This is not true. While it's not a good idea to waltz in naively and buy drugs without educating yourself, most people I know strongly prefer the dark markets to buying on the street.

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The big trend is that the hype has died and that people have largely stopped using Bitcoin for things that it is not really good at. Growth is up though. People use it for its strengths more, many more people have heard of it, and overall Bitcoin is seeing a lot of traction.

As Greece demonstrated, it's really nice to be in control of your money. At current volatility, Bitcoin is more of a contingency plan than a savings strategy , but its core strengths are just as relevant as ever.

2014: "Hmmm... I just built a centralized business around Bitcoin, so now my customers have the same counterparty risks as before... why was I excited about Bitcoin again?"

2015: ???

2016: Profit

(If someone figures out the entry for 2015, please let me know what it is...)

As long as there isn't sigificantly more transactions than are reasonable to be included in a block there simply won't be too much pressure on the senders side to increase the amount of fees paid.

The other aspect is the miner's inevitable margin compression. From the numbers we have seen (e.g. KnC in 2014), it seems that these companies are already operating on razor thin margins. Whatever money they have made, they needed to re-invest into upgraded hardware in order to stay competitive. Unless there is a meaningful increase in price before the reward halving, a lot of miners will likely run into trouble.

The reward drop will instantly price out of the market a large proportion of the current hash rate.

This will make the next 2016 blocks take substantially longer to find than normal, which will result in a large drop in the difficulty. This, in turn, will price a large chunk of mining back in - enough to mean that the following 2016 blocks take substantially less time to find than normal.

So I think we'll see see-sawing difficulty in alternate 2016-block periods for a while, until a new equilibrium is reached (at a lower difficulty / lower network hash rate than before the reward drop).

I don't think there'll be a significant effect on either the bitcoin price. Transaction fees should rise a bit in the "high difficulty" periods, and drop in the "low difficulty" periods, but once equilibrium is reached they should be much the same as they were before the reward drop.

Is this really the consensus of the dark-net market denizens? Are they using another currency now?

You gotta be kidding me. Are you saying that it is safer to go to streets, than to order online?

I fail to see how giving out your personal address to random strangers on the internet is somehow preferable to a face to face transaction that insulates the drug dealer from where you sleep and keep all your valuable possessions. I also reject the implication that one must necessarily turn to "the streets" to buy recreational drugs. Most habitual drug users have a relationship with their drug dealer(s) and don't troll "the streets", cash in hand, looking for someone to satiate their fix.

And they all still use bitcoin.

And who told you this?

Nit: as of a few days ago when I was there, the one at Hacker Dojo is still there.

Originally, the Robocoin machines displayed their bid and ask prices on the attract screen. They stopped doing that; the size of the spread (about 15-20%) was embarrassing.

Normally I wouldn't notice this (for example that Nova legend about a car that doesn't go doesn't really sound at all plausible and doesn't really sound like "no go" to me) but with all of the connotations of theft that people have put around bitcoins, "Robocoin" sounds like a terrible name to my hispanophone ears.

Still the context is important. When talking about some machine, it's obvious that it's meant for robot, not to say it's going to rob you - even if it's what it actually does.

I think countries giving up fiscal policy for the euro would make other countries consider bitcoin. Makes sense to have a tax regime based on immobile property taxes rather than resorting to inflation or foreign currencies. Since us and Europe already are pretty confident in their ability to collect taxes, they won't be too hostile to bitcoin.

http://www.coinmekiosk.com/

I think they're up to three now.

I thought that was pretty much entirely Willybot, then other exchanges following Mt Gox's blatantly fraudulent prices about $100 lower.

> 2014: Aargh!

> 2015: Meh.

so, bitcoin got into productivity plateau?