Extreme bitcoin price fluctuation?

[jbgc]

About 3 months ago I bought a bunch of BTCs when they were at $20 per coin.  I have been monitoring the BTC price and it is now down to 6-7.  I'm kinda getting worried here.

Why has the price dropped so much?  In your opinion do you think it will swing back up?

Thanks in advance.
jbgc

[1714941670]

1714941670

[ctoon6]

i think bitcoin will eventually die off.

[adamstgBit]

bitcoin isn't going to die .... thankfully you'll die b4 it dose

its due to a lost of faith by lots of people and the sell off of bitcoin fortunes.

its likly the price will continue to drop for very slowly for years.... then someone in the media will be like "you guys remember that bitcoin thing well now they are able to _______ with bitcoin" and poof over night its gose to 10k per coin! LOL we'll see ....

[BookLover]

If bitcoin doesn't fail then it will go to great heights, but even if it does fail, it's probably a good idea to put some of you money in something besides a fiat currency.

So my advice would be to keep at least a few of the BTC you have and invest in silver as well as possibly in gold.

[ctoon6]

bitcoin isn't going to die .... thankfully you'll die b4 it dose

its due to a lost of faith by lots of people and the sell off of bitcoin fortunes.

its likly the price will continue to drop for very slowly for years.... then someone in the media will be like "you guys remember that bitcoin thing well now they are able to _______ with bitcoin" and poof over night its gose to 10k per coin! LOL we'll see ....

from what i have seen personally, it will.

not only are the people behind bitcoin making things difficult by hacking and stealing peoples coins, it lacks charge backs, good or bad

also, bitcoin has flaws that can not be fixed, like the size of the blockchain.

there are more and more competing chains that distract bitcoin users.

its very different, and the southern hicks wont use it no matter what logic you give them.

and very large growth you describe is never stable, any idiot knows that. the most stable growth for an economy 3 or 4 times the current one would probably be a rise of no more than 20 cents a month.

edit: i am contemplating writing a white paper for a new crypto currency similar to bitcoin but with changes that address the problems that will eventually plague bitcoin.

[BookLover]

The impossible just happened!  Someone looked into the future and saw that the flaw that cannot be fixed is fixed!

Jokes aside there are many ways for this to be "fixed", one way it may happen is technological advances will render the growing block-chain to be a trivial amount of data(and thus not a problem),
another way is there could possible be some people who will act as central nodes which contain the full block chain while other people just hold the last 200,000 blocks or so(I know this will some what centralize bitcoin but the number who have the whole block chain cannot be limited by the government and there's nothing to prevent the common BTC user from ordering a few extra hard-drives and storing the whole block-chain.)

My point is nothing is impossible unless you make it impossible for yourself.

[smoothie]

The impossible just happened!  Someone looked into the future and saw that the flaw that cannot be fixed is fixed!

Jokes aside there are many ways for this to be "fixed", one way it may happen is technological advances will render the growing block-chain to be a trivial amount of data(and thus not a problem),
another way is there could possible be some people who will act as central nodes which contain the full block chain while other people just hold the last 200,000 blocks or so(I know this will some what centralize bitcoin but the number who have the whole block chain cannot be limited by the government and there's nothing to prevent the common BTC user from ordering a few extra hard-drives and storing the whole block-chain.)

My point is nothing is impossible unless you make it impossible for yourself.

Okay I have to take a shit but I don't want to. So it will be impossible for me to take a shit no?

[memvola]

not only are the people behind bitcoin making things difficult by hacking and stealing peoples coins, it lacks charge backs, good or bad

That is a nice one. I doubt that it will make sense for anyone so I'll pass...

also, bitcoin has flaws that can not be fixed, like the size of the blockchain.

Bitcoin client has flaws you mean? First of all, database pruning will be automatic. As the network grows though, Bitcoin nodes will tend to become like current miners, hobbyists that have specialized hardware to run a node. We will have lightwight protocols to connect to these nodes using our mobile devices, and many more trusted third party services than now. We might even have an untraceable transaction protocol implemented on top of bitcoin network operated by third parties. These aren't even technologically challenging and most of them are being worked on as we speak.

there are more and more competing chains that distract bitcoin users.

We'll see how it goes, I can only speculate here. I'm guessing the chains that survive will be the ones which provide services that Bitcoin doesn't and can't. Minor alterations won't work. We have Namecoin, which I think has the potential to evolve into something great if we work on it enough. We'll probably have a decentralized stock exchange. Things like that.

its very different, and the southern hicks wont use it no matter what logic you give them.

You mean the Africans? I live pretty close to Africa and I am aware of some people who use it in north Africa (don't know them personally). If you mean South America, I'm sure that's not the case.

and very large growth you describe is never stable, any idiot knows that. the most stable growth for an economy 3 or 4 times the current one would probably be a rise of no more than 20 cents a month.

I'm sure there is a sound scientific theory behind these numbers.

edit: i am contemplating writing a white paper for a new crypto currency similar to bitcoin but with changes that address the problems that will eventually plague bitcoin.

Good luck.

[The_Duke]

About 3 months ago I bought a bunch of BTCs when they were at $20 per coin.  I have been monitoring the BTC price and it is now down to 6-7.  I'm kinda getting worried here.

If you are worried, then pull out now. If you don't care to lose the money, then just hang on to it and watch it slide to 0.

Why has the price dropped so much?

Because more and more people are realising that bitcoin can actually do nothing that an existing currency can't do, that it is not anonymous, that it is cumbersome, that businesses and people alike actually do not like that "non-chargeback" idea, that the price of bitcoin is purely based on speculation and not an anything else and that there is no real bitcoin economy, unless you count a handful of scammers, drug dealers and "accepting bitcoin donations". And then they sell their bitcoins.

In your opinion do you think it will swing back up?

No.

[greyhawk]

The impossible just happened!  Someone looked into the future and saw that the flaw that cannot be fixed is fixed!

Jokes aside there are many ways for this to be "fixed", one way it may happen is technological advances will render the growing block-chain to be a trivial amount of data(and thus not a problem),
another way is there could possible be some people who will act as central nodes which contain the full block chain while other people just hold the last 200,000 blocks or so(I know this will some what centralize bitcoin but the number who have the whole block chain cannot be limited by the government and there's nothing to prevent the common BTC user from ordering a few extra hard-drives and storing the whole block-chain.)

My point is nothing is impossible unless you make it impossible for yourself.

Okay I have to take a shit but I don't want to. So it will be impossible for me to take a shit no?

Well, you could always go the cyborg route and get yourself fitted with a colostomy bag.

[bittersweet]

About 3 months ago I bought a bunch of BTCs when they were at $20 per coin.  I have been monitoring the BTC price and it is now down to 6-7.  I'm kinda getting worried here.

Why has the price dropped so much?

When it went up by 2000% did you ask questions why?
Maybe you should have...

[The_Duke]

Why has the price dropped so much?

When it went up by 2000% did you ask questions why?
Maybe you should have...

Lots of people did, and the same people that are now saying "bitcoin will endure" then said "bitcoin is worth it! and more!".

[ctoon6]

Bitcoin client has flaws you mean? First of all, database pruning will be automatic. As the network grows though, Bitcoin nodes will tend to become like current miners, hobbyists that have specialized hardware to run a node. We will have lightwight protocols to connect to these nodes using our mobile devices, and many more trusted third party services than now. We might even have an untraceable transaction protocol implemented on top of bitcoin network operated by third parties. These aren't even technologically challenging and most of them are being worked on as we speak.

you cant prune all the required transactions to make the chain of a reasonable size when bitcoin reaches a reasonable size. the estimate is around a gig per block. and you cant prune a block that came out 2 minutes ago.

its very different, and the southern hicks wont use it no matter what logic you give them.

im not talking about Africans, im talking about stupid rednecks in the south in the US.

your claims about the blockchain will never work, people have already tried things like decentralized chains and they don't work because you cant trust them to give real money for coins. so you either centralize or continue as is. you are kinda right about the android client. and AFAIK you would still need to have full blocks to exist in the network.

[Technomage]

The price of Bitcoins fluctuates a lot because there are speculators and traders playing the market. The size of the market is still so small that only a handful of decent bankroll traders can cause big shifts in the price. Price will stabilize if and when the Bitcoin market gets bigger.

But when we talk about going down from $20 to $7, well, that's the bursting of the biggest bubble in Bitcoin history. A speculation bubble. Actually it's from the peak of $32 but anyway.

At the same time we have seen the size of the economy contract a little, as can be seen clearly from this chart: http://pi.uk.com/bitcoin/charts/n-transactions

Now we are reaching the point of a "bottom price" right now, with the amount of transactions leveling off as well within a few months for sure, possibly earlier. Then the price will start going up, probably in an unstable fashion again because there are big speculators on board. But eventually, I hope, the size of the market will increase and it'll be more difficult for people to just "play the market".

One thing is clear, if you think Bitcoin is still doing good for the long term (years), then don't worry about the current price too much. Personally I still think Bitcoin is doing really good and has so much potential which is slowly being realized. It has been a slow process with some growing pains on the way but that's natural.

[cbeast]

The two main criticisms of bitcoin are that it will be cracked and the large size of the block chain. The first is a technological one that will take a major breakthrough in math or computation speed. The latter is something that can be solved by engineering and re-structuring the bitcoin network. The solution may be easier to implement with an entirely new algorithm, but the current one can probably be kludged and work just fine. If the new one works better, that doesn't mean that the old one will die, it just means that the original bitcoin will serve a different function.

[Technomage]

The two main criticisms of bitcoin are that it will be cracked and the large size of the block chain. The first is a technological one that will take a major breakthrough in math or computation speed. The latter is something that can be solved by engineering and re-structuring the bitcoin network. The solution may be easier to implement with an entirely new algorithm, but the current one can probably be kludged and work just fine. If the new one works better, that doesn't mean that the old one will die, it just means that the original bitcoin will serve a different function.

Indeed. If I remember correctly there have already been plans to modify Bitcoin in the future so that not everyone needs to have the whole chain. I think it would work great if you can choose to have the whole chain or not. It would centralize the network a bit because only the nodes with the whole chain are actually critical but I think the number of nodes with the whole chain would still be massive so it's not a problem.

I would certainly like to download the whole chain even if it's a bit big because I do have HD space. But some people might not want to do that so they could just confirm stuff from the core nodes via data transfer.

[BookLover]

In response to post ten:

Before I answer the question I'd like to point out this was a general remark and may not be true in every instance(just like all those scientific laws which keep being proved to be not always true).  This is why I supported my case before stating the remark.

Now to answer your question; Yes until you or your body(in other words YOU again) decide to, it will be impossible.

And don't say what if some or something else made me because the post says impossible for YOURSELF.

[dancupid]

Look at the logarithmic graph for the past year or so:

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#vzlztgSzm1g10zm2g25zi1gMACDzi2gRSI

There are clearly 3 major bubbles.
Assuming the growth continues it's exponential journey (and there is no reason that it should - but that's 'best case' in my opinion), bitcoin looks to be worth about $10 as best case as of now.

Now would be a good time to buy (with a sensible get out strategy so you don't risk too much).

[Colargol]

Why has the price dropped so much?

I heard an interesting theory ( on this forum? ) that the thieves who stole all that BTC sold large quantities of it recently.

I don't think large fluctuations in price caused by speculation tell us very much at all about how successful Bitcoin will be. 

[payb.tc]

there is no real bitcoin economy

i'm going to post jeremy's link every time i read this.

http://spendbitcoins.com