Topic: Is it really THAT bad right now? (Read 3198 times)

That is true, I adopted bitcoin early 2013-2014, so at that point, mining was dead to newcomers.

I think Bitcoin is falling because lack of user adoption.

In particular, mining brought a huge number of people into Bitcoin that weren't there before. Stories about how people had made tons of money getting into bitcoin early and mining bitcoin with their gaming computers brought a pretty large contingent into the fold.

A lot of those hobbyist miners put money into additional GPUs and ASICs, and then got burned by companies like Butterfly Labs and MtGox. This let to a lot of people slowly leaving bitcoin and many of those that remained have become a bit cynical.

That's not to say that Bitcoin can't or won't recover, but I do think it has a bit of a user adoption problem. There are a number of tech and financial companies that are looking to leverage the technology behind bitcoin to solve problems like remittance and in the process build new institutions. However, most of these companies make money off of transaction fees or trading fees. These companies won't rely on the price of Bitcoin going up hugely per se, but rather on the idea that people will make transactions over the network.

Put simply, the price of bitcoin has been going down because less people are coming into bitcoin. In fact, I think there is probably some net attrition going on.

This may change, their may be some other factor that causes bitcoin to jump up and more users to join, but for the moment there appears to be a net attrition corresponding to a decline in price.

There are still a few cloud mining companies that are worth the investment if you can wait a few months for ROI.

Mining has been dead for newcomers for months. Once ASICs took over, the days of mom and pop mining bitcoin were gone.

I couldn't agree more. All I see is opportunity.
Buy low sell high! Pretty simple. 

Its relative, I dont see it as bad, I see it as an excellent opportunity to buy. This is how sound investors think.

There is really no need for any panic, the price is always this volatile. The price may just rise or nose-dive to a crash in the future. No one should invest more than they can afford into Bitcoin as it isn't backed by anything and it is not backed by anyone.

Well the price spike we saw a couple of days ago was just the market's reaction to the Coinbase announcement. That was really awesome news but not enough to bolster the value, truth of the matter is we're lacking big investors. But then who would invest millions knowing that at any time their millions could be worth a few thousands?
Still the Coinbase news is a great way to start 2015, hopefully we'll get a few big names on board this year 

Because there is not enough new comer.

I think that some poeple panic sold, but some of the price decline has to do with people trying to day trade and people buying on margin.  As for the panic sellers, people need to realize that trading any crypto requires that you have courage, no anxiety, and patience. I believe that BTC along with good alts will recover when the big boys start buying in, which should be soon.

The difficulty changes every 2016 blocks and the hashrate is a market so actors make their own conclusions and can stop mining or increase their hashrte if they want to.

price is not included in the protocol.

But the hash rate is, and it might drop if prices are too low and many people unplug their mining stuff, decreasing the hash rate and sooner or later the difficult.

So true about the internet.

Anyone remember when that was man of the year?

And also, really? 5 years? Is it really gonna take that long for bitcoin to recover?

It is OK to be upset right now. But one should consider it a 5 year investment.
Any fluctuation in between is just plain numbers.
It was also hard to foresee the bloom of Internet back in 1995.

Let's enjoy the journey to 1000$ then more, if it was going there too fast it would not be as enjoyable.

BTC raise up a little bit, so don't need to panic, hope it reach 1000$

i don't think mining is yet profitable, at this moment. the bitcoin price needs to go higher than this for mining to become profitable

Is there a stabilizer sort of thing to compensate the price vs. difficulty? Cause if not, mining will be dead to the majority of newcomers.

It's looking a lot better now.  The 190-200 dollar coin price just makes mining hard.  At current price I can actually mine feeling ok.   I hope it goes up more but either way were doing a lot better now then a week ago.

There are always many different factors in a market. If you believe Bitcoin will work out in the long term, then invest long term.