2014: The Worst Year for BTC?

[X7]

IMO 2014 was a damn good year for BTC

[1715152808]

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[Rickdias]

oui oui senior 2014 was good for coining up

[halfawake]

oui oui senior 2014 was good for coining up

Only if you did it at the right time, which would probably be now.  I've made a pretty massive paper loss on the value of my bitcoins, but I'm not selling as I'm hoping this downward trend will reverse itself one of these days.

[OrientA]

Patience, Patience, Patience !!!

[Rickdias]

oui oui senior 2014 was good for coining up

Only if you did it at the right time, which would probably be now.  I've made a pretty massive paper loss on the value of my bitcoins, but I'm not selling as I'm hoping this downward trend will reverse itself one of these days.

yea that'll get you, when playing the bear market its easier to sleep at night holding fiat. But when in Cyprus do as the Cypriots

[Sefton]

Sure it's been a disappointing year price-wise, but Bitcoin is still going strong and growing daily, but the price isn't everything.

[polynesia]

Sure it's been a disappointing year price-wise, but Bitcoin is still going strong and growing daily, but the price isn't everything.

Price is the easiest measurable metric, which is why everybody seems to be obsessed about it. 

[ducatitalia]

Check back in 85 years to see where Bitcoin lands on the 21st Century list...

http://investorplace.com/2014/06/best-investments-of-20th-century/#.VC1_W_ldWKI

[krishatnet]

Price is going down day by day worried about the future will its value increase again?

[GenTarkin]

Worst year? are you talking price or adoption?
Because as far as price goes, sure its one of the larger declines, its like been a really slow bubble pop year =P
But last I checked the price is still above the most recent bubble($266) and definitely above its lowest of $0.

Adoption has been quite impressive though, more vendors jumping on board, services popping up like wildfire, governments taking it seriously, etc...

The way I see it, we are entering its more mature growth cycle. Its quite similar to the .com bubble. There was huge hype around the .com bubble which ultimately lead to a massive round of losses... but shortly after is when innovation & real value was being created for the web, now ".com's" are worth more than they ever were - meaning what was once just a hype driven bubble, has steadily grown into something used by everyone, everywhere, everyday...

We are at that very beginning of perhaps, but true & real innovation for crypto... is my guess.
So, the above is what bitcoin always has going on for it 'behind the scenes'

The only thing that will cause it to go super high in any short / midterm will be the complete implosion of major world fiat currencies, primarily USD. Once it gets inflated into the sky, at incredible rates, people will be 'cashing out of USD / other fiat' into some other form of safe haven. Bitcoin has become part of that 'safe haven' realm in such occasions. The secondary effect of this failure, will be more people seeking other ways to transact outside of USD ... bitcoin fits the bill for this really well.

Basically, what it comes down to.
For there to be true demand behind bitcoin's price ... the critical mass has to WANT to use it as an alternate currency. What will get us there quicker is us in the community who actually give a shit about what Bitcoin offers the world, actually getting off our asses and 'spreading the good word' about it. What will get us there REALLY FUCKING FAST, will be world monetary systems failing every day.

So, either the community decides to take action, which some have(hence is part of the reason why bitcoin is used as much as it is today and responsible for a decent chunk of its price point) and spread the word OR the community continues to sit back and wait for the demise of major world currencies. Of course, theres doing both =) ... which I imagine some of us are!

[allthingsluxury]

Price wise, it hasn't been great at all. But as far as adoption and growth, I think it's been very positive. The long term trend for bitcoin continues to look positive.

[GenTarkin]

Price wise, it hasn't been great at all. But as far as adoption and growth, I think it's been very positive. The long term trend for bitcoin continues to look positive.

Guess it depends on what side of the fence you sit on. If you sit on Bitcoin just hoping its price point skyrockets, then yes price sucks for you. But, if you hoping price goes down so you can stock pile more.... price has been awesome for you this year..

[vasya666]

no, the best year 

Or not, lol.

[LiberyOrDeath]

Worst year? are you talking price or adoption?
Because as far as price goes, sure its one of the larger declines, its like been a really slow bubble pop year =P
But last I checked the price is still above the most recent bubble($266) and definitely above its lowest of $0.

Adoption has been quite impressive though, more vendors jumping on board, services popping up like wildfire, governments taking it seriously, etc...

The way I see it, we are entering its more mature growth cycle. Its quite similar to the .com bubble. There was huge hype around the .com bubble which ultimately lead to a massive round of losses... but shortly after is when innovation & real value was being created for the web, now ".com's" are worth more than they ever were - meaning what was once just a hype driven bubble, has steadily grown into something used by everyone, everywhere, everyday...

We are at that very beginning of perhaps, but true & real innovation for crypto... is my guess.
So, the above is what bitcoin always has going on for it 'behind the scenes'

The only thing that will cause it to go super high in any short / midterm will be the complete implosion of major world fiat currencies, primarily USD. Once it gets inflated into the sky, at incredible rates, people will be 'cashing out of USD / other fiat' into some other form of safe haven. Bitcoin has become part of that 'safe haven' realm in such occasions. The secondary effect of this failure, will be more people seeking other ways to transact outside of USD ... bitcoin fits the bill for this really well.

Basically, what it comes down to.
For there to be true demand behind bitcoin's price ... the critical mass has to WANT to use it as an alternate currency. What will get us there quicker is us in the community who actually give a shit about what Bitcoin offers the world, actually getting off our asses and 'spreading the good word' about it. What will get us there REALLY FUCKING FAST, will be world monetary systems failing every day.

So, either the community decides to take action, which some have(hence is part of the reason why bitcoin is used as much as it is today and responsible for a decent chunk of its price point) and spread the word OR the community continues to sit back and wait for the demise of major world currencies. Of course, theres doing both =) ... which I imagine some of us are!

I am talking strictly in terms of BTC price. You pointed out the April 2013 bubble - it went to 260-270 USD , that's the last major support for BTC price wise. We are around 370 USD at the moment and have been there for days. As long as the price stays above the support of 270 USD or maybe psychologically important 300 USD - we are still good. On the off chance that I falls down below 300 USD - we are fucked and could see it go back under 100 USD. I hope it will not happen, and for me this is a long term play - not a short speculation, however many new investors bought in January-March period and the losses are substantial for a lot of people at the moment.

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Quite substantial

[X7]

Honey badger don't care

[BlindMayorBitcorn]

Honey badger don't care

Honeybadger don't give a shit

[mmortal03]

No time in bitcoin history has anyone lost any money if they held for 1 year at any buy in point.  This will be really interesting when we start hitting september/october.

I keep hearing people say this, and it's completely false. It simply wasn't the case in 2011. If you bought in near the peak ($32), then it took between 17 and 20 months before you broke even. Take a look at the Mt. Gox chart for yourself (will probably need to zoom out): https://bitcoinwisdom.com/markets/mtgox/btcusd

[mmortal03]

In fact, you're taking two arbitrary points in time and comparing the exchange rate of BTC vs the USD.
Just because theses points in time happen to be January 1st and December 31st doesn't add any fundamentally important information.

Well then, what points in time would you suggest we use instead of years and months?

Let's say you do use months. Here's something I posted elsewhere on the forum, slightly revised:

A comparison to 2011

It took us 20 months following the 2011 $32 high for that price to be surpassed. Giving the investors back then the benefit of the doubt, let's assume that most of them didn't go all in at $32. Say they averaged at around $16. Even if that was the case, it actually still took 18 months just for them to get back above THAT level after it dropped below it.  So, then, let's use an even more optimistic estimate for them. Say they dollar cost averaged down in equal amounts from $32 to $2 (June 2011 to November 2011). Their break even exchange rate might have been about $10.  Even then, they'd still have had to wait around 13 months after the $32 peak just to break even.

Putting that into today's context, with our ATH on Bitstamp of 1163, the relative to 2011, the bottom this time around would've been around $73, and we've only actually gotten down to the $340 range! This brings me to another key difference regarding this time around.

The fact that we haven't even gotten close to such a relative low of $73, that's actually a double edged sword. Even while people haven't lost as much money on the way down up to this point as they would have if it had dropped to $73, they also haven't had the opportunity to buy in as low, to accelerate their process of breaking even -- assuming that it still, in the long term, goes back up.

This time around, say you dollar cost averaged in, by buying in with the same amount of dollars, at equal intervals, all the way down from $1163 to $338.  Your break even point might now be around $655. In a relative sense, that break even point is much closer to it's related high of $1163 than, say, the aforementioned $10 was to $32 back in 2011. Back then, it would've been like having your break even exchange rate at around $18, not $10. Keep in mind that that even a price of $18 wasn't crossed again for 19 months out from the high of $32.

So, we're currently only 10 months out from the current ATH. Say the same sort of situation comes to pass as 2011. Could you really hold out eight more months just to break even?

[Unbelive]

Even though we still have a few months to go until the end of 2014, chances are that this year might turn out to be the worst for BTC. By this I mean the first year so far that BTC will end up in negative territory, 2011, 2012, 2013 all ended with huge upward movements, yet this year we have fallen from January high of $900-$1000 to what we have know $475.

What does this signal in your opinion? This year has seen many breakthroughs and positive news, yet we are down more than 50% this year - unprecedented event in the history of BTC, since all the previous years ended with high gains. Does this mean that 2015 will be a huge year or is it just a small detour along the way?

What do you cryptoheads think about this phenomenon ?

Cheers,
Jay

September 4, 2013
1 BTC = $123

September 4, 2014
1 BTC = $475

That's an increase of $352 (286%) over 1 year.

It'll be interesting to see what happens in the remaining 4 months.

October 3, 2013
1 BTC = $103

October 3, 2014
1 BTC = $375