Will bitcoin based sales transactions volume fall as mining difficulty rises ?

[Poodlehat]

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 ?

[naphto]

I don't think so. It is not really worth mining bitcoins now, so most people are buying it.
Bitcoin will probably die because of an other reason (transaction fees, time to processed for a transaction, and so on)

[elebit]

Or will the price increase as miners want don't want to sell too cheap, seeing as they've invested in $10k mining asic rigs?

Nobody knows. Anything can happen. Exciting, isn't it?

[Birdy]

For every miner that sells Bitcoins there is someone buying them to hoard, speculate, spend or whatever.
Those people won't go away just because there are less miners (unless some miner groups are so strong that they are a danger for the network).

[Poodlehat]

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.

[DannyHamilton]

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.

I've never mined a single Satoshi, and have transacted well over a cumulative $20,000 worth of bitcoin in the past year.

My father tried out mining with the graphics card on his gaming system when I introduced him to the bitcoin concept a few months ago.  I'd estimate that he mined about 0.01 BTC in total before he got bored with is and uninstaled the mining software.  I'm nearly certain that he's transacted over 1,000 times that amount since, and I believe he's been playing around with day-trading a bit as well lately.

My sister has never mined anything.  I know she's hoarding some bitcoins in hopes that she can use them for something fun when they can finally be spent on everday mainstream purchases.

I've met many people who are acquiring and/or using bitcoins without doing any mining at all.

You need to get out of your bubble of miner friends and see the bitcoin world for its true size and diversity.