Ok bros, it's pretty clear now that we missed the moon. But why?
A considerable fraction of total bitcoins was mined during the early days/months, another was stolen during an impressive number of various scams and hacks, another was earned by trading manipulation.
All this people, all clever than me, has probably already cashed out a ton of fiat at a better price, and is currently still doing it, they will do it untill people put money in it, because they have a tons of cheap btc, and want to convert to a ton of fiat before collapse.
This bubble was very bad for me: I buyed even at 4 digits, i build a scrypt miner and I was not able to ROI, I was scammed for little amounts. I never sold, beside little bad trades.
I am still glad to be here on this forum, but I have never seen so much scam attempts, here nobody trust nobody (and probably should not) and there's hardly someone who will help you for nothing - and it's a forum!
6 2 billion dollars of purchasing power, and what is the great thing the bitcoin community is currently doing for the world? Scamming each other for penauts. Oh yeah, and gambling.
We missed the moon. Maybe it's time to ask us why.
We didn't miss the moon for ever but you bring up interesting points about what has been the Bitcoin history : hacks, bad management, gambling. A lot has been achieved and a 2 Billions market cap can be a stepping stone for higher accomplishments.
The financial landscape will change drastically soon and Bitcoin will likely profit from it.
We were so fuckin' near... as somebody asked, I will state what is the moon for me: wide adoption, and things starting to be denominated in bitcoin.
The world was watching us when btc bubbled, and what did they see? Scammers. A lot of. And a greedy base of trolls and rogue speculators. No idealism, neither great projects, or user-friendly applications...only a tons of altcoins, and exchangers, and speculating instruments of all sort, from pure gambling to ponzi to binary options to cloud mining etc... The only things bitcoin community was, and are, able to develop in no-time.
Note that i'm still a beliver, I srill strongly hope that bitcoin will become something great in the future, but..
To actually being able to properly use bitcoins, you still need to be young and have an above-average IQ and cultural background, and to spend some days on a shady forum where somebody will say " use escrow u n00b", while u wait your blockchain to download and your bitstamp ID verification process to be completed. After that, prepare to be scammed or hacked, or at best sit and see your purchasing power sinking. Or buy quickly your alpaca socks or something, in a much more complicated way and for no discount when compared to fiat. If you want to transfer 10 million usd from USA to Cuba and pay 1 dollar fees bitcoin could be a great thing and need only a bigger market, but for the average user it's not a great deal using btc to buy a pizza or whatever. It COULD be.
But i wonder how " we " could develop an healty economy if we can't get rid off all the scammers and speculators that are infesting the bitcoin world, as it seems that they now control the vast majority of both hashing power and bitcoins.