Why are the mining centers killing it? More and more merchants are accpeting btc daily, you just need patience. It's going to be a slow process.

I've done my fair share in spreading this anywhere in all local shops explaining benefits, no charge back risks little to no fees. Its been 7 years now and I've yet to see a single store in my area to accept bitcoins for something as simple as a doughnut. I understand slow process but where is the decentralization or hardware that is worth purchasing? What makes bitcoin decentralized anymore?

TBH I think the "Bitcoin Theives" - the people that stole from Gox, Silk Road etc. With such a large amount stolen they are offloading the coins fast and shorting the price.

Without volatility = 90% of traders would not be interested in it.

You can't get huge leverage on bitcoin like with forex, so bitcoin gets its liquidity from volatility. Without volatility it would be even more illiquid.

Has it? My time machine must be acting up again.

ok then give me your btc and run along then!

You mention doughnuts. That's fine, as doughnuts are tasty and ubiquitous, but is that really what bitcoin is best designed for, namely, small real-world transactions? Bitcoin can indeed handle small real-world transactions, but it instead really shines as a global remittance system that puts SWIFT to shame, or as a secure-way to purchase high-end goods globally.

Maybe the richest and smartest people trying to "squeeze out the most juice" of bitcoin and maybe they really effect the price somehow and the price is bouncing but I hope It wont last forever... 

I'd rather have my transactions secured by temperature-controlled, dedicated ASIC farms than by bots, over-heating laptops, and dysfunctional youth installing backdoor cpu miners on their parents' PCs because they're jealous of the early adopters. Move on. The early, wild west days of bitcoin are over. They were glorious and thrilling. But looking forward towards innovation and merchant adoption should be a priority, not decrying that the way things are now isn't the way you think they ought to be.

If you are incapable or not inclined to help bitcoin grow with its merchant adoption and are determined to stay focused on the mining aspect, then support p2pool any way you can.

ASICs are not intrinsically good or bad, yet they are inevitable beyond a certain threshold of success that bitcoin crossed a long time ago. Centralized mining is indeed problematic, but ASICs do not cause it. During the CPU, GPU, and FPGA days of bitcoin mining, the network was more vulnerable to attack than it is now. 51% attacks loomed far more frequently then than they do now.

Like most security vulnerabilities, it's human nature, hubris, and greed that's the weakest link, not the actual tech itself.

Yet the important few keep switching to prevent one of the pools to reach 40% or more of the hashrate. (I do think that some have hit that percentage for a short amount of time)