Topic: The Energy and Enthusiasm is Dying. Bitcoiners are Growing Tired. ZZZZzzzzz.... (Read 6188 times)

Well Coindesk published pieces of my original post/rant here. Front page article. Here's the link:  http://www.coindesk.com/is-bitcoin-over-the-hill/

I didn't lambast the alt community. I lambasted scam coins. Joke coins.  Con coins. Coins we should as a community be embarrassed to support in hopes for weak gains at best.

The "Energy and Enthusiasm" is picking up.
Lot's of good news today. 

One example:
Major French Supermarket Chain to Accept Bitcoin
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/2014-04-08-major-french-supermarket-chain-to-accept-bitcoin-563444

You can regard bitcoin as a certificate of each person's spent wealth. You spent $500 and bought 1 bitcoin, you now have one bitcoin certificate in this public ledger

Actually the fiat money works the same way: Each piece of fiat money is just a certificate of your wealth, the worth of your spent wealth (labor, resource, time) is recorded on fiat money paper, but the wealth itself is already gone. What you received is just a paper to prove that you have done certain amount of work or paid certain amount of resource in exchange for this certificate. When merchant see this certificate, they know that you have the right to purchase equal worth of consumables

Why using a network issued certificate instead of a government issued certificate? Because the certificate issued by government get printed more and more each passing day, so the value of your certificate goes down each passing day

The price appreciation of bitcoin indicated that the market demand for this kind of network issued value certificate is huge and it is growing rapidly

Have we reached Despair yet? .  

"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.gif

People 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.

As long as there is a need for invisible oversea assets that can not be confiscated, it will always attract some interest

The biggest demand comes from its anti-inflation and anti-confiscation character

It's always a slippery slope once the Bull market goes up too fast.
I wonder if BTC will ever see a rational Bull cycle (i.e. ~25% per year gains for a few straight years)

While it is a potentially efficient means of payment - its lack of general acceptance makes it terribly ineffective in most places in reality. It is restricted to a tiny niche in the hughe system of global payment options.
But that's IMHO not the main point.

Bitcoin is not a store of value by any means. It is a new and highly experimental (Beta) technology trend with completely unknown origins and an even more unknown future. It qualifies for absolutely none of the critical requirements for being a store of value. It's rather a permanently endangered species relying on dozens of hightech requirement chains, of which breaking only a single one would make it utterly useless until workarounds are put in place.
Being digital in nature, I'd go as far as to say it is everything but a store of value.

That shall not prevent anyone to convert value into it, but alot have done and already paid the price for this mistake (outside speculatory gains for early adopters or successful traders). Please never confuse a virtual currency with the term "store of value", both are absolutely contradictory in nature. Hard assets relying on absolutely nothing and having no counterparty risk are a store of value. Bits & Bytes connected to the internet never were and never will be, even if they survive for extended periods of time due to heavy protection and intensive caretaking.

This is so true.

Gox killed the big bubble back in 2011. Gox had DDoS issues in the collapse of the April 2013 bubble, and then went insolvent in the collapse of the November 2013 bubble. Now that Gox is gone, there will be other factors to explain future bubble collapses.

Out in the real world many people think "Bitcoin went bankrupt."
MtGox did more damage to BTC than all the alt coins combined.

People should get used to it.

I believe that you are right about queues at the Bitcoin ATM. We have three in Austin and when I make my almost daily purchase of some fractional coin - there is no one else there.

Initial enrollment the Robocoin ATM system took me 5 minutes, and that process will create the queues for new users who have no idea how to use one. Routine purchases I have timed and they take 70-90 seconds - which includes stuffing in a few bills. By time I arrive back home, the coin has been confirmed into my hot wallet.

1) Betamax was not that much better as Bitcoin is better than fiat.
2) QR codes? - huge success
3) DIVX - huge success
4) 3G - huge success
5) Google TV (have not much info about it, but sounds like nothing too revolutionary for me)
6) Segway - nothing too revolutionary too.

What we have with Bitcoin here is huge thing, and in a sense it's the greatest invention of our time - possible even greater than Internet itself.

Another bubble is coming... Maybe several bubbles, until thing stabilizes and Bitcoin becomes like 80% of Internet-based payments.

Message to OP: It's time to buy. Desperation level is at its peak, price can't go below 350$. Since we all know Bitcoin is not what it should become, another bubble is around the corner. And this time infrastructure is even better. I see queues on the Bitcoin ATM's soon, in the middle of a next bubble. Somehow I just know I'm right about this.

The crazy ride has ended (possibly... ), now the long trek begins.

and some people will die along this journey, but those that walk onwards will have interesting times and many tales to tell... and one day... We'll all reach the promised land!

Yup, just like the guy that bought a pizza for 1000 BTC prob thought he was lucky to get that deal at the time.  Every sudden peak in the charts of Bitcoins life so far has been followed by a fall, then a long lull, slow buildup to then another 10x higher peak.  That's not to say this behaviour is guaranteed forever and we're going to see $1million Bitcoin valuation (something I don't believe in), but I really wouldn't worry about the current price, at all.

Ah, the community, right... but I have a doubt right now, about the meaning of 'community':

Are you talking about those trying to turn the potential of Bitcoin into a reality?

Or a you talking about those who thought they were just getting into a make-money-fast aka get-rich-quick bubble/tulip/Ponzi/whatever?


Besides speculation (and bubbles), it's an increase of interest for Bitcoin that will LEAD to an increase of its price. NOT the other way round. Has there been any increase of interest for Bitcoin (from real, everyday users) since the prices started declining? My answer is no.


I thought Bitcoin, as a protocol, was designed as a decentralized system that did not rely on trust.


Supply and demand. The current state of interest for Bitcoin from the 2+ billion internet users worldwide is still very limited, and probably somewhat shrinking. We have now reached the limit of profitability, and there is no one willing to subsidise over 50,000 TH/s any further.

Basically, nothing wrong is here. Being able to 1) buy a machine, 2) plug it in and 3) profit without doing anything is an anomaly, a privilege.


Crypto-currencies live in an unregulated world where everyone is free to create and launch the shitcoin of their choice. Of course, most if not all of these shitcoins are despicable, obviously 99% are just premine / IPO / fast halving scams, driven by greed. At best, they bring nothing really innovative compared to the original i.e. Bitcoin

But look at what's happening now: shitcoins are failing! This is GOOD! This is a failed reality check and natural return to sanity.


Yes, I wish they would fail faster, skipping the pitiful phase of agony where they can be 51'ed with less than $1000, i.e. probably close to what their market cap will be by then


Oh no, I think you are perfectly right.

Let me tell you something: maybe we will lose 90% of the members on the forum, maybe we will see prices declining by 90% to $50 like early last year (though I don't think so, but maybe), maybe we'll see 90% of the shitcoins at the graveyard (and I'd be glad to see them here).

If that's what it takes to rebuild the community with real developers (in the broad sense), then so be it.

Greed is not really the problem here. The problem is short sight and misplaced ego. I consider myself greedy, but I know that I won't get any money before actually creating value, adding something to the system, making my contribution worthwhile. THEN, and ONLY THEN, I will expect some ROI.

This is great.  I too am looking to spend small amounts of coins instead of only hoarding.  We all need to adopt this attitude.  It is hypocritical to expect bitcoin adoption while not adopting it ourselves.

Well, one of the novel features of the Bitcoin Economy is that it is a deflating store of value.

Everyone here knows that a maximum of 21 million bitcoins will ever be mined. That changes how one goes about spending bitcoin. Should I replace my old car now with a new car for 60 bitcoins, or should a postpone the purchase two years and buy the same sort of new car for 0.6 bitcoins? Easy decision - to postpone the purchase and become a bitcoin hoarder in the meantime.

Deflation in the Bitcoin Economy is virtuous in that it encourages spending on what one really, really needs. No easy credit is available in the Bitcoin Economy. Why should someone loan me bitcoin for any long term, knowing that it is difficult to pay back the same amount of coin.

As many have pointed out, and what I do myself as a bitcoin investor, is to spend coin daily on essentials and replenish those working funds from fiat - leaving my bitcoin hoard alone except for periodic sales at bubble peaks. A Metcalfe Law relationship has been discovered that links the quantity of bitcoin transactions with the bitcoin price. Therefore, it is advantageous for a bitcoin hoarder to create meaningful spending and receipt transactions that move the Bitcoin Economy forward.

Bitcoin is both an efficient means of payment, and a deflating store of value.

Not really a consensus, although it may be a prevailing attitude.  People see bitcoin as an investment with great potential BECAUSE they believe it may see wide adoption as a currency, yet we tend to forget that fact.

Cant agree more ...entrepreneurs need this peace that traders and investors wont understand