Retracted previous statements :)

[iluvpie60]

This forum is a bad place to post a bearish thread. It's all permabulls and they're going to come up with any argument just to slaughter you. It's like you're inside of a rodeo.

I do understand that, yeah. It does suck that people who believe in something never want to hear the other side of it, or don't want to understand what they believe in. Sometimes I feel like most of the people on this entire website are all about "OMFG ITS CRASHING SELL NOW AND GET BACK IN WHEN IT DIPS BY 20%" OR "OMFG BUY NOW ITS RISING, MOON MOON MOON OMFG ITS THE BEST MOON YOU EVER SAW, THE MOON IS SO BRIGHT TONIGHT AND FULL OMFG BEST MOON EVERRRRRRRRRR".


I post here though to see if someone really has a counter point to what I said, a few people made interesting notes, but when I look at how things are in the real world and other companies and take everything into consideration, I don't see BTC going much of anywhere.


Avg poor people will not use this, it is too complicated for them. People who don't trust BTC don't trust it because they didn't take the time to get to know it. Not many average people get into something where you need to learn all the terms, look up the history of it, how it was made, open source code, blah. People don't openly trust BTC right away. Giving anyone a 30 minute definition of something doesn't mean they will trust it, and if it takes too long to explain in my experience, people don't wanna hear it. There aren't as many smart people in this world as you might think, and a lot of presuppositions hold people back all the time.

In reply to bolded part:

These "average poor people" need not worry their average minds.

Consider:

Back in the day only a few geeks had computers, you basically had to get out a soldering iron and build your own out of mail order kits or go without. Some enthusiasts offered prebuilt units, but still you had to be quite the nerd to actually do anything with them, there were no operating systems to speak of, just simple bios layer. Enthusiasts met at weekly local meetups (no internet then).

Everyone else said, these things are fun for geeks but nobody else, haha look at the geeks, those thing will never take off.

Now every dropkick carries a 1GHz processor in their pocket.

The same happened with the internet, first attempts were radio amateurs running packet radio systems at low baud rates and then bulletin boards ran by uber-geeks using phone system; other geeks would all post and read to their node like a simple forum. Then came the internet.

Bitcoin is in its early days, but follows the same exponential growth as other technogy, you've got to plot it on a log scale to see it:

OK this is FUD.


Me, being a Forecasting and Planning Analyst(actual job title) can tell you right now, the basic first rule of planning and forecasting is not to take historic data and say "this must be what will happen".

See, you aren't looking at all of the bad things going on lately, and you aren't taking in all of the factors. You are just saying this is a tech thing, its gonna blow up, blah blah.

There isn't really anything that exists to make it easier to obtain BTC. Unless there is a direct point to using BTC for the average person, which there currently aren't many for, they won't care.

I am more than an average user when it comes to Tech stuff, growing up programming 3 hours a day for my "shop class" in high school. 3 hours a day * 5 days a week * school year days * 4 years is how much programming experience I had at a very young age. Believe you me, I know what I am talking about. BTC isn't really going anywhere fast.

[iluvpie60]

When I look at BTC I see innovation. I see a technology that allows me to be my own bank instead of making crooked banks wealthier. Take a look at the top 6 profitable public companies in Canada:

1  Royal Bank of Canada    
2  Bank of Nova Scotia    
3  Toronto-Dominion Bank
4  Bank of Montreal    
5  Imperial Oil    
6  Canadian Imperial Bank of Congress    

     *source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_public_companies_in_Canada_by_profit

Notice that 5 of them are banks. I'm sure the pattern is similar for many other countries. It's not really surprising, given that they make money out of nothing basically. You mentioned that eventually the banks will take over BTC. They would have to buy them off of us to get them. Banks wouldn't be able to operate like they are right now using BTC unless they built an additional centralized layer on top of it. The blockchain is an open ledger that anyone can access, so they can't create endless BTC like they can do with fiat.

I realize that the days of throwing a few hundred dollars into BTC and becoming rich are over, but there's still a lot of room for growth and improvement.

You don't know who your BTC is going to when you are buying and selling on exchange. They can easily get the majority it from exchanges over time without telling anyone. The Bitcoin protocol can indeed be changed to create infinite Bitcoins if Gavin and the team choose to do so.

[iluvpie60]

hey iluvpie60 why do you still have a signature begging ppl to contribute btc to you then?

This is funny. OK let me break it down for you.

My sig says "Cool Contribution bro, contribute again". So when you contribute BTC to my address I receive the BTC ok... Now then, I can spend the contributions once I have them.

You new here?

[iluvpie60]

Just because there is a limited supply doesn't mean anything, the demand also comes in somewhere no? Look at the demand right now, price dropped from a high of I dunno 1,135 USD something(not MTGOX  inflated prices) now it is at 445 USD. A lot of people got invested into this when it was going up in price, ever wonder why you only see 3,000 people signed on BTC-E anymore and not 15,000 like they were getting? Demand is dropping, supply doesn't matter if no one wants it.

Before I take my time to write out an answer to your statement, I would like to know why you think that limited supply doesn't mean anything? Care to explain your thought in detail?

Limited supply means something only IF it MEANS SOMETHING to others.

I got a used tissue I just blew my nose, and my load into. Very limited supply on that these days, most of them get thrown away! I am being an ass here lol. Couldn't resist.

[iluvpie60]

hey iluvpie60 why do you still have a signature begging ppl to contribute btc to you then?

Yeah, you should change it to a paypal address.

lol I should. That would seriously be the best thing ever, people would flame me forever if I did that.

[master-P]

You don't know who your BTC is going to when you are buying and selling on exchange. They can easily get the majority it from exchanges over time without telling anyone. The Bitcoin protocol can indeed be changed to create infinite Bitcoins if Gavin and the team choose to do so.

Sure the BTC devs can change the protocol to create infinite BTC, but they won't be able to force people to adopt such an update. Bitcoin is open source and I'm sure other programmers delicately scrutinize any updates. You're correct that anyone can buy BTC on the exchanges, but it's not a suitable medium to purchase large enough quantities to make you a majority holder. Prices would go up as they buy essentially creating another bubble. Even if the banks came to own most of the existing BTC, they would be at a huge risk because people could abandon it for another crypto, essentially making them bagholders.

[g4c]

Me, being a Forecasting and Planning Analyst(actual job title) can tell you right now, the basic first rule of planning and forecasting is not to take historic data and say "this must be what will happen".

I would only ever write things like "this may be what will happen".

Historic data is very valuable in attempts at prediction, it being the ONLY data available.

See, you aren't looking at all of the bad things going on lately, and you aren't taking in all of the factors.

Yes I am. and they are very similar to the events surrounding all previous bubbles.

You are just saying this is a tech thing, its gonna blow up, blah blah.

Price has remained within a logarithmic growth channel.

There isn't really anything that exists to make it easier to obtain BTC. Unless there is a direct point to using BTC for the average person, which there currently aren't many for, they won't care.

Recently bitcoin ATM machines are going out with quite aggressive placement strategies.

The worlds a big place.

I am more than an average user when it comes to Tech stuff, growing up programming 3 hours a day for my "shop class" in high school. 3 hours a day * 5 days a week * school year days * 4 years is how much programming experience I had at a very young age. Believe you me, I know what I am talking about.

I like coding too, my latest project is a virtual reality casino: http://www.game4coins.com/

BTC isn't really going anywhere fast.

It has come a long way very fast.

But if you don't have the stomach for it then by all means sell now.

[dragonseer]

Face reality. Or don't, idk your choice. This is kinda long. Why not. Fun is spelled F U N.

Look at all of the news in the past few months. The IRS classified Bitcoin as property(the judgement everyone was waiting for to see if it was legal or not officially) Check, its there now.

You can buy almost anything you want with BTC now(might have to convert to Gyft for some things).

Some countries have banned it some haven't.

China is basically going to ban it and cause a new price crash on April 15th(Or so I have heard and it really looks to be the case from my own research).

At this point, can anyone really say there is something that will catapult Bitcoin straight up like happened months ago?(no you can't and the comments below prove you can't even form sentences to this question). I will change my mind if someone really gives a good argument for a huge sharp rise in a short period. But I don't see one(comments below show no arguments yet).

Long term, another coin will beat it out, or something better will be invented. It's no secret mining is a completely stupid way of verifying a transaction because all that happens is that tons of computers/gpus/servers/rigs are guessing random numbers until they line up with what is needed. This eventually will cause a tremendous amount of energy waste(right now I am pretty sure all miners are losing money if they are converting into USD right away).

Just because there is a limited supply doesn't mean anything, the demand also comes in somewhere no? Look at the demand right now, price dropped from a high of I dunno 1,135 USD something(not MTGOX  inflated prices) now it is at 445 USD. A lot of people got invested into this when it was going up in price, ever wonder why you only see 3,000 people signed on BTC-E anymore and not 15,000 like they were getting? Demand is dropping, supply doesn't matter if no one wants it.

That being said, if you are one of these people who "put all of their life savings in BTC/Alt coins" I think it is time for a reality check(at least in the short term).

Oh but the Network effect you all scream like babies, tell that to MySpace rofl. Or AIM, or Yahoo, or any other person who held the network majority, its called competition(google it).

Personally, I lost all of my BTC, originally had 5 BTC, turned it into 7 BTC, lost some on a bad trade, lost 45% of my BTC on Cex.io adding "futures options", which I had no idea they were doing(my fault I know). Then I accidentally did a max bet on Just dice and lost most of it, got like .2 BTC left right, then coinex gets hacked rofl... so im down to abotu .05 BTC total.

For reference, my friend put 3,000 bucks into stock at his company and bought in at 43 bucks per, had to hold for a lil while, then sold it at 60 bucks. Kinda wishing I never did this whole BTC thing, it helps people, but it's definitely a super minority of people this helps(for now). I agree it might help poorer countries, but "Ain't nobody got time for that" over there, they are like you know, farming and stealing to eat and survive. So #ya.


Edit 1: Let me also add, BTC it is not very user friendly for the majority of any population. You have to verify a bank account where your Fiat comes from and get a fee charged on you (but Bitcoin itself can have no fees I understand that) So you still have fees for now, so that doesn't exactly help. Fees need to be eliminated or driven down really really low, then you got a fee to withdraw into Fiat also. I understand you can just keep it in BTC, but heres the problem you run into. Say you have 1 BTC, you spend all of it, guess what? Time to pony up and pay more fees to get BTC, now you have to keep track of the flucuations of BTC according to the IRS ruling. Every time you buy or sell any coins for any reason ever, you have to keep track of it, no thanks rofl.

 If Obama can win a majority of a country of 300 million +  and get a second term based on ideas and no substance, how do you expect Bitcoin which is based on substance and some Ideology to win over morons? It won't. Also, the repubbies'cans say the same thing for the past 8 years, they presented their ideas and didn't win anything but the House. Might get Senate this time because Obama lies a lot and ppl get madzzz.


Edit 2: Personally, I incur 0% fees per year on my credit cards. All of them have no annual fee, no fees for bank transfers ever on my cards, no late payment fees ever for an unlimited amount of times, 1 and 2% cash back on everything(one of my cards is 1% but it is MasterCard I have to sometimes use), I get 5% cash back on purchases in the rotating 3 month categories(I  have 4 credit cards all linked to one b ank account, and whichever card has the 5% off of whatever I am buying I use that). So it becomes extremely wrong to advocate Bitcoin be used for rich/middle/lower middle class people. I only make 47,000 a year Salary, I am 24 years old, 2 years out of college and I am at my first "REAL" job, to tell me to use Bitcoin and get some fees converting from Fiat to BTC, then I spend the BTC, then guess what??? I need more BTC, lets incur more fees converting from Fiat to BTC. Don't you see BTC is really for poor people? If poor people only use BTC back and forth between each other it would be wonderful, but that isn't going to happen for a long long long time, 10s of years later maybe, MAYBE people will all be tech savvy. MAYBE. But BTC doesn't solve any problems for the majority of people and you know it.


Edit 3: I really feel like that mining is a huge waste of electricity, think of if we didn't have to mine and have hardware that generated random numbers to complete a hash. What then? Do we really need something to continually guess at solving a hash and it takes time and massive amounts of equipment? I don't think we do. I just think we need enough connected computers to agree what something is, I feel it is very unnecessary to have servers/mining rigs chug out random guesses at solving a hash 24/7 for Bitcoin to work. That isn't efficient, and eventually it will all be controlled by someone with the highest bankroll who can keep buying new servers/quantum computing. The fact that organizations like Cex.io exist should really make anyone question what this is all about.

There are people making money, and the people making the most money are in the hardware side. Do you ever wonder why it seems like there are so many people making hardware? Why don't they use it for themselves and keep all the BTC they make? Because the return on investment is really risky, better to have a guaranteed return in US dollars or BTC by selling the hardware/services.

When you think of it all that way, you can see why I believe BTC will be dominated by companies and inevitable BANKS. BANKS and INSURANCE companies are the only establishments that would logically take on this kind of thing, and the only establishments who need to BUY it out. Why did Facebook buy Whatsapp and Pinterest? Less competition = better life for Facebook. It is what all Oligopolies want and crave Wink

I think Bitcoin may approach $1000 again this year, but I don't see it going any higher. It could just as easily go under $100 as well. If you are going to see a huge rise in a coin in 2014, it will be because either of two things happen. It may be that a digital currency that has been floated with an airdrop gets enough traction so people start converting their fiat to it in places like Iceland with Auroracoin, or in the Netherlands with Electronic Gulden. Or it may be that you will see other altcoins used for merchant transactions, I think Bitcoin is too slow for point of sale transactions, a few altcoins like Quark and maybe Zetacoin are not. If you are heavily invested in Bitcoin you might not like these scenarios but, it just means the advantages of Bitcoin may be better realized in other open source alternatives. Another thing to be wary of this year is of things like Ripple and Mastercoin imposing themselves in this space and getting friendly with corporations. If Apple lets a Mastercoin wallet app on their store after booting off Bitcoin you will know what I mean.

[paratox]

Just because there is a limited supply doesn't mean anything, the demand also comes in somewhere no? Look at the demand right now, price dropped from a high of I dunno 1,135 USD something(not MTGOX  inflated prices) now it is at 445 USD. A lot of people got invested into this when it was going up in price, ever wonder why you only see 3,000 people signed on BTC-E anymore and not 15,000 like they were getting? Demand is dropping, supply doesn't matter if no one wants it.

Before I take my time to write out an answer to your statement, I would like to know why you think that limited supply doesn't mean anything? Care to explain your thought in detail?

Limited supply means something only IF it MEANS SOMETHING to others.

I got a used tissue I just blew my nose, and my load into. Very limited supply on that these days, most of them get thrown away! I am being an ass here lol. Couldn't resist.

The difference is, your load is only of practical use for a small part of population if at all. Limited supply of something that is useful for a large part of population is definitely meaningful.  


It seems you jump to the conclusion that demand is dropping, just because the bitcoin price is in a short/mid-term downtrend.

Demand (interest) is not as transparent as you seem to believe. How do you know that there aren't people waiting on the sidelines? Personally I know a few people who just learned about bitcoin during the last bubble  but are intelligent enough to wait for a good moment to buy in.

[Bit_Happy]

Fail.
Your post is not balanced.
If you rewrite with this in the first paragraph then it will be better and more people will read it:
Denmark has declared you can trade BTC and pay no taxes on the profits.


ps. You do not need to use bold or blue. 

Face reality. Or don't, idk your choice. This is kinda long. Why not. Fun is spelled F U N.

Look at all of the news in the past few months. The IRS classified Bitcoin as property(the judgement everyone was waiting for to see if it was legal or not officially) Check, its there now.

You can buy almost anything you want with BTC now(might have to convert to Gyft for some things).

Some countries have banned it some haven't.

China is basically going to ban it and cause a new price crash on April 15th(Or so I have heard and it really looks to be the case from my own research).

At this point, can anyone really say there is something that will catapult Bitcoin straight up like happened months ago?(no you can't and the comments below prove you can't even form sentences to this question). I will change my mind if someone really gives a good argument for a huge sharp rise in a short period. But I don't see one(comments below show no arguments yet).

Long term, another coin will beat it out, or something better will be invented. It's no secret mining is a completely stupid way of verifying a transaction because all that happens is that tons of computers/gpus/servers/rigs are guessing random numbers until they line up with what is needed. This eventually will cause a tremendous amount of energy waste(right now I am pretty sure all miners are losing money if they are converting into USD right away).

Just because there is a limited supply doesn't mean anything, the demand also comes in somewhere no? Look at the demand right now, price dropped from a high of I dunno 1,135 USD something(not MTGOX  inflated prices) now it is at 445 USD. A lot of people got invested into this when it was going up in price, ever wonder why you only see 3,000 people signed on BTC-E anymore and not 15,000 like they were getting? Demand is dropping, supply doesn't matter if no one wants it.

That being said, if you are one of these people who "put all of their life savings in BTC/Alt coins" I think it is time for a reality check(at least in the short term).

Oh but the Network effect you all scream like babies, tell that to MySpace rofl. Or AIM, or Yahoo, or any other person who held the network majority, its called competition(google it).

Personally, I lost all of my BTC, originally had 5 BTC, turned it into 7 BTC, lost some on a bad trade, lost 45% of my BTC on Cex.io adding "futures options", which I had no idea they were doing(my fault I know). Then I accidentally did a max bet on Just dice and lost most of it, got like .2 BTC left right, then coinex gets hacked rofl... so im down to abotu .05 BTC total.

For reference, my friend put 3,000 bucks into stock at his company and bought in at 43 bucks per, had to hold for a lil while, then sold it at 60 bucks. Kinda wishing I never did this whole BTC thing, it helps people, but it's definitely a super minority of people this helps(for now). I agree it might help poorer countries, but "Ain't nobody got time for that" over there, they are like you know, farming and stealing to eat and survive. So #ya.


Edit 1: Let me also add, BTC it is not very user friendly for the majority of any population. You have to verify a bank account where your Fiat comes from and get a fee charged on you (but Bitcoin itself can have no fees I understand that) So you still have fees for now, so that doesn't exactly help. Fees need to be eliminated or driven down really really low, then you got a fee to withdraw into Fiat also. I understand you can just keep it in BTC, but heres the problem you run into. Say you have 1 BTC, you spend all of it, guess what? Time to pony up and pay more fees to get BTC, now you have to keep track of the flucuations of BTC according to the IRS ruling. Every time you buy or sell any coins for any reason ever, you have to keep track of it, no thanks rofl.

 If Obama can win a majority of a country of 300 million +  and get a second term based on ideas and no substance, how do you expect Bitcoin which is based on substance and some Ideology to win over morons? It won't. Also, the repubbies'cans say the same thing for the past 8 years, they presented their ideas and didn't win anything but the House. Might get Senate this time because Obama lies a lot and ppl get madzzz.


Edit 2: Personally, I incur 0% fees per year on my credit cards. All of them have no annual fee, no fees for bank transfers ever on my cards, no late payment fees ever for an unlimited amount of times, 1 and 2% cash back on everything(one of my cards is 1% but it is MasterCard I have to sometimes use), I get 5% cash back on purchases in the rotating 3 month categories(I  have 4 credit cards all linked to one b ank account, and whichever card has the 5% off of whatever I am buying I use that). So it becomes extremely wrong to advocate Bitcoin be used for rich/middle/lower middle class people. I only make 47,000 a year Salary, I am 24 years old, 2 years out of college and I am at my first "REAL" job, to tell me to use Bitcoin and get some fees converting from Fiat to BTC, then I spend the BTC, then guess what??? I need more BTC, lets incur more fees converting from Fiat to BTC. Don't you see BTC is really for poor people? If poor people only use BTC back and forth between each other it would be wonderful, but that isn't going to happen for a long long long time, 10s of years later maybe, MAYBE people will all be tech savvy. MAYBE. But BTC doesn't solve any problems for the majority of people and you know it.


Edit 3: I really feel like that mining is a huge waste of electricity, think of if we didn't have to mine and have hardware that generated random numbers to complete a hash. What then? Do we really need something to continually guess at solving a hash and it takes time and massive amounts of equipment? I don't think we do. I just think we need enough connected computers to agree what something is, I feel it is very unnecessary to have servers/mining rigs chug out random guesses at solving a hash 24/7 for Bitcoin to work. That isn't efficient, and eventually it will all be controlled by someone with the highest bankroll who can keep buying new servers/quantum computing. The fact that organizations like Cex.io exist should really make anyone question what this is all about.

There are people making money, and the people making the most money are in the hardware side. Do you ever wonder why it seems like there are so many people making hardware? Why don't they use it for themselves and keep all the BTC they make? Because the return on investment is really risky, better to have a guaranteed return in US dollars or BTC by selling the hardware/services.

When you think of it all that way, you can see why I believe BTC will be dominated by companies and inevitable BANKS. BANKS and INSURANCE companies are the only establishments that would logically take on this kind of thing, and the only establishments who need to BUY it out. Why did Facebook buy Whatsapp and Pinterest? Less competition = better life for Facebook. It is what all Oligopolies want and crave Wink

[master-P]

Fail.
Your post is not balanced.
If you rewrite with this in the first paragraph then it will be better and more people will read it:
Denmark has declared you can trade BTC and pay no taxes on the profits.


ps. You do not need to use bold or blue. 

The most balanced approach would be to list both the good and bad points and make an analysis based on that.

[Beans]

Face reality. Or don't, idk your choice. This is kinda long. Why not. Fun is spelled F U N.

Look at all of the news in the past few months. The IRS classified Bitcoin as property(the judgement everyone was waiting for to see if it was legal or not officially) Check, its there now.

You can buy almost anything you want with BTC now(might have to convert to Gyft for some things).

Some countries have banned it some haven't.

China is basically going to ban it and cause a new price crash on April 15th(Or so I have heard and it really looks to be the case from my own research).

At this point, can anyone really say there is something that will catapult Bitcoin straight up like happened months ago?(no you can't and the comments below prove you can't even form sentences to this question). I will change my mind if someone really gives a good argument for a huge sharp rise in a short period. But I don't see one(comments below show no arguments yet).

Long term, another coin will beat it out, or something better will be invented. It's no secret mining is a completely stupid way of verifying a transaction because all that happens is that tons of computers/gpus/servers/rigs are guessing random numbers until they line up with what is needed. This eventually will cause a tremendous amount of energy waste(right now I am pretty sure all miners are losing money if they are converting into USD right away).

Just because there is a limited supply doesn't mean anything, the demand also comes in somewhere no? Look at the demand right now, price dropped from a high of I dunno 1,135 USD something(not MTGOX  inflated prices) now it is at 445 USD. A lot of people got invested into this when it was going up in price, ever wonder why you only see 3,000 people signed on BTC-E anymore and not 15,000 like they were getting? Demand is dropping, supply doesn't matter if no one wants it.

That being said, if you are one of these people who "put all of their life savings in BTC/Alt coins" I think it is time for a reality check(at least in the short term).

Oh but the Network effect you all scream like babies, tell that to MySpace rofl. Or AIM, or Yahoo, or any other person who held the network majority, its called competition(google it).

Personally, I lost all of my BTC, originally had 5 BTC, turned it into 7 BTC, lost some on a bad trade, lost 45% of my BTC on Cex.io adding "futures options", which I had no idea they were doing(my fault I know). Then I accidentally did a max bet on Just dice and lost most of it, got like .2 BTC left right, then coinex gets hacked rofl... so im down to abotu .05 BTC total.

For reference, my friend put 3,000 bucks into stock at his company and bought in at 43 bucks per, had to hold for a lil while, then sold it at 60 bucks. Kinda wishing I never did this whole BTC thing, it helps people, but it's definitely a super minority of people this helps(for now). I agree it might help poorer countries, but "Ain't nobody got time for that" over there, they are like you know, farming and stealing to eat and survive. So #ya.


Edit 1: Let me also add, BTC it is not very user friendly for the majority of any population. You have to verify a bank account where your Fiat comes from and get a fee charged on you (but Bitcoin itself can have no fees I understand that) So you still have fees for now, so that doesn't exactly help. Fees need to be eliminated or driven down really really low, then you got a fee to withdraw into Fiat also. I understand you can just keep it in BTC, but heres the problem you run into. Say you have 1 BTC, you spend all of it, guess what? Time to pony up and pay more fees to get BTC, now you have to keep track of the flucuations of BTC according to the IRS ruling. Every time you buy or sell any coins for any reason ever, you have to keep track of it, no thanks rofl.

 If Obama can win a majority of a country of 300 million +  and get a second term based on ideas and no substance, how do you expect Bitcoin which is based on substance and some Ideology to win over morons? It won't. Also, the repubbies'cans say the same thing for the past 8 years, they presented their ideas and didn't win anything but the House. Might get Senate this time because Obama lies a lot and ppl get madzzz.


Edit 2: Personally, I incur 0% fees per year on my credit cards. All of them have no annual fee, no fees for bank transfers ever on my cards, no late payment fees ever for an unlimited amount of times, 1 and 2% cash back on everything(one of my cards is 1% but it is MasterCard I have to sometimes use), I get 5% cash back on purchases in the rotating 3 month categories(I  have 4 credit cards all linked to one b ank account, and whichever card has the 5% off of whatever I am buying I use that). So it becomes extremely wrong to advocate Bitcoin be used for rich/middle/lower middle class people. I only make 47,000 a year Salary, I am 24 years old, 2 years out of college and I am at my first "REAL" job, to tell me to use Bitcoin and get some fees converting from Fiat to BTC, then I spend the BTC, then guess what??? I need more BTC, lets incur more fees converting from Fiat to BTC. Don't you see BTC is really for poor people? If poor people only use BTC back and forth between each other it would be wonderful, but that isn't going to happen for a long long long time, 10s of years later maybe, MAYBE people will all be tech savvy. MAYBE. But BTC doesn't solve any problems for the majority of people and you know it.


Edit 3: I really feel like that mining is a huge waste of electricity, think of if we didn't have to mine and have hardware that generated random numbers to complete a hash. What then? Do we really need something to continually guess at solving a hash and it takes time and massive amounts of equipment? I don't think we do. I just think we need enough connected computers to agree what something is, I feel it is very unnecessary to have servers/mining rigs chug out random guesses at solving a hash 24/7 for Bitcoin to work. That isn't efficient, and eventually it will all be controlled by someone with the highest bankroll who can keep buying new servers/quantum computing. The fact that organizations like Cex.io exist should really make anyone question what this is all about.

There are people making money, and the people making the most money are in the hardware side. Do you ever wonder why it seems like there are so many people making hardware? Why don't they use it for themselves and keep all the BTC they make? Because the return on investment is really risky, better to have a guaranteed return in US dollars or BTC by selling the hardware/services.

When you think of it all that way, you can see why I believe BTC will be dominated by companies and inevitable BANKS. BANKS and INSURANCE companies are the only establishments that would logically take on this kind of thing, and the only establishments who need to BUY it out. Why did Facebook buy Whatsapp and Pinterest? Less competition = better life for Facebook. It is what all Oligopolies want and crave Wink

I think Bitcoin may approach $1000 again this year, but I don't see it going any higher. It could just as easily go under $100 as well. If you are going to see a huge rise in a coin in 2014, it will be because either of two things happen. It may be that a digital currency that has been floated with an airdrop gets enough traction so people start converting their fiat to it in places like Iceland with Auroracoin, or in the Netherlands with Electronic Gulden. Or it may be that you will see other altcoins used for merchant transactions, I think Bitcoin is too slow for point of sale transactions, a few altcoins like Quark and maybe Zetacoin are not. If you are heavily invested in Bitcoin you might not like these scenarios but, it just means the advantages of Bitcoin may be better realized in other open source alternatives. Another thing to be wary of this year is of things like Ripple and Mastercoin imposing themselves in this space and getting friendly with corporations. If Apple lets a Mastercoin wallet app on their store after booting off Bitcoin you will know what I mean.

We need a centralized service that operates separate from bitcoin. Where you can register addresses under your name, then we can have charge-backs and instant transactions. That's what we need to really get the adoption rate back up.

[sidhujag]

We are early adopters.. All that stuff can happen with insurers stepping up making the markets. Refunds instant transactions etc are all possible.

[Bit_Happy]

We are early adopters.. All that stuff can happen with insurers stepping up making the markets. Refunds instant transactions etc are all possible.

Virtually anything is possible! 

[Arghhh]

Personally, I lost all of my BTC, originally had 5 BTC, turned it into 7 BTC, lost some on a bad trade, lost 45% of my BTC on Cex.io adding "futures options", which I had no idea they were doing(my fault I know). Then I accidentally did a max bet on Just dice and lost most of it, got like .2 BTC left right, then coinex gets hacked rofl... so im down to abotu .05 BTC total.

sooo... you lost pretty much all your bitcoins by your own stupidity... and now you're in a frantic loop justifying why bitcoin will never go big again by spreading FUD?

Why on earth would anyone pay you to be a planning and forecasting analyst?

I think you, cosmofly, and fonzi should talk over beer at the Barking Bear, the trip will be provided by my early stash of HODL n' win coins.

Notice that the people spreading the most FUD are often the ones who jumped off the train early.

[Hyena]

Bitcoin will never go to the moon again because we already did that. Mars is next, stupid OP.

Yeah? Pics or it didn't happen.

#idiot

OP you're an obvious noob in this forum and in the bitcoin world. I was here long before you and all the oldfags know that Bitcoin already got to the moon. DONE. Now, let's speak about Mars.

[frienemy]

I think you, cosmofly, and fonzi should talk over beer at the Barking Bear, the trip will be provided by my early stash of HODL n' win coins.

The Barking Bear...isn't that the place with this huge suicide terrace on the top floor?

[Arghhh]

I think you, cosmofly, and fonzi should talk over beer at the Barking Bear, the trip will be provided by my early stash of HODL n' win coins.

The Barking Bear...isn't that the place with this huge suicide terrace on the top floor?

Correct. Here's the terrace:



Protip: Death by impalement

[SlipperySlope]

Personally, I lost all of my BTC, originally had 5 BTC, turned it into 7 BTC, lost some on a bad trade, lost 45% of my BTC on Cex.io adding "futures options", which I had no idea they were doing(my fault I know). Then I accidentally did a max bet on Just dice and lost most of it, got like .2 BTC left right, then coinex gets hacked rofl... so im down to abotu .05 BTC total.

Despair.

Yet another sentiment data point indicating that we are near the bottom of this bubble collapse.

[CoinRocka]

Personally, I lost all of my BTC, originally had 5 BTC, turned it into 7 BTC, lost some on a bad trade, lost 45% of my BTC on Cex.io adding "futures options", which I had no idea they were doing(my fault I know). Then I accidentally did a max bet on Just dice and lost most of it, got like .2 BTC left right, then coinex gets hacked rofl... so im down to abotu .05 BTC total.

Despair.

Yet another sentiment data point indicating that we are near the bottom of this bubble collapse.

Tough times are tough.