Why aren't more people buying bitcoins?

[airdata]

When I got into bitcoin prices were where they are now, and difficulty level was 1,500,000 less than it is now.  So at that time, mining made sense.

Right now, mining and investing in mining hardware really doesnt make much sense.  Buying bitcoins right now is a much better investment, IMO. 

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[Herodes]

Well, there's been many failures related to bitcoin over the last months.

- mtGox hacking
- MyBitCoin scandal
- Bitomat.pl failure (although mtGox generously bought them and reinstated the lost funds)
- Bruce Wagner revealed as a conman (now, recently).

This coupled with lack of major press (?), and a bit of a hard time to get started with bitcoins,
the forum turning into a trollplace, it's not that easy for a newbe to get into bitcoins. And now,
with a declining price, it may not look like the best investment to be buying at the moment.

Who knows where we would have been if everything went smooth, and there was no failures?

[N12]

Because the price is going down.

[Piper67]

Actually, people aren't buying bitcoins because they're not particularly easy to buy. If you're a regular Joe who just heard about Bitcoin and thinks it's an idea with some merit, think of what you have to do in order to just get your hands on 100 BTC.

That's one of the reasons I am so keen on the idea of a Bitcoin ATM. Now, if someone could just come up with one... 

[Piper67]

My question is why are all the trolls coming in saying sell sell sell!  instead of buy buy buy!!!   we have the wrong kind of trolls. 

I consider myself a noobie, but after the second "THE END IS HERE"  Or "SELL SELL SELL!" thread  its so obvious they are trolling.  That got me thinking why havent we had any "buy!" trolls ?

Heh, in a weird way, it's a vote of confidence in Bitcoin. The trolls yell SELL SELL SELL, because they want more BTC. If they wanted more dollars, they'd be yelling BUY BUY BUY.

[airdata]

Because the price is going down.

Best time to buy!

Actually, people aren't buying bitcoins because they're not particularly easy to buy. If you're a regular Joe who just heard about Bitcoin and thinks it's an idea with some merit, think of what you have to do in order to just get your hands on 100 BTC.

That's one of the reasons I am so keen on the idea of a Bitcoin ATM. Now, if someone could just come up with one...  

True...  There would be alot more buyers if people could just whip out their credit card or use their paypal account.  I've stressed in many other threads that the anonymity of bitcoin is horrible for its growth since it gives scammers all sorts of easy targets with no risk of punishment.

[N12]

Best time to buy!

Have you said the same thing at 25, 20, 15 and 10 USD?

[Blackout]

I agree that the main thing causing lack of growth of bitcoin is that it is just a geeky pain in the ass not geared towards the common person and the common person would not even understand a need / use for it except maybe for two things right now:

#1 silk road

College kids find out about silk road, which only takes bitcoin, which leads them to find out about bitcoin and want to buy stuff.  It is ridiculous but this is probably the number one thing holding the bitcoin to any real value right now because why in the hell would you go through all the hoops and hassles for anything else?  Wire money to some strange internet company you no nothing about to get a weird intermediate currency / commodity to buy what? Overpriced socks and bad dry and canned food? Why not just BUY the stuff with your currency.

2 - gambling sites

People love gambling and bitcoin is perfect for this - we haven't seen any major sites embrace it but little ones have popped up.  So you can actually play poker online for real money, but it's still a pain in the ass for the average joe.

All other bitcoin value right now (which I guess would be the #3 thing pegging it to any value) is based on speculation from miners and computer geeks and some investors / traders buying and selling - or a few people trying to move money around without being taxed / noticed. There are some exeptions with the very very few trendy places in NYC and a few other tech hubs in the world that actually have real places that accept bitcoins fpr tangible things like food and items without markups - but again the question begs - why would you use bitcoins there if you are a REGULAR person? You wouldn't, because you would just use your normal currency.  The people spending bitcoins at these places right now are miners who are feeling cool that they got lunch out of letting their gpus run.

I have tried to spread bitcoin and the idea of it to non tech friends and it's a hard sell - unless they are a stoner and you tell them about silk road, then they are motivated.

There needs to be the SAME level of motivation for the average joe and it needs to be easy and greatly improved - the client, the wallet issues, backing them up securely - this all needs to be in a nice friendly app / gui for dummies - otherwise this is going to remain a technotoy currency for hobbyists, despite its lofty ideas. Average people don't want to hear about keys and encryption, it makes them run away, this needs to be built in to the client with backup built in and "and idiots guide" book pdf with the client or app.

The easiest / fastest way to get bitcoins so far is exchB by far (for U.S,).  You deposit cash, you get your money on account very fast - BUT - this is STILL too complex for the average joe... he wants to go to a place like a bank and just hand  money over and get the bitcoins and buy his stuff on silk road or play his poker or send his money to friends in a third world country.  Average joe wants to buy some bitcoins right now and hand over the money and have the coins - average joe is not a stock market person and doesn't understand that now he has to put in a 'bid' order... "what's that?" says average joe? screw this and just uses his cash.


Bitcoin atms, and direct buy bitcoins at current price instantly needs to happen and sell in both directions easily and not on some IRC channel which is again, for geeks. Mom doesn't know what an IRC channel is. Mom knows what ebay is. If mom is really hip, mom might know what paypal is. That's as far as it goes.

The above two companies control the internet trading grid along with amazon, and for bitcoin to break through that grid it needs to be as easy, but of course, banks and ebay and paypal will see this as a threat - so it's hard to do anything direct credit card or paypal to bitcoin OFFICIALLY because it's a chargeback nightmare - but the deposit cash into an atm and get bitcoins might work.

Then there needs to be some more positive national TV coverage, and it just might work.. currently, it's geek hobby at best and only exists because of the above and miners spending and selling.

When the regular people want in, and have reason, and the massive layer of middlemen curs down, it could go through the roof. This is not currently happening though.

- Blackout

[tacotime]

Unrealistic ROI for miners

Basically at the current price miners are making a ton of cash, we will see some really crazy volumes (and investment) when the price hits 3-5$ USD.  No one at the moment wants to be giving their money to miners who are making 80% ROI, though, why pay $2 for a bunch of bananas that you by all calculations are only worth $1?  Investors aren't dumb and can tell when they are being ripped off.

BTC going down to 3-5$ USD/BTC will be the best thing to ever happen to bitcoin, I think

[da2ce7]

BTC going down to 3-5$ USD/BTC will be the best thing to ever happen to bitcoin, I think

Everyday that goes past and bitcoin doesn’t drop down so low; I'm getting more and more bullish.

Something's Gotta Give.

I don't believe that the big investors have withdrawn their funds from mogos and the other trading sites... I suspect that those funds are just sitting there waiting for the next rally.  However the market is much wiser now, I think that once the goods and services economy finally reaches a certain threshold we will see the next big massive rally.  (It is clear that the global investment interest in bitcoin is much more than $80M USD now)

It is all about picking the bottom and buying big.

Let’s see... I don't want to commit to a time-frame, but my gut is starting to get excited again.

[fcmatt]

I do not think anyone has mentioned the early adopter issue too.
All it takes is for one early adopter to decide, for example, that he would like to buy a really
nice car or a down payment on a second home. So he goes onto an exchange and sells 5000+
BTC at once or over a week period.

I know some people have done some tracking of the early coins and was not the conclusion that
quite a few were not moving around? Thus being held by these "early adopters".

So buying at 10-15 could be a mid term mistake when a few individuals can hammer the price
with a few clicks/taps of the mouse/keyboard. And eventually they will I bet.

But this is all speculation. I do not buy BTC. I mine them and feel more comfortable in my current position.

[S3052]

I agree that the main thing causing lack of growth of bitcoin is that it is just a geeky pain in the ass not geared towards the common person and the common person would not even understand a need / use for it except maybe for two things right now:

#1 silk road

College kids find out about silk road, which only takes bitcoin, which leads them to find out about bitcoin and want to buy stuff.  It is ridiculous but this is probably the number one thing holding the bitcoin to any real value right now because why in the hell would you go through all the hoops and hassles for anything else?  Wire money to some strange internet company you no nothing about to get a weird intermediate currency / commodity to buy what? Overpriced socks and bad dry and canned food? Why not just BUY the stuff with your currency.

2 - gambling sites

People love gambling and bitcoin is perfect for this - we haven't seen any major sites embrace it but little ones have popped up.  So you can actually play poker online for real money, but it's still a pain in the ass for the average joe.

All other bitcoin value right now (which I guess would be the #3 thing pegging it to any value) is based on speculation from miners and computer geeks and some investors / traders buying and selling - or a few people trying to move money around without being taxed / noticed. There are some exeptions with the very very few trendy places in NYC and a few other tech hubs in the world that actually have real places that accept bitcoins fpr tangible things like food and items without markups - but again the question begs - why would you use bitcoins there if you are a REGULAR person? You wouldn't, because you would just use your normal currency.  The people spending bitcoins at these places right now are miners who are feeling cool that they got lunch out of letting their gpus run.

I have tried to spread bitcoin and the idea of it to non tech friends and it's a hard sell - unless they are a stoner and you tell them about silk road, then they are motivated.

There needs to be the SAME level of motivation for the average joe and it needs to be easy and greatly improved - the client, the wallet issues, backing them up securely - this all needs to be in a nice friendly app / gui for dummies - otherwise this is going to remain a technotoy currency for hobbyists, despite its lofty ideas. Average people don't want to hear about keys and encryption, it makes them run away, this needs to be built in to the client with backup built in and "and idiots guide" book pdf with the client or app.

The easiest / fastest way to get bitcoins so far is exchB by far (for U.S,).  You deposit cash, you get your money on account very fast - BUT - this is STILL too complex for the average joe... he wants to go to a place like a bank and just hand  money over and get the bitcoins and buy his stuff on silk road or play his poker or send his money to friends in a third world country.  Average joe wants to buy some bitcoins right now and hand over the money and have the coins - average joe is not a stock market person and doesn't understand that now he has to put in a 'bid' order... "what's that?" says average joe? screw this and just uses his cash.


Bitcoin atms, and direct buy bitcoins at current price instantly needs to happen and sell in both directions easily and not on some IRC channel which is again, for geeks. Mom doesn't know what an IRC channel is. Mom knows what ebay is. If mom is really hip, mom might know what paypal is. That's as far as it goes.

The above two companies control the internet trading grid along with amazon, and for bitcoin to break through that grid it needs to be as easy, but of course, banks and ebay and paypal will see this as a threat - so it's hard to do anything direct credit card or paypal to bitcoin OFFICIALLY because it's a chargeback nightmare - but the deposit cash into an atm and get bitcoins might work.

Then there needs to be some more positive national TV coverage, and it just might work.. currently, it's geek hobby at best and only exists because of the above and miners spending and selling.

When the regular people want in, and have reason, and the massive layer of middlemen curs down, it could go through the roof. This is not currently happening though.

- Blackout

+1. Well written and so true.

By the way, to the point that we need more positive media coverage: We are starting a PR campaign soon (see thread from piper).

[GeniuSxBoY]

Not really any hope for bitcoin. New investors have enough data to see the continuous downward slide to $0.


We lost Bruce...
We lost Dwolla...
We lost Tradehill...
We lost Mybitcoin...
We lost investors...
We lost forum activity...


Only thing we've got is MtGox.




Silkkroad has nothing to do with ANYTHING. It was a fabricated website to get on the news.

[fcmatt]

Not really any hope for bitcoin. New investors have enough data to see the continuous downward slide to $0.


We lost Bruce...
We lost Dwolla...
We lost Tradehill...
We lost Mybitcoin...
We lost investors...
We lost forum activity...


Only thing we've got is MtGox.




Silkkroad has nothing to do with ANYTHING. It was a fabricated website to get on the news.

Bruce, Dwolla, Forum, etc... Are not Bitcoin. Investors come and go.
How do you figure we lost TradeHill?

When tradehill stopped using dwolla it was a pretty big hit for them. I moved to mtgox myself along with
many others. Mabye that is what he was thinking of?

[Blackout]

None of the things you mentioned are relevant except mybitcoin perhaps.

Silk road is fabricated? Really?  Then I suppose the stuff several people I know purchased and received and used is imaginary... just like bitcoin.

The issue, and I repeat, is getting bitcoin usable and adopted by regular people for convenient reasons for tangible things.  Do that, and it will skyrocket.

[Nagle]

Not really any hope for bitcoin. New investors have enough data to see the continuous downward slide to $0.


We lost Bruce...
We lost Dwolla...
We lost Tradehill...
We lost Mybitcoin...
We lost investors...
We lost forum activity...


Only thing we've got is MtGox.

Mt. Gox seems to have a major crisis about once a month. And we still don't know if 1) they have the financial strength to cover the losses they had in the break in, and 2) if they're trade on their own market. As the price goes down, and they have to pay out more cash than they take in, we'll find out about 1).

Remember, the trouble with Bitcoin "exchanges" is that they're also depository institutions, holding the funds of others.  Uninsured, unaudited depository institutions.  That didn't work out well for the customers of "online wallet" services.

Silkkroad has nothing to do with ANYTHING. It was a fabricated website to get on the news.

Silk Road appears to be real, but it's not clear how much Bitcoin traffic it generates.

[pekv2]

I will be buying some soon, it is such a great currency, I just like BTC so much. Easy transfers, everything is just easy with it. You are your own bank account without fees. I will definitely be sticking around for a long time.

[Blackout]

If it weren't for silk road I doubt anyone would even know about bitcoin.  That's what got all the major news coverage that got geeks mining. The wired article alone is like placing a million dollar ad out for bitcoin:

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/06/silkroad/

It is about a week after about that point that the price skyrocketed.  

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#rg120zvztgSzm1g10zm2g25

Coincidence? I think not.

[fcmatt]

mtgox must be doing alright enough to buy that polish exchange for ?17000? BTC.

[coined]

he secretly started a fractional reserve system, users don't need to know  

[Nagle]

he secretly started a fractional reserve system, users don't need to know  

That's a criminal offense in Japan. Mt. Gox is a money transfer firm at best, and those are required to keep customer funds separate from their own funds.

[GeniuSxBoY]

Silkkroad has nothing to do with ANYTHING. It was a fabricated website to get on the news.

Silk Road appears to be real, but it's not clear how much Bitcoin traffic it generates.

Silkk road was supposed to be an illegal drug trading site using bitcoins before bitcoins had any value. There is no way a person would accept a monetary form without value(bitcoin) for something they could easily trade for a monetary form with proven value(USD, CANADIAN).

[TraderTimm]

Ah, I see the requisite bitcoin trolls are all here.

They always come out when price trends down, like worms after a hard rain

They have to dust off their topic list a bit though, the old "Early Adopters can CRUSH US ANY SECOND" and "Mt. GOX!! < Insert panic topic here >" is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Funny thing is, hashing power hasn't dropped in any major way. You'd think if bitcoin was as 'dead' as these people keep spouting, it would be trending toward zero.

But carry on, the amusement factor still makes it worth reading

[fcmatt]

What is it about this forum and the over use of the term troll?
I swear to god it pops up in every other thread around here. Never saw anything like it.

The person who posted before cannot possibly refute the the things he listed as something
that could never happen. We know people have large amounts of BTC they mined long ago or bought
very cheaply compared to today. They could very well sell at anytime.

Mtgox has had problems that caused chaos before, therefore, it can happen again.

Instead the person who posted before just throws out the word troll. Does not even attempt
to explain why people may not be buying bitcoins. Does not try to explain why they should.

Just uses the word troll and has this really smug way about him.

c'est la vie.

[DrYe5]

When I got into bitcoin prices were where they are now, and difficulty level was 1,500,000 less than it is now.  So at that time, mining made sense.

Right now, mining and investing in mining hardware really doesnt make much sense.  Buying bitcoins right now is a much better investment, IMO. 

Why would anyone want bitcoins?

The point of mining is to get dollars, not bitcoins.

[fcmatt]

When I got into bitcoin prices were where they are now, and difficulty level was 1,500,000 less than it is now.  So at that time, mining made sense.

Right now, mining and investing in mining hardware really doesnt make much sense.  Buying bitcoins right now is a much better investment, IMO. 

Why would anyone want bitcoins?

The point of mining is to get dollars, not bitcoins.

Now you know that is not true for everyone who is mining. I pretty much figure when I am almost done mining
I will stash away 100+ BTC for the long term. Just hold it for a couple of years to see what happens.

[322i0n]

When I got into bitcoin prices were where they are now, and difficulty level was 1,500,000 less than it is now.  So at that time, mining made sense.

Right now, mining and investing in mining hardware really doesnt make much sense.  Buying bitcoins right now is a much better investment, IMO.  

Why would anyone want bitcoins?

The point of mining is to get dollars, not bitcoins.

your dollars will be taxed either through inflation or income taxes, bitcoins cannot be taxed and eventually they will only increase in value in the long term. when people catch on to this and start using and accepting bitcoin for goods and service , recieving full value and not being raped by the feds, they won't be changed for fiat money much at all.

[David M]

Why would anyone want bitcoins?

The point of mining is to get dollars, not bitcoins.

Why would anyone want gold?

The point of mining is to get dollars, not gold.

[memvola]

Why would anyone want bitcoins?

The point of mining is to get dollars, not bitcoins.

I (almost) never convert BTC to USD, whether I mine or buy. I have the habit of spending them.

More to the point, I think there are a lot of potential buyers out there, waiting to see where Bitcoin phenomenon will move. We experienced a lot of bad events last few months, but the price hasn't decisively reflected the outcomes and there is no absolute sign otherwise that the structure surrounding Bitcoin got over these issues. I'm confident that new enterprises are a lot sounder than the old ones but we need a more organic structure that will hold even though one node collapses. I'm talking about things like MtGox acquiring Bitomat. If we could have also saved MyBitcoin that way, it would be a great indicator of strength.

Alternative Bitcoin forks are also a question; will they be able to compete with Bitcoin without introducing new functionality? If an incarnation like IxCoin can survive for instance, it will really be a bad indicator in people's minds about Bitcoin being a sound idea (i.e. if anyone can come and print currency that can compete with Bitcoin, it's not really like gold, is it?). I'm not talking about all possible alternative crypto-currencies though, if it has different functions that creates value of its own, then why not? So I'm pretty sure at least some people are waiting to see how this situation will turn out as well.

[Cluster2k]

Basically at the current price miners are making a ton of cash

Calculations please.  Include hardware costs, electricity, cooling, etc.  That "ton" of cash existed when bitcoins were worth in the mid teens.  That was a very long time ago in Internet time terms.

BTC going down to 3-5$ USD/BTC will be the best thing to ever happen to bitcoin, I think

You may just get your wish.  That would mean bitcoins are almost 90% off their highs.  Try finding another investment 90% off and recommending it as a hot buy.

[DrYe5]

BTC going down to 3-5$ USD/BTC will be the best thing to ever happen to bitcoin, I think

You may just get your wish.  That would mean bitcoins are almost 90% off their highs.  Try finding another investment 90% off and recommending it as a hot buy.

There... this. It is simple greed that lets people equate these two, when really they are more like opposites.

[Bitcoin Swami]

I think more people should move over to the GLBSE and trade there.  I think its gonna be huge, but there is just a small percentage of the bitcoin community that even knows about it or understands what it is.   Trading shares of companies is much more fun than watching the price of bitcoin I think.

[Minsc]

It's fallen below $8



Freefall inevitable!

[Nagle]

Basically at the current price miners are making a ton of cash

Calculations please.  Include hardware costs, electricity, cooling, etc.  That "ton" of cash existed when bitcoins were worth in the mid teens.  That was a very long time ago in Internet time terms.

The mining forums have extensive discussions of this. The consensus seems to be that running already-purchased GPU-based mining rigs is still profitable, but it's no longer profitable to buy more hardware. Most of the calculations assume that floor space and operator time have zero value, and that air conditioning has zero cost. No way would data center sized mining operations pay.

Regardless of the level of mining activity, about 7200 new Bitcoins are created every day. The difficulty of mining self-adjusts to maintain that number. So it's inherent in the system that, from now on, mining is just barely profitable.

[Stalin-chan]

I agree that the main thing causing lack of growth of bitcoin is that it is just a geeky pain in the ass not geared towards the common person and the common person would not even understand a need / use for it except maybe for two things right now:

#1 silk road

College kids find out about silk road, which only takes bitcoin, which leads them to find out about bitcoin and want to buy stuff.  It is ridiculous but this is probably the number one thing holding the bitcoin to any real value right now because why in the hell would you go through all the hoops and hassles for anything else?  Wire money to some strange internet company you no nothing about to get a weird intermediate currency / commodity to buy what? Overpriced socks and bad dry and canned food? Why not just BUY the stuff with your currency.

Silk road will never catch on because college students already have a place where it is extremely easy and safe to buy drugs, it's called college.

[mmortal03]

The mining forums have extensive discussions of this. The consensus seems to be that running already-purchased GPU-based mining rigs is still profitable, but it's no longer profitable to buy more hardware. Most of the calculations assume that floor space and operator time have zero value, and that air conditioning has zero cost. No way would data center sized mining operations pay.

Regardless of the level of mining activity, about 7200 new Bitcoins are created every day. The difficulty of mining self-adjusts to maintain that number. So it's inherent in the system that, from now on, mining is just barely profitable.

Right, once one adds in the cost of air conditioning by itself, then even where I'm at in the U.S., at $0.13 per kWh, it's pretty close to breaking even. I've turned my rig off until it get's cold enough outside to need heating. I may decide to buy coins as it dips, but that's it for me in terms of mining until the profitability goes up again.  I guess one could argue that I could still continue to mine, sort of like dollar cost averaging the dip, but at this point, I'd rather see some positive momentum before I go any further.

[cbeast]

It is very difficult for most people to acquire bitcoins. Using exchanges is very slow. Even if average joes manage to get bitcoins, security is difficult for them for things like backups and lack of encrypted wallets. What it will take is well developed smartphone and pc clients that allow geeks to sell bitcoins to the masses safely and securely. I still don't trust the exchanges, I prefer a decentralized approach, but the bitcoin smartphone apps are still too primitive to be very useful. I'm glad to see vendor tools being developed, but they won't be much good until there are people with bitcoins out there to use them.

[JA37]

You want to know why I don't buy bitcoins?

I have zero interest in rewarding miners or early adopters. If I mine myself I get a few coins and the house gets a bit warmer. If bitcoin takes off I'll make some money, perhaps, and if it doesn't then no harm done. Buying is just rewarding the early adopters, and I don't think they deserve that reward. If the early adopters wants bitcoin to take off then they should start buying stuff, anything, with it. Preferably from stores that doesn't immediately exchange btc to dollars but instead buys something else with btc.
People with thousands, or tens of thousands of btc needs to make sure there's an economy here, or btc will continue down the drain and fade into history as a nice experiment.

Then googlecoin will show up with the same properties but guaranteed to be able to buy google services and you'll have a working cryptocurrency.  I think it's make or break time for bitcoin around now, and break looks more likely.
IMHO.

Edit: Reworded for clarity.

[GoWest]

Then googlecoin will show up with the same properties but guaranteed to be used to buy google services and you'll have a working cryptocurrency.  I think it's make or break time for bitcoin around now, and break looks more likely.
IMHO.

No one company could ever run a cryptocurrency that would have the same qualities as Bitcoin.  That would defeat the purpose.

[wndrbr3d]

Bitcoin seems to be sustaining itself right now without invested capital. If you look at the hourly and 24h "sent" volumes, people ARE using it. The issue of value (specifically on the exchanges) is actually around people putting more capital in the market.

[Cluster2k]

Bitcoin seems to be sustaining itself right now without invested capital. If you look at the hourly and 24h "sent" volumes, people ARE using it.

There is a large amount of bitcoin volume not associated with MtGox/TH/etc trade traffic, but how much of that is from mining pools doling out rewards and people moving coins between PCs they own?  Does anyone have reliable statistics on what proportion of transfers are used to buy goods or services?

[JA37]

Then googlecoin will show up with the same properties but guaranteed to be used to buy google services and you'll have a working cryptocurrency.  I think it's make or break time for bitcoin around now, and break looks more likely.
IMHO.

No one company could ever run a cryptocurrency that would have the same qualities as Bitcoin.  That would defeat the purpose.

Ok, what's the quality that googlecoin can't have that bitcoin has today?

[wareen]

No one company could ever run a cryptocurrency that would have the same qualities as Bitcoin.  That would defeat the purpose.

Ok, what's the quality that googlecoin can't have that bitcoin has today?

Decentralization?
If it were run by one company then it would by definition not be decentralized.

Of course, Google can just take the Bitcoin source, strap their name and logo onto it and release it as Googlecoin on github, but what would be the point of that?

[Superform]

no one is buying cause btc are finished as a speculative investment... its in its death throws

[JA37]

No one company could ever run a cryptocurrency that would have the same qualities as Bitcoin.  That would defeat the purpose.

Ok, what's the quality that googlecoin can't have that bitcoin has today?

Decentralization?
If it were run by one company then it would by definition not be decentralized.

Of course, Google can just take the Bitcoin source, strap their name and logo onto it and release it as Googlecoin on github, but what would be the point of that?

It could still be decentralized, even if it's run by google, just pegged against their services.
Or do you mean decentralized development? Project management?

[Shortline]

I agree that the main thing causing lack of growth of bitcoin is that it is just a geeky pain in the ass not geared towards the common person and the common person would not even understand a need / use for it except maybe for two things right now:

#1 silk road

College kids find out about silk road, which only takes bitcoin, which leads them to find out about bitcoin and want to buy stuff.  It is ridiculous but this is probably the number one thing holding the bitcoin to any real value right now because why in the hell would you go through all the hoops and hassles for anything else?  Wire money to some strange internet company you no nothing about to get a weird intermediate currency / commodity to buy what? Overpriced socks and bad dry and canned food? Why not just BUY the stuff with your currency.

Silk road will never catch on because college students already have a place where it is extremely easy and safe to buy drugs, it's called college.

Luckily for Silk Road, the majority of drug users in the world (that is, the majority of people, most of whom are drug users in one way or another) aren't in college. And as of today this forum has 38,053 members, while Silk Road has about 30,000. So yeah... sounds like a real flop.

[Blackout]

When I got into bitcoin prices were where they are now, and difficulty level was 1,500,000 less than it is now.  So at that time, mining made sense.

Right now, mining and investing in mining hardware really doesnt make much sense.  Buying bitcoins right now is a much better investment, IMO. 

Why would anyone want bitcoins?

The point of mining is to get dollars, not bitcoins.

And how does one get these dollars from mining bitcoins? Selling to people who don't mine - so if  you can't answer your own question, "Why would anyone want bitcoins?" then no one would pay real cash for them, and no one would bother mining them - so there needs to be real uses for them that someone is willing to convert their dollars into them for some reason, and there are currently only a few reasons as I stated in my above post.

You are being silly if you look at bitcoin from only a mining perspective because you shoot yourself in the foot if there are no real practical easy reasons for someone who is NOT technical to want bitcoins and be able to obtain them easily without being an internet computer nut of the deepest degree.

People use fiat money because they are just trained to do so.  How many people actually understand the monetary system? Very very very few.  Finally more awareness is coming out, but the Fed had the wool over people's eyes for almost 100 years now.

[grod]

A few more bear "trollings" that don't get mentioned.

Power companies and AMD don't accept bitcoins.  Several tens of thousands of dollars do get siphoned out of the bitcoin ecosystem every month, if only by people who are smart enough to cash out to pay for their expenses.   Do the math assuming 14 terahash of network capacity and 300 mhash for 200 watts, 15 cents/khwhr (10c/khwhr is about as low as it gets in the US and doesn't include transfer fees or taxes).  Those numbers are a bit on the conservative side, IMO.  But that would tell you roughly how much new investment is needed to pay to run the network as it is today.

Now, not everyone is selling bitcoins to pay for power and hardware -- that is true.  And those will be the bagholders, once again IMO.  Every pyramid has them, and there's definitely a pyramid built on top of bitcoins.

We've stalled out in community growth, and I see that as an incredibly bearish development for the pyramid.  And here is the beginning of the end: https://cablesaurus.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=10&zenid=6c61a72a1daba7a1d88f406b9de540f0

When all that was needed to get into bitcoins was a CPU, the number of potential participants in the bitcoin ecosystem numbered in the billions.  When that became GPUs we dropped to hundreds of millions.   When that became only high end and/or multi-GPUs from AMD, tens of millions.  And soon, with the only practical way to participate becoming direct buy or investment in specialized hardware capable of ONLY bitcoin mining the pool of potential participants will shrink to tens of thousands.

Until you actually have some bitcoins to play with and send to someone it's very hard to understand WHY they're valuable.  And that is the big danger -- reducing the potential community to the current disciples.  Everyone else will look at the whole bank -> dwolla -> mtgox -> local wallet chain and either fail to understand or just decide to buy gold instead.

I expect bitcoin to be around for a about six more months, shrinking both the community and $/btc.  That's why I am not buying until I see what develops.  I can buy far more when BTC is well under a dollar, if I still think it's worth doing.

[fcmatt]

grod,

you might want to read up on fpga mining. that was just a 50 dollar deposit to claim a fpga setup.
it will end up costing you 500+ dollars for 90-200 mh/s which is a ridiculous purchase if you ever
want a reasonable ROI.

also ASICS, except for hobbyists like Forz, are a dream still. And even the setups Forz built were more
to see if he could do it/experiment and the ROI on them is still much worse then a radeon 5830 for $130.

gpu mining is not going anywhere... with the price of BTC going down, cut in half essentially when ASIC
talk was at its peak.. must have broken a lot of possible plans.

[grod]

grod,

you might want to read up on fpga mining. that was just a 50 dollar deposit to claim a fpga setup.
it will end up costing you 500+ dollars for 90-200 mh/s which is a ridiculous purchase if you ever
want a reasonable ROI.

Looks like the pricing is $610 for 180 mhash at 15 watts.   Sure, it's ridiculous at $8/coin with power costs of $3/coin.  How about at $1/coin with power costs of $1/coin with GPU and 10c with FPGA?  Sure, you could mine 6x as many coins with GPU.  Maybe even 10x as many.  But you'd make $0/day vs 90c/day.  So difficulty and price both adjust down until the FPGA miners are pulling in the same ROI for a $600 investment that a current $600 3x 5830 rig yields.  Sure, the 3x5830 rig could mine 10x as many coins -- but with zero or even negative return for each coin.

Also, look elsewhere for my guestimate that we could see the same 200 mhash boards retail for under $300 once volume picks up.  Heck, one of the FPGA board producers mentioned high volume pricing would make them competitive with GPUs on a mhash/$ level at a 1000 unit level.  I believe it -- a 100 mhash capable FPGA retails for $180 at digikey.  Wanna take a guess at what the same FPGA would wholesale for direct from Xilinx in 1000, 1000 and 100k unit volumes?

One of the early adopters cashing out 30k bitcoins at today's prices could start producing and selling $300 200 mhash boards.  For bitcoins even, to recoup their original 30k investment.  Negotiate a future volume rebate deal with Xilinx, move a few million $ worth of product and profit.  Use that profit to develop an ASIC for the next upgrade cycle.

[RodeoX]

Another question is "what happened to all the bitcoin worker-bees? There was a time when these forums were littered with posts about exciting ideas to spread the word. Now it seems new peers just show up thinking they are going to get rich sitting on their duff.
Go out and explain bitcoin to people. Sure most will just look at you like this -     But ocationaly someone will grasp it and look like this - 

[grod]

It's much harder to generate interest in a down trending commodity. 

It's a lot easier to spin a positive, engaging story when it's more of "I just spent $400 on video cards and they're pumping out $60 a day for me!  Let me tell you all about this awesome bitcoin network and why people are excited about it" as opposed to "yeah, a bunch of suckers got into the bitcoin pyramid and are currently being hosed."

[Synaptic]

When I got into bitcoin prices were where they are now, and difficulty level was 1,500,000 less than it is now.  So at that time, mining made sense.

Right now, mining and investing in mining hardware really doesnt make much sense.  Buying bitcoins right now is a much better investment, IMO. 

Mining took off because people were getting something for nothing, and the whole idea of "if the market crashes, I still have the hardware" prevailed.

I know, because that was my view too.

People aren't buying more Bitcoins because Bitcoins are a fucking stupid investment vehicle.

[Nagle]

It's much harder to generate interest in a down trending commodity.  

It's a lot easier to spin a positive, engaging story when it's more of "I just spent $400 on video cards and they're pumping out $60 a day for me!  Let me tell you all about this awesome bitcoin network and why people are excited about it" as opposed to "yeah, a bunch of suckers got into the bitcoin pyramid and are currently being hosed."

Right.

People aren't buying more Bitcoins because Bitcoins are a fucking stupid investment vehicle.

Also right.  Originally, Bitcoin was supposed to be a medium of exchange, a form of money that was easy to e-mail. That didn't happen much. As an investment vehicle, Bitcoin is zero-sum; for every winner, there's a loser. If the Bitcoin world had a huge business transaction volume and minor speculation, it might have worked. The other way round, it's a pyramid scheme.

[grod]

When I got into bitcoin prices were where they are now, and difficulty level was 1,500,000 less than it is now.  So at that time, mining made sense.

Right now, mining and investing in mining hardware really doesnt make much sense.  Buying bitcoins right now is a much better investment, IMO. 

Mining took off because people were getting something for nothing, and the whole idea of "if the market crashes, I still have the hardware" prevailed.

I know, because that was my view too.

People aren't buying more Bitcoins because Bitcoins are a fucking stupid investment vehicle.

Another way to look at it: people aren't speculating with bitcoins because the short term trend is still down, and has not been broken.   There's no rush like there was when BTC was going up tens of % a day.   The longer I wait the more bitcoins I can get per $.

Mining is still highly profitable but the writing is on the wall.  $100/month for my two remaining 5830s will likely shrink to $50/month and then $0 a month after power costs over the next 8 weeks.   It's true that difficulty follows price, but IMO price also relates to difficulty.   When the price in power to generate a bitcoin (determined by difficulty) was about a dollar and market price was $32 predictable things eventually happened to both price and difficulty.   If BTC pricing falls into the $3 range (current cost to produce a BTC for much of the US) we may see a similar cycle start to the downside.  See my FPGA theory with 1/10th of current GPU production costs (or 90% gross margin) for what I think might further drive that cycle.

I'm kind of hoping a few more bitcoin bulls show up to buy my last two 5830s before then.  It'd make my bitcoin investment story that much more awesome (325% return and two free games sounds much better than 210% return, 2 crappy video cards and 2 free game codes).

And that money is NOT going back to buy bitcoins directly.  If anything it'd go to Xilinx.

[N12]

People aren't buying more Bitcoins because Bitcoins are a fucking stupid investment vehicle.

Also right.  Originally, Bitcoin was supposed to be a medium of exchange, a form of money that was easy to e-mail. That didn't happen much. As an investment vehicle, Bitcoin is zero-sum; for every winner, there's a loser. If the Bitcoin world had a huge business transaction volume and minor speculation, it might have worked. The other way round, it's a pyramid scheme.

Serious question: What distinguishes Gold from Bitcoin here? I’d like to know if you consider that a pyramid scheme, too.

[Synaptic]

People aren't buying more Bitcoins because Bitcoins are a fucking stupid investment vehicle.

Also right.  Originally, Bitcoin was supposed to be a medium of exchange, a form of money that was easy to e-mail. That didn't happen much. As an investment vehicle, Bitcoin is zero-sum; for every winner, there's a loser. If the Bitcoin world had a huge business transaction volume and minor speculation, it might have worked. The other way round, it's a pyramid scheme.

Serious question: What distinguishes Gold from Bitcoin here? I’d like to know if you consider that a pyramid scheme, too.

Oh Christ...the Gold vs. Bitcoin argument.

Not even going to bother...sorry.

[N12]

Oh Christ...the Gold vs. Bitcoin argument.

Not even going to bother...sorry.

No, I’m serious. I know of some crucial differences which in my opinion makes Gold much less of a pyramid scheme (timespan of thousands of years vs. Bitcoin in the media maybe one year; industrial uses of Gold; elasticity of Gold supply (unlike Bitcoin where the first miners without any competition could snatch >25% of the supply ever) which is actually mildly inflationary, but I’d like to know if I’m missing any argument here.

[Minsc]

Gold has practical value:
* electronics
* decoration on pimp outfits

[Synaptic]

Oh Christ...the Gold vs. Bitcoin argument.

Not even going to bother...sorry.

No, I’m serious. I know of some crucial differences which in my opinion makes Gold much less of a pyramid scheme (timespan of thousands of years vs. Bitcoin in the media maybe one year; industrial uses of Gold; elasticity of Gold supply (unlike Bitcoin where the first miners without any competition could snatch >25% of the supply ever) which is actually mildly inflationary, but I’d like to know if I’m missing any argument here.

No, you've covered most of the bases there.

And of course, the worldwide trust and acceptance based on those qualities, especially the thousands of years of human history part...

[Minsc]

Governments can't seize your bitcoin.  You can hide it on a flashdrive or you can just turn your wallet.dat into some pattern on clothing to hide it.

[Synaptic]

Governments can't seize your bitcoin.  You can hide it on a flashdrive or you can just turn your wallet.dat into some pattern on clothing to hide it.

Governments can't seize your gold either, if you aren't a complete moron...

Not that there's any chance of gold being confiscated anyway.

[Minsc]

@Synaptic

There was a Wikipedia article about how the US government in the 20th century forced everyone to hand over their gold, and if I remember correctly, it was for no compensation either.

[Synaptic]

@Synaptic

There was a Wikipedia article about how the US government in the 20th century forced everyone to hand over their gold, and if I remember correctly, it was for no compensation either.

Yes I'm aware.

And those people who allowed the government to retrieve their assets were fools. It's really not difficult to hide a physical asset, especially from an entity as impotent as the Federal government.

[wareen]

It's really not difficult to hide a physical asset, especially from an entity as impotent as the Federal government.

Good luck hiding all your physical assets when you need to take them across borders for some reason.

[Synaptic]

It's really not difficult to hide a physical asset, especially from an entity as impotent as the Federal government.

Good luck hiding all your physical assets when you need to take them across borders for some reason.

Since when does the Federal government intercept private shipping?

You could FedEx yourself almost any nominal quantity of gold directly.

If it's the apocalyptic times the retard anarcho-libertarians here like to jack off about, then melt your fucking shit down into pellets and swallow them or cram them up your ass.

Of course, privately held gold is in no danger anywhere, it's only retards trying to find some kind of imaginary value in Bitcoin that come up with this shit.

[Minsc]

The government will intercept large amounts of cash going in or out of the country.

[kgo]

@Synaptic

There was a Wikipedia article about how the US government in the 20th century forced everyone to hand over their gold, and if I remember correctly, it was for no compensation either.

People were paid for the gold they turned in.

[cbeast]

@Synaptic

There was a Wikipedia article about how the US government in the 20th century forced everyone to hand over their gold, and if I remember correctly, it was for no compensation either.

People were paid for the gold they turned in.

It was FDR, and I'm almost counting on something like this to happen.

[Blackout]

Governments can't seize your bitcoin.  You can hide it on a flashdrive or you can just turn your wallet.dat into some pattern on clothing to hide it.

Governments can't seize your gold either, if you aren't a complete moron...

Not that there's any chance of gold being confiscated anyway.

Governments can and have seized gold. As a matter of fact that's exactly what they did to get to the state we are at now.  It was demanded all gold be turned in way back in 1933, two years after Wilson fucked the U.S. by allowing the Fed in.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Executive_Order_6102

There's a bunch of bullshit history and back and forth stuff but the Dollar was fully disconnected from gold in 1971 and is now not even money, it is only currency created by banks as debt.  There in fact is no money in legal existence in the world right now - in the classical sense of the definition of money.

[DrYe5]

Oh Christ...the Gold vs. Bitcoin argument.

Not even going to bother...sorry.

No, I’m serious. I know of some crucial differences which in my opinion makes Gold much less of a pyramid scheme (timespan of thousands of years vs. Bitcoin in the media maybe one year; industrial uses of Gold; elasticity of Gold supply (unlike Bitcoin where the first miners without any competition could snatch >25% of the supply ever) which is actually mildly inflationary, but I’d like to know if I’m missing any argument here.

Well to my mind the one glaring difference is that bitcoin supply is unlimited. Because anyone can split the block chain, you can create an infinite number of bitcoin analogs: Bitcoin1, Bitcoin2... each with an arbitrary 21,000,000 coin limit, but functionally identical. No digital anything is supply limited. As if that isn't enough, the historicity and popular perception is determinant in this kind of thing.

[cbeast]

Well to my mind the one glaring difference is that bitcoin supply is unlimited. Because anyone can split the block chain, you can create an infinite number of bitcoin analogs: Bitcoin1, Bitcoin2... each with an arbitrary 21,000,000 coin limit, but functionally identical. No digital anything is supply limited. As if that isn't enough, the historicity and popular perception is determinant in this kind of thing.

Alternate blockchains would be fools-bitcoin. Actually, the 21M BTC can be infinitely divided to assure endless supply of value as demand increases.

[Synaptic]

Well to my mind the one glaring difference is that bitcoin supply is unlimited. Because anyone can split the block chain, you can create an infinite number of bitcoin analogs: Bitcoin1, Bitcoin2... each with an arbitrary 21,000,000 coin limit, but functionally identical. No digital anything is supply limited. As if that isn't enough, the historicity and popular perception is determinant in this kind of thing.

Alternate blockchains would be fools-bitcoin. Actually, the 21M BTC can be infinitely divided to assure endless supply of value as demand increases.

Pft...

Bitcoin is fools-bitcoin.

[cbeast]

Alternate blockchains would be fools-bitcoin. Actually, the 21M BTC can be infinitely divided to assure endless supply of value as demand increases.

Pft...

Bitcoin is fools-bitcoin.

I use the term as in a false bitcoin, unless you know of a crypto-currency in use before Nakamoto's bitcoin.

[Synaptic]

Alternate blockchains would be fools-bitcoin. Actually, the 21M BTC can be infinitely divided to assure endless supply of value as demand increases.

Pft...

Bitcoin is fools-bitcoin.

I use the term as in a false bitcoin, unless you know of a crypto-currency in use before Nakamoto's bitcoin.

It was just a joke.

[mmortal03]

Mining is still highly profitable but the writing is on the wall.  $100/month for my two remaining 5830s will likely shrink to $50/month and then $0 a month after power costs over the next 8 weeks.   It's true that difficulty follows price, but IMO price also relates to difficulty.   When the price in power to generate a bitcoin (determined by difficulty) was about a dollar and market price was $32 predictable things eventually happened to both price and difficulty.   If BTC pricing falls into the $3 range (current cost to produce a BTC for much of the US) we may see a similar cycle start to the downside.  See my FPGA theory with 1/10th of current GPU production costs (or 90% gross margin) for what I think might further drive that cycle.

I'm kind of hoping a few more bitcoin bulls show up to buy my last two 5830s before then.  It'd make my bitcoin investment story that much more awesome (325% return and two free games sounds much better than 210% return, 2 crappy video cards and 2 free game codes).

And that money is NOT going back to buy bitcoins directly.  If anything it'd go to Xilinx.

Are you sure it's still "highly" profitable for you? How are you measuring your profitability?

[mmortal03]

Gold has practical value:
* electronics
* decoration on pimp outfits

Bitcoins also have practical value unique to them.

[demonofelru]

The thing that worries me the most and why I've been bearish almost always is,  an exploit for bitcoin could come out tomorrow they could then become worthless.  The closest thing I could think of is if someone finds a way to make gold to where it would be impossible to tell between the natural and synthetic gold.

[Cluster2k]

The closest thing I could think of is if someone finds a way to make gold to where it would be impossible to tell between the natural and synthetic gold.

That has already happened.  A number of Hong Kong gold dealers were fooled into buying fake gold bars last year.  The forgeries were clever alloys of metals such as osmium, tungsten, silver and coated with gold to have the same density, size and weight as a real gold bar.  The bars can be made at less than half the cost of real gold.  Older forgeries consisted of tungsten coated with gold, but this new approach is harder to detect.

Truly synthetic gold can be made in particle accelerators and nuclear reactors from mercury, but it's more expensive than natural gold and also radioactive.  Not very useful and easy to detect.

Could bitcoins suffer a fatal security flaw that makes them useless?  Possibly.  It's all open source and apparently secure, but how many forum participants have downloaded and analysed the source code?  Not many, I'm willing to bet.

As to why I have never purchased a bitcoin (apart from trading and using proceeds of mining to buy bitcoins), the answer is pretty clear.  I have yet to find a product that cannot be purchased easier, faster, and most importantly cheaper in bitcoins than with a conventional currency.  Merchants automatically have to incorporate a large price cushion into their products to help counter the massive volatility of the exchange rate.  Since the products they source are purchased in conventional currencies there is no current way to insulate bitcoins from the real world.

Bitcoins are currently at $8.27 and falling.  My purchase orders at $7.1 look like they'll be filled soon.  Not to use bitcoins, but to trade them on an up tick.

[S3052]

Technicals point down and there is quite some probability to see a crash-type decline before a more meaningful bottom can be put in place.

This crash can go down and slice below 7$, 5$ and even 2$, without endangering the longterm bitcoin trend.

[DrYe5]

Technicals point down and there is quite some probability to see a crash-type decline before a more meaningful bottom can be put in place.

This crash can go down and slice below 7$, 5$ and even 2$, without endangering the longterm bitcoin trend.

I've been waiting for it... and someone's going to be holding those coins. What I'm not sure about is if it's going to stagnate there (I expect) and whether the global economy will improve enough over the next few years to invalidate the movement (if you can call it that).

[Cluster2k]

Perhaps we could ask someone who has bought up a lot of Bitcoins as to what they think and why people should continue to pile money into bitcoins today.

http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

He allegedly (no one can check) put all his savings into bitcoins on 29 May 2011, at presumably $8.30 per bitcoin.  The price just happens to be $8.25 right now, and bitcoin has been as high as $32 and as low as $0.01 (due to a hack, but still, the guy must have been packing his pants).  He's been in for one heck of a wild ride over the past three and a bit months.  I wonder if he's still as bullish now as he was back then.

He was rather excited about the exponential growth in price back then.  "And there’s no indication it’s slowing down or saturating. Quite to the contrary: interest is picking up."  Thousandfold growth in a little over a year, and no signs of it letting up.  I wonder if he feels the same way today.

[proudhon]

Perhaps we could ask someone who has bought up a lot of Bitcoins as to what they think and why people should continue to pile money into bitcoins today.

http://falkvinge.net/2011/05/29/why-im-putting-all-my-savings-into-bitcoin/

He allegedly (no one can check) put all his savings into bitcoins on 29 May 2011, at presumably $8.30 per bitcoin.  The price just happens to be $8.25 right now, and bitcoin has been as high as $32 and as low as $0.01 (due to a hack, but still, the guy must have been packing his pants).  He's been in for one heck of a wild ride over the past three and a bit months.  I wonder if he's still as bullish now as he was back then.

He was rather excited about the exponential growth in price back then.  "And there’s no indication it’s slowing down or saturating. Quite to the contrary: interest is picking up."  Thousandfold growth in a little over a year, and no signs of it letting up.  I wonder if he feels the same way today.

He's probably one of the ones who's been selling bunches on the way down.   

[oakpacific]

Technicals point down and there is quite some probability to see a crash-type decline before a more meaningful bottom can be put in place.

This crash can go down and slice below 7$, 5$ and even 2$, without endangering the longterm bitcoin trend.

I'm holding out to see if that's true, and if it definitely happens I will subscribe also for the sake of the depreciation.

[Xenland]

My question is why are all the trolls coming in saying sell sell sell!  instead of buy buy buy!!!   we have the wrong kind of trolls. 

I consider myself a noobie, but after the second "THE END IS HERE"  Or "SELL SELL SELL!" thread  its so obvious they are trolling.  That got me thinking why havent we had any "buy!" trolls ?

any time you want to know why trolls are doing what they are doing... just head on over to the "Troll handbook" called  Encyclopediadarmatica http://encyclopediadramatica.ch/Bitcoin
as you can see the list of things to do to piss off bitcoiners it to post to sell on the forums.

Although I must admit i get some lolz checking out the site i think that people actually have the time to troll is just sad while the other rest of the country are trying to change the world for good.

Maybe trolls just need a hug!?