Bitcoins

[Tilda]

Anybody play/buy them?

If you're not sure what they are, they're a crypto-currency thats vaule has been increasing steadily better than gold and currencies.
You can mine them using a GFX card which gets you slow small amounts.

I just bought a few, and have set up a mining app on my PC.
If I'd bought one BTC last year (when they were around $7), I'd have made over 100% return if I sold today. If I'd sold on wednesdays high, I'd have made $230~ which is a massive return.

Just wondered if anybody else was buying them/mining them etc?

 

[caLLous]

I've looked into mining them but I couldn't throw sufficient computing power at it to generate enough to make it worth my while - joining a pool would be an option though.

It remains to be seen how viable a currency it is though, let's wait and see how it fares through these recent fluctuations...

 

[Ctuchik]

Read something about that a week or so ago that someone wanted to sell his house for 5000 bitcoins.....

The fuck is wrong with people?

 

[Tilda]

There was a bitcoin bubble back in 2011 I think, it's recovered within days. This recent spike has settled down. I'm not convinced its a dotcom bubble, but as with any investment, don't put in more than you can afford to loose.

 

[Scouse]

The fuck is wrong with people?

They understand that a currency is simply that which people are willing to trade for goods and services and they're looking for an alternative to the traditional anglo-dutch banking system?

I.E. They're not fucking idiots.


I was mining earlier this year but the value of a bitcoin was not much better than the electricity you'd spend to get one. That's different now but they're twice as hard to mine now (you get 'em in a block of 50 - but using the GPU on my PC full-time I couldn't expect to hit that more than every 6 months or so I reckon).

You could use a pool, but it'll be simpler to wait for the price to crash again and then wang a grand into it.

 

[Billargh]

Read something about that a week or so ago that someone wanted to sell his house for 5000 bitcoins.....

The fuck is wrong with people?

As it works out atm though, he could sell them for close to $1m.

 

[Tilda]

Thats the thing, set up USD ready to buy, place low buy order, wait for market to tank a bit - buy, sell when they go back up to $200USD per BTC

 

[Raven]

Nearly like shares except subject to a whole different set of fiddling.

Frankly I don't trust them.

 

[caLLous]

You could always go a bit silly and mine them with a bespoke ASIC miner (I think it was $25k before it went out of stock).

 

[ileks]

I looked into mining them a while ago. It would have been viable as I wasn't paying for electricity (university hals) but I just never bothered. It wouldn't have made much anyway.

When I looked into it there were companies offering pre orders of these computers that were designed specifically to mine bitcoins. As soon as they become mainstream mining with your GPU will be a waste of time. The problem was, to make a good return you would have to be one of the first to get them. The companies that sold them weren't that reputable so you would have to take a big risk with your pre order.

I remember reading that when they first came out one bloke ordered a pizza with absolutely loads of bitcoins. If he'd held on to them they would be worth over $2m today

 

[rynnor]

A mate at work built a specialist rig to farm these a year or so again but he has free electricity - even he has gone off them though - they keep decreasing the mining rate.

I have dark suspicions about the work - it looks suspiciously like brute force encryption cracking to me - on behalf of who?

Could be NSA, could be organised crime - stinks to me.

 

[Gumbo]

Complete Emperors new clothes thing going on with Bitcoins. Only the magic has worn off and even the Emperor can see that he's standing there naked. Don't waste your actual money.

 

[Ctuchik]

I.E. They're not fucking idiots.

History proves that wrong on a daily basis. Why should bitcoin succeed when other virtual currencies have not?

 

[Chilly]

Are you guys seriously talking about this in any sense except outright gambling? If you are, you need to walk the fuck away. I do this kind of thing for a living. I guarantee any profits you make doing this are a fluke, do not get drawn in to it.

 

[old.Tohtori]

I think people around these here parts are more interested in Throds peestones then bitcoins

 

[Scouse]

History proves that wrong on a daily basis. Why should bitcoin succeed when other virtual currencies have not?

It's not about it succeding. If nobody tried anything then nothing would succeed.

If everyone thought like you obviously do, nobody would ever try anything different...

 

[old.Tohtori]

obviously do nobody

Yeah i for one would rather do someone rather than nobody.

 

[Scouse]

Comma added, though not really needed.

 

[Gwadien]

WTF IS THIS SHIT

 

[Ctuchik]

It's not about it succeding. If nobody tried anything then nothing would succeed.

If everyone thought like you obviously do, nobody would ever try anything different...

No that wouldn't be very good. I wouldn't have anything to whine about.

 

[Everz]

I think I'd rather by some crack with it.

 

[Ctuchik]

Thats the thing, set up USD ready to buy, place low buy order, wait for market to tank a bit - buy, sell when they go back up to $200USD per BTC

Now is a good chance then, yesterday it was down to 54 USD from 247 on Wednesday.....

Feeling lucky?

 

[rynnor]

Now is a good chance then, yesterday it was down to 54 USD from 247 on Wednesday.....

Feeling lucky?

The whole thing could unravel at any point though - its pure bubble with no inherent worth.

 

[Chilly]

Well it does have a worth, actually. It costs electricity and compute power to generate a bitcoin. You can work out the fundamental value without too much trouble if you had the basic figures to hand:
efficiency of flops/watt for every year they've been in circulation
cost in flops for every tranche of bitcoins (the rate at which you can mine them slows over time to force deflation)

With that, 30 seconds in excel would give you a lower limit in terms of the price in real terms of making them. The difference between that price and what people pay is the fiat bit. I'd go so far as to say that if it drops below the fundamental price, you might as well pile in. I suspect it's pretty low, though, <$10 at a guess.

 

[TdC]

quick question: how does one "mine" a bitcoin? doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of a currency?

edit: ok I just read up a bit. still, I don't get the coin generation thing. how does one do that? by participating in the btc network or something?

 

[Cadelin]

Well it does have a worth, actually. It costs electricity and compute power to generate a bitcoin. You can work out the fundamental value without too much trouble if you had the basic figures to hand:
efficiency of flops/watt for every year they've been in circulation
cost in flops for every tranche of bitcoins (the rate at which you can mine them slows over time to force deflation)

With that, 30 seconds in excel would give you a lower limit in terms of the price in real terms of making them. The difference between that price and what people pay is the fiat bit. I'd go so far as to say that if it drops below the fundamental price, you might as well pile in. I suspect it's pretty low, though, <$10 at a guess.

That's like saying that all Scouse's or all Old.Tothori's post have a worth. It costs electricity to run their computer and time and calories to type something. Are you going to start paying them for every one of their posts? Unless whats created is useful to you, it doesn't have any inherent worth.

 

[Chilly]

quick question: how does one "mine" a bitcoin? doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of a currency?

edit: ok I just read up a bit. still, I don't get the coin generation thing. how does one do that? by participating in the btc network or something?

you try and solve a hard crypto problem. due to the nature of the beast, you might solve it on your first or your last go - it's completely randomly distributed between the two. on average, though, it'll take approx half the search space to crack the key. The coin is the key, essentially, you are trying to brute force. There are only so many keys.

 

[TdC]

so does the system take in to account fast cpus and such? I assume so...I mean I could feed the compute into my hypothetical 1000 phi module farm and buy that station in New Zealand I want so bad.

 

[ileks]

so does the system take in to account fast cpus and such? I assume so...I mean I could feed the compute into my hypothetical 1000 phi module farm and buy that station in New Zealand I want so bad.

Yes, better graphics cards mine them at a quicker rate for example.

I think people used to use their CPU to do it but then using your graphics card became more efficient. Now they have these ASIC devices that are much faster. The problem is, they aren't worth investing in unless either you are one of the first to get in on the act because as they quickly mine new coins, it gets more difficult for everyone else to mine them.

I only found out about these because I got a virus that made my graphics card go at 100% when I didn't move the mouse for 20 seconds or so. My computer was mining coins for someone else. I got it from pirating one of the Skyrim DLC packs. Quite clever really - they put the virus in a file people with decent graphics cards are likely to download. There must be loads of people out there mining away without realizing it. I wonder if they could get consoles to do it?

 

[old.Tohtori]

That's like saying that all Scouse's or all Old.Tothori's post have a worth. It costs electricity to run their computer and time and calories to type something. Are you going to start paying them for every one of their posts? Unless whats created is useful to you, it doesn't have any inherent worth.

Hey, watch your mouth or i'll shut down this internet tear powered posting machine that keep the earth defense matrix running