Topic: Critical mass may have been hit, the sky is the limit (Read 4390 times)

Yes this is what I'm saying, this is the beginning of critical mass. My 60 year old parents in-law has independently heard about Bitcoin, without me ever telling them. They have nearly no technical knowledge, they just read news. They asked me what Bitcoin was, and were very surprised to hear that I was already in Bitcoin for over 2 years.

I personally would say this is the beginning stages of critical mass.  Not that many people of all age groups acquiring bitcoin IMO.  There is still going to be volatile swings in the price but I'm very optimistic of the coming months for sure. 

Nice to here others opinion on the topic though lets hope more people adopt BTC and cancel out all the scammers trying to steal them.

I heard Vancouver's getting 5 more ATMs. When will the other cities of the world catch up?

Yep, the infrastructure surrounding bitcoin is still not robust enough.

Hm, maybe a critical mass of sorts has been hit after all.
 

Check out this report from in-person bitcoin purchases in Vancouver:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1qlulv/went_to_buy_10k_of_bitcoin_today_lineups/

Not critical mass of use yet- but critical mass in the media. EVERYBODY is talking about.
Every newspaper, every TV station that talks about economy, every magazine, blog.. you name it

Even my 80 yr old father  asked me to explain what it is.
( he read about it in Time Magazine in the article about the darknet)

We just need the development of hardware/software to catch up and make it EASY to use and keep safely.

This time around is not a bubble. Bitcoin will have mini-bubbles time to time from rapid upward momentum, but the economy is sound enough to support this new price.

April was a combination of rampant speculation followed by Mt.Gox's trade engine buckling under the weight of the sudden volume, causing an equally large panic and collapse to $50, and leveling off at $100.

Since then-

BTCChina has taken over the top spot in volume, Mt.Gox is no longer the central exchange. Gox again started having issues this rally, but BTCChina held up the price, BTC shrugged and kept going. No flash crash to be seen (aside an expected correction, and from there to new all time highs again)

BTC is nearing a $5 Billion cap. April saw $1 Billion after 4 years. We saw it go from $2 Billion (6 months from April) to nearly $5 Billion in 90 days. The chart has gone parabolic, we might see $10 Billion by the end of the year.

Payment gateways and ease of use is increasing greatly.

Global deployment of local Bitcoin ATMs further diversifying the exchange net

Adoption by very large companies, and lots and lots of small ones tired of being gouged by the failing fiat economy.

All those that said "Bitcoin is dead!" in April have been 110% silenced. Media exposure this time has been much, much more positive than April.

SR shutdown scrubbed Bitcoins filthy image from the public eye (despite it not really mattering as SR replacements, and SR itself, returned ), which BTC barely reacted to price-wise. BTC is becoming a real currency and money to the public.

Overall enthusiasm and momentum is increasing rapidly.

The mining network has been converted from a bunch of fire-hazard looking GPU and FPGA rigs to professional grade mining gear.


It has yet to be seen, but we may be seeing the early days of the exponential rise of Bitcoin. I do see this all to mean a state of critical mass, world adoption is accelerating at a breakneck pace. Nowhere near the end at all to be sure. 2013 was the real Year of Bitcoin, moving from the plaything of tech enthusiasts and hobbyists to serious business and market penetration.



And I for one couldn't be happier to be a part of it

 "Honey badger don't care!" and "Honey badger don't give a shit!

You could say the same thing for DNA based life I suppose.

Whenever I see a Bitcoin article outside of this forum that has public comments 95% of the people commenting are people saying Bitcoin isn't money, if they want fake money they'll go into their closet and pull out some monopoly money, or it's a scam, or a ponzi scheme, or insert tons of other stuff people claim Bitcoin to be. The other 5% are "true believers" calling the other people idiots.

I'm no bear, but I am a realist. We are no where near, and I mean NO WHERE near mainstream with Bitcoin.

Greed is the only thing leading this train. How far it goes is anyone's guess.

Theres definitely some mass coming in though, the first $32 bubble, my friends were wtf are you talking about, $266, I was like I'm a millionaire, and they were like GTFO now, this time, their all going sell me some!

There was no bubble in housing, US housing market is still dirt cheap. Like I said, it was a financing bubble, not a housing bubble. If you want to see a housing bubble in action, you need to look at China.

I guess it's no a popular opinion around here, but I do believe some regulation is needed. For example, completely unregulated and privatized healthcare would be a disaster.

Helping people to set up secure Wallets , linux distro encrpted LVM etc , and full-wallet only ,  just as the digital version of the old SAFE
does help spreading the bitcoin gospel.
  
 

Cool story. You missed the part where you told the bartender he should put up a sign saying "We accept bitcoins" in a visible location.

Yes, regulation fixes everything! If something goes wrong in the financial world, we need just make a regulation and it will go away. Good statist monkey. Let me give you some monkey treats. 

(Also, why is the housing bubble reinflating? If now we can no longer have a bubble because regulation blah blah blah...)

Let me guess, you also support quantitative easing, because it "fixes the economy," and keep inflation close to the target of 2%, and let me guess, you also believe that real inflation is actually 1-2% just like Uncle Ben says, and let me guess... nah, I think I've got you allll figured out 

Some good science on the 100th monkey was just published.

Turns out you only need 10% of a population to be fan(atic)s to achieve permanent meme propagation.

Anyway, a friend of mine just told me she saw a "Selling Bitcoins in $my_city" sign on the wall at the local post office!

She asked if it was me; I said "no, I'm done selling BTC for anything under one million dollars."   

Nope, 2009 was not a housing bubble, 2009 was a financing bubble, banks blindly financed people who have bad credit, and then packaged the mortgage as "AAA" rating CDS security and sold to investors. This securitization of mortgages is a relatively new thing, started from the 1990s, and voila it caused a huge bubble. Now that we have a better understanding of CDS, it can no longer cause a bubble, because now we have proper regulation in place to regulate it.

somebody here ever heart of the 100th monkey effect?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect and  http://www.wowzone.com/monkey.htm
Check this for the  action!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4KrnKheu6g0

I see that... so everyone is holding! perfect.

This is the "is bitcoin a currency or is bitcoin money" arguement. If bitcoin's primary purpose was an alternative currency, then I would agree with you statements above. But if you view bitcoin as an alternative form of money, then you do not need the average Walmart shopper.

The average Walmart shopper knows nothing about gold, but central banks are currently fighting over the remaining physical suppies (see the US to Germany delays). The average Walmart shopper knows nothing about bank reserves or bonds but they serve as the backbone of our currency system, which they use everytime the make a purchase from Walmart.

The average person never has to get into bitcoin for it to take off. If bitcoin is money it could one day serve as the underlying asset of what the average person uses for currency transactions.