Why aren't more people buying bitcoins?

[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.