclaimer: I'm a newbie as well. In BTC, playing and researching for just a month now.

Exchanges factor: Issue with MtGox as an example. These exchanges mushroomed together with the BTC bubble (if you don't mind me calling that), probably without much security measures in place. A friend of mine had 20 btc in with them and still hasn't got it back even though MtGox claims that they are in the process of returning all their customers.

Greed factor: Even on this forum, you can find the btc pyramid scheme. People are just ripping each other off like crazy.

Mining factor: http://bitcoinx.com/profit/ calculates the profitability of mining. As the difficulty rate goes up, it'll be less profitable to mine it. The early adopters will want to see btc continue until they cash out but that's it.

I think those that got in early benefitted from the USD30/btc (if they cashed out). I just don't see enough businesses using btc (granted btc is still in the infancy stage). Even though http://bitcoinx.com/profit/ is selling bitcoin tshirts; but notice that it's not even accepting btc as one form of payment.

In another post, I had mentioned more reasons why it's very discouraging for newbies to enter the bitcoin scene (from my perspective of course). Without newbies, there won't be newer markets.

[jstorm]

In another post, I had mentioned more reasons why it's very discouraging for newbies to enter the bitcoin scene (from my perspective of course). Without newbies, there won't be newer markets.

Have to agree on that note - am a newbie myself and it's very difficult to "get going". The more I read the more confused I'm getting!

But I'm not giving up, that's for sure. I think there's potential here and it's an exciting, too.

[Elwar]

The more I read the more confused I'm getting!

This is the very reason that I believe bitcoins have no place to go but up.

When bitcoins were much newer they had a few fledgling exchanges. It was mainly just some guy who set up a website and set up a very basic way of trading bitcoins. Hardly anybody used it but it was interesting.

Then the more professional exchanges came out that made it easier to exchange bitcoins for money and vice versa.

Starting out with bitcoins right now takes some thought and a degree of knowledge to get going.

How long before professional companies come along and make it easy to get bitcoins.

Once it is as easy to get bitcoins and use them as it is to set up a PayPal account, many more people will use them.

The fact that there are 6 million or so bitcoins out there at close to $20 each means that there is a $120 million market of consumers out there ready to consume. There are literal millionaires who have bitcoins to spend.

I am fine with jumping through a few hoops to get in before it becomes mainstream and the value jumps even more.

[Tulkas]

Well I am mining but 1.5 bitcoins every 2 days isnt going to get me anywhere and its only going to get harder to mine, so makes sense that it needs to be treated like a stock, and invest and buy low bitcoins price which I am at 14 bux, but then pray it gets up to a 100 bux a coin in the near future to make some type of profit like my friend did, which not sure if that will happen, seems I missed that bubble of profit.  I believe in bitcoins and am hoping that is what is going to happen.  Wish I could figure out how to open a bitcoin business.

If you join a smaller pool you would make up to 7,8 BTC every few days.

About the price : The harder it is going to be, the higher the price will go

I don't think so. There is no correlation between mining difficulty and price. The price will go up if there is more people willing to buy bitcoins than people willing to sell then. Just because something is difficulty to obtain doesn't means people will pay lots of money for it.

[dazedtrader]

Price stability has got to be a good thing for the Bitcoin economy. Think long term people - if you're running a business that accepts BTC, you don't want crazy price swings as they make your cashflow unpredictable from one day to the next.

[serchanto]

I think as more and more people find out about BTC and new businesses accepting BTC emerge the price will keep rising.  MtGox leak revealed it had 60K or so users (with most joining recently), still plenty of growth to be had and the number of people interested will outpace the number of bitcoins in circulation.  Plus it's a good hedge against traditional currencies fluctuations and inflation.  Currencies that are controlled by one central authority and are not backed by anything but trust in that authority and paper they are printed on have been known to collapse, sooner or later.  It has happened in my lifetime.  My 0.02 BTC.

[mizike29]

I just dont see me making 28k bux off of a 1000 dollar investment ever again in this bitcoin situation like my friend did with his.  Starting at 86 cents a coin and selling at 30 bux a coin is a major profit margin where im starting in around 15 bux a coin, it has to go way the heck up to make any type of real profit like that and im worried I and many others missed that part of the boat.

Still love the concept and bitcoin though

Also yes I think being a NEWBY to bitcoins makes it difficult to get more people involved.  I am way above average in computer technology intelligence and can build and repair any type of computer, liquid gaming machines whatever and I still had to have the guy that I built his Bitcoin Mining rig for, log in remotely to my computer to set up my bitcoin system and set it up to mine for deepbit.  Its the coding, thats old school, something I missed and is harder to comprehend.  We are so used to double clicking, installing and app and there ya go ur  up and running.  THis is a little more complex then that and to get it done where it works well and makes sense is tough.  SOMEONE NEEDS TO MAKE A NICE APP THAT IS SECURE AND INSTALLS EVERYTHING YOU NEED, ENCRYPTS YOUR WALLET etc, that woudl be awesome.

[Hunterbunter]

I think you're missing a big point about bitcoins mizike29. Your friend wasn't investing in bitcoins, he was speculating on its exchange rate, and it's rising scarcity. Just like you don't know if your $1000 speculation today will be worth 25x in the future, no one knew that bitcoins would go from 0.86 -> 30, and thus, they profited from speculation. The same thing often happens on the share market...people speculate on a low priced stock, sometimes it tanks, sometimes it booms, and early buyers make ridiculous returns. There is no intelligent thought into the underlying reasons, so it is speculating.

An investor in bitcoins actually does or commissions some work for bitcoins, and is someone who either builds a business that only accepts bitcoins, or someone who is paid and spends bitcoins, since it's designed to be a trade token. They're investing their time into them, which is one of two things that give bitcoins any actual value.

It's like you build computers - you accepted money for it, when you could just as easily have accepted bitcoins. Why didn't you accept bitcoins? Is it because you didn't know/trust you could spend it? Now you do?

[mizike29]

I didnt accept bitcoins because they were worth nothing and no one had ever heard of them except for this guy lol.  Plus he didnt have any at the time I built his computer, but now for sure, like I posted in the other forum, I would definitely build or repair computers for bitcoins I guess on the hopes of positive speculation.  Yeah I understood how he made the money, it just pissed me off because I missed it lol and built his computer AHHH, but I just pray that bitcoins do get stronger and I can make some money from it.