i started mining in summer 2011, and yeah i thought fall/winter 2011 bitcoin was in a world of hurt. kept mining as the rigs heated my basement anyway.
2013-16 being boring? not boring really but i dont remember too much excitement either. i mean it was declared "dead" many more times too but after the 1st one i experienced in 2011 i was used to it i guess. no big deal.
As far as I understand, even in 2011 and 2013 to 2016, blocks continued to come out every 10 minutes.
Adoption continued to happen. Development continued to happen.
So being bored might be an attempt to focus on only one aspect, which was whether BTC happened to be in a hype period.
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"world of hurt" was my viewpoint at the time. many others seemed worried too.
of course there were blocks every 10 minutes (the protocol is the protocol) and development still happened. however at the end of 2011 the price was at the point where i was mining at a slight loss (compared to just buying btc, which i wasnt about to do at that point) even counting the heating aspect, and the drop from $35 to like $3 was the 1st time i read about the "death spiral" bit. i thought it might fail as a project. but i did folding@home for free for years, so supporting the bitcoin project by mining for "free" was no different, and there was still the chance it might take off and be useful. money at that point was secondary to me. but for peeps that mined purely for money and as a business model it was surely different.