Topic: Do you have a feeling BTC has slowed down a bit? - page 2. (Read 4357 times)

Yeah, I see some people that have been here a long time. Satoshi considered this to be the main forum for Bitcoin info and development and it's losing the oldest supporters. Either this forum is losing it's position in the Bitcoin world as you suggest or people are moving on and losing interest for whatever reason (graduating, scammed out of their faith in the system, scared of the legal standing, finally see the fight will be decades not months).

you can't really compare like this, now there is more people "playing" with bitcoin, the volume is larger, more transactions, and the price is higher, which mean more money involved in any movement, it's called proportion

0.5 cent is rougtly 1/12 of 6 50 is 1/6(but that was just one case), normally we are moving of 20-30 only now, which mean 1/10-1/12, about the same as before

Hah, interesting analysis. So if this all true, when do you foresee the next phase of highly rapid growth?

Bitcoin tends to have short bursts of highly rapid growth surrounded by long phases of slow, zero, or slight negative growth. If you look at the history of BTC adoption as well as historical price charts, you will see that there was very little growth or activity happening in the BTC scene between January 2009 and January 2010. In the beginning of 2009, the network difficulty was 1.0. On January 2010, the network difficulty was 1.18. One month after Satoshi launched Bitcoin, the network hashrate was 5 MH/s. Ten months later, it was 6 MH/s. Much of this hashrate could be attributed to Satoshi himself as well as a few extremely early adopters such as Hal Finney mining on their home computers.

In 2010, Bitcoin adoption grew at a slow but steady pace. The first significant spike in terms of activity didn't really happen until early to mid 2011. That was during the June bubble which pulled a lot of mainstream users into the BTC community. The price went from cents to $33 before crashing back down to $3 later in the year. A lot of miners joined in resulting in the hashrate exploding from 100 GH/s to 10,000 GH/s. Many businesses started accepting Bitcoin too. Silk Road and BitPay were both also established in this year.

(Keep in mind that before mid 2011, Bitcoin was almost completely unknown to the outside world. Those few months constitute a very special and significant event in Bitcoin's history.)

Compared to 2011 however, 2012 was another lackluster year for Bitcoin similar to 2010. Bitcoin's price started off at $7 in the beginning of the year and only grew to $13 by the year's end. Bitcoin was still growing, new companies were still entering the scene, and new Bitcoin startups were still being created although most of this happened behind the scenes.

Then came 2013 which was another repeat of 2011 except now there were two bubbles this time. The first happened when the price shot up from $13 to $266 by April before collapsing. Then it repeated itself later in the year when the price reached over $1,200 before collapsing again. This of course created huge publicity which brought Bitcoin back onto television screens and the mainstream media. Tons of people started entering the Bitcoin community.

Since the last bubble happened so quickly and was almost completely sustained by hype, naturally the price fell afterwards as the hype failed to materialize.

2014 was mostly about dealing with the after effects that this massive bubble created. You now had a lot more people involved in the Bitcoin scene than previously but the increase in price was still way out of proportion to the increased demand. People realized this and so money began leaving the scene. Then as prices dropped further, more people cashed in their coins and left.

TL:DR; Price goes up and people rush in = increased activity. Price doesn't go to the moon so people lose interest and start to leave = decreased activity.

No the VC fundings are through the roof already and things are still very much alive, pace has picked up last September/October again, which is even more impressive given the price decline!

some say no because:

3 years ago it took ALOT of effort for prices to move from $6.20 to $6.60 in a month ..
but now prices are moving $225-$270 every week roughly.

$50 dollar movement as oppose to 50 cent movement means that alot of dollar is moving about...

.... or (my theory) not much bitcoin is on exchanges allowing movements to be rapid, without much dollar involvement

This place comes alive when there are big movements either way in bitcoin price. The most activity seems to happen when bitcoin gets pumped, but it's still very active when it suddenly crashes. The tumbleweeds start blowing around when nothing is happening.

Well, only mindless people can dump that way. If they do want out, selling over longer period of time makes them earn much more. I doubt any early adopter s that dumb.
I understand that this constant price decrease might actually be due to higher retail adoption and selling BTC as soon as retailers get them. However, there has to be a bottom line, thing need to pick up soon.

It will be interesting to see what happens if/when bitcoin gets to 3k or more...will many adopters hold or cash out?

I look at BTC as an investment, but I probably wouldn't exit unless BTC reaches less than 5 dollars a coin and EVEN THEN, I would probably just triple down anyway on the notion that we're back to the good ol speculation days with huge volatility.  As often as I'm around the ecosystem though, I would probably see signals that its worse than just a currency crash - like fundamental thefts everywhere along with movement of millions of early coins - that would probably signal me to exit my bitcoin holdings. 

As someone else here said, the network effect will be what determines crypto 2.0's winer.  If we use sidechains and they are indeed superior, many (including me) will transfer a little bit of BTC to those new chains, but will keep BTC as a true stored reserve of value in case the new instrument crashes, or even perhaps, we speculate and trade with those pairs instead of USD btc. 

I'm not gone, I'm just on other platforms more often.  I find that a lot of people here seem to ask the noob stuff all too often.  I think you can find many of us still active on places like facebook twitter reddit instagram has some... This place is good, but relatively, but I wish that the marketplace section was more active. 

Well it all comes to the BTC adoption rate. I simply cannot belive that 6 years into the game the market still cannot consume these couple thousands BTC produced every day. I do not believe early adopters dump a lot so this slowing down caused by the price drop which s caused by supply being over demand must be the reason behind the lack of faster BTC development.

the current market is stagnant this way you feel it in this way, but it's a good thing it mean that the price is stabilizing, we are correcting in price slowly

bitcoin is on a right track, the price from now will rise naturally, without any stupid manipulated pump(aka 1200)

It just feels that way because the market is a voting machine and not a weighing machine. Just remember that BTC started at 0.0001 USD

I don't agree with the idea that all early bitcoiners were in it for the drugs or drug money.

That makes no sense to me at all.

I found bitcoin in the fall of 2009, but that was just because I had some fun at a virtual stock exchange in 2007,
and I was searching for something like that.
It had nothing to do with drugs at all.
I like to speculate on  things that other people rejected, but I see opportunities.
(sure, I didn't buy or get involved with bitcoin back then, and i feel robbed because of circumstances,
but I dont intend to make the same mistake again)

Similar to why I am into smartcoin now. I see opportunities when other people reject something sometimes.

I never have understood people who won't take chances on speculative investments,
which might pay 10x, 100x, 1000x or more.

bitcoin is hardly dead. its just getting started is what i think.

 That's an informative graphical depiction.Perhaps I should refocus my efforts to acquire more BTC.

Nope, sure don't.

Like anything, people will tend to lose interest in it.  But for the long term, I think cryptocurrencies are here to stay.

This WHOLE POST is a signature campaign.  
I am glad to see sig spam on a whole new level. 
If op has no substance than it makes it easy to add to the discussion and sig spam.

Maybe the only thing that would give stability would be world dominance. If it 'stabilised' at $250 it could be smashed upwards or downwards every time a fresh group of people discovered it. Said volatility on the way up pretty much negates potential world dominance but you never know.

I partially agree, but the majority seems to be tired by all the positive and negative news. There's been so much FUD and manipulation in 2014 that even news are losing impact.
Bitcoin is still doing fine and the price is decent. If you bought last year then probably you'll say it's weak, but Bitcoin hasn't started from the 2013 pump, but has been around for years before and the average price is still on the rise.