In 2011 when Bitcoins spiked to $32 or whatever then flash crashed down to $2, many people, probably the majority, just assumed that BTC was done. There was no reason to believe otherwise.
Bitcoin was at that point just seen as a passing fad that some geeks got excited about but ultimately was proved to be worthless and destined to fail. It was too volatile, too hard to understand. Nobody "needed it."
Why would you stay in "the scheme" at that point? You either cashed out big or lost big. It was over. Gonna be a slow dribble down top $0, but definitely over. "Nothing positive on the horizon" etc etc
All the smart money got out around then.
Well, almost all of it.
It was new then. It was easy to mine and cheap to buy. It's not new now. It's neither cheap to buy or mine. If you wanted some bitcoin back then you could easily mine yourself some with what you already owned especially if it was a decent gaming rig, that's not the case at all now.
Now it's an investment whichever way you choose to get them. A bigger decision.
It's still too geeky, too volatile, too hard to understand and not really needed as far as normal people are concerned when spending money buying things. Does your Mum use it? Could she? Would she? Would most people? Not really. That's what we need. Joe Public using bitcoin in the same way they use Paypal as easily as they use Paypal.
Most people here would be wary of leaving money in an exchange or online wallet, for obvious reasons, this is another serious drawback right now ...all people have seen lately is bitcoins going missing bigtime in a way they don't understand and probably we don't properly even after research, wallets vanishing and appearing at MtGox for example are hardly showing bitcoin in a good light are they?
Assuming all will magically come right because they will...nice idea, not certain at all. It takes something positive to happen I think.
I don't understand why people in the community spread rumours like the China one, which get picked up by a bored reporter on reddit or somewhere and contribute to the negativity? Even this U.S. thing is overblown when it really needs explaining honestly. People like to profit from the peaks and troughs in price IMO, so they do well short term...long term it's damaging trust and once people lose trust it's hard to recover it.
I just hope that we've had all the bad news and horror stories now, then maybe gradually we get the chance to recover momentum. If I'd told you a year ago about all the recent events, I doubt you'd believe most of them would happen.
