Despite the many large investors still hedging on Bitcoin taking over the world, and the spin they push through various media outlets and sites like Coindesk, the truth is that the general Bitcoin community is growing tired. Tired of falling prices. Tired of scandals like Mt. Gox. Tired of rigs they invested in not paying off like they hoped. Tired of maintaining those rigs. Summer on its way. AC bills will rise. Price now trading flat, or in my opinion barely holding on to current levels. Scam after scam with companies that promise mining equipment but instead use your money to develop and build the technology only to use it for months and months, earning the BTC for themselves and skyrocketing the difficulty. Crap coin after crap coin which honestly just makes the whole industry look like a joke. Potcoin. Dogecoin. It makes the technology look like a circus for morons yet more coins come out every day and are backed by exchanges that represent the industry. Could you imagine if the NASDAQ was filled with goofy company names like that?
Posts are slowing on the boards. Hashrate is spread so thin across so many coins. And most coins are so thinly traded, even with the bigger ones you'd have a damn hard time liquidating a large value of currency if you had it, the prices are held up by thin buys, and not enough buyers to really dump huge amounts.
I hope I'm wrong.
Have we reached Despair yet?
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"Posts are slowing on the boards. Hashrate is spread so thin across so many coins."
Posts are not slowing down.
Hashrate is doing nothing but going UP on BTC. Sorry if you wasted your money on altcoins, but don't look at that as part of the bitcoin ecosystem's problem. Altcoins are abused, experimented with, and hyped up. You ever buy into an IPO that shit itself? This is the way markets work. I've had TWTR stock, TSLA stock, FB as well as some others... you want to talk about a rollercoaster, and you think Bitcoin is unique to these types of swings? This must be your first rodeo in investing (which is clearly what you see it as since you are referring to the USD price).
I personally like when prices go down, because I want more stock in some of these companies to go long on. Bitcoin is a little different for me because I'm so ideologically in love with Bitcoin. I've finally found something and an ecosystem that I find is worth supporting. I buy bitcoins, and I mine bitcoins because there is nothing I have found in my life that is worth more of my time, attention, and capital than bitcoin.
Weak Hand flushes where a price stabilizes lower than the perceived floor (which one could picture is probably $500 nowadays), are normal in market cycles, and especially in this one. Institutional investors look for somewhat of a stable point before jumping in. There are big buys that have been happening, but the smart money isn't going to drive of the price if they don't have to. Institutional investors are a lot more patient than you or I. They don't check the bitcoin price everyday 5 times a day hoping that if it just went up 20 bucks in one day and maybe did that a few days in a row they would somehow "feel better". Investors look at the big picture and aren't going to buy into sharp price rises.
I like to think like Bitcoin is "rediscovered" every year at different levels and basically goes through this cycle each time:
http://marketpredict.com/articles/images/bubble-lifecycle.gifPeople say Bubbles hurt bitcoin, but in the long run it gets people interested, the people who get burned are the people who got greedy and spent too much money on something they didn't understand during a period of where "everyone is making money".
Bitcoin doesn't want people extracting money into its ecosystem, so it naturally has flushed out those people through the free market system. Put money into the Bitcoin ecosystem and help it grow and who knows, you might be rewarded handsomely one day, and hey if not, at least you spent your time on something you believed in and thought was going to make some good in the world.
If you are just trying to make money, try and flip triple leveraged ETF's and learn a few stocks and learn their option players well and learn to play the options market, those have tons of movement and if you know what you are doing, you will trade up more often than not.