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Anyone got any bitcoins?

CyberNerd

By CyberNerd
in General Chat

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localzuk

localzuk

Posted
Posted

Ouch. Know the feeling. I had a small 'trust' of sorts as a teenager from an injury payout, and I was asked if I wanted to do anything to try and increase its value. It was worth £3k at the time. If I'd agreed with the suggestion from a stock broker dad of a friend of mine, he was going to put it into Apple shares (he put part of his son's trust in them). They'd be worth about £250k now. Instead, I didn't do it, spent it on crap (I was a teenager!) and am in debt instead... My friend is now a multi-millionaire. :(

 

That's life though. I'd only spend it on gadgets anyway... :p

LosOjos

LosOjos

Posted
Posted
Yeah I really regret not investing a few quid in these way back when. I considered just buying £50 worth but thought it wouldn't be worth making such a small investment. How wrong I was!
LosOjos

LosOjos

Posted
Posted
I don't even get the point of these things aren't I right in thinking these bitcoins are just virtual money a bit like what paypal does....?

 

Paypal isn't virtual currency, it's just a way of transferring real currency between accounts. bitcoin is a new type of currency so is susceptible to exchange rates the same as if you were to buy Euros, so they have the potential to increase/decrease in value

Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted

Obligatory don't buy bitcoins post. They have absolutely no use outside of speculation* and so will crash to worthlessness when this bubble bursts, you almost certainly will lose money. Invest in shares or raw materials instead.

 

*yes I know some websites and a few shops will accept them, but they all use a service called Bitpay which instantly converts the bitcoins they get into fiat money. What do Bitpay do with the bitcoins they effectively buy? That's right: Speculate!

 

Also the price displayed on MtGox isn't really the "real" price. You haven't been able to withdraw cash from MtGox for a few months now, which has had the affect of pushing the price on there slightly higher than on the other exchanges. The best place to watch the bubble in real-time is bitcoinity.org/markets

 

 

Oh yeah and definitely don't buy mining equipment. It is literally worthless and you will never ever recoup your investment now because the mining difficulty is WAY too high.

Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted
I don't even get the point of these things aren't I right in thinking these bitcoins are just virtual money a bit like what paypal does....?

 

They're a proof-of-concept toy designed to show how a decentralized virtual currency could work. For some reason people are exchanging huge amounts of cash for them, despite not being able to do anything with them except exchange them back into cash.

synaesthesia

synaesthesia

Posted
Posted (edited)

Rubbish. Few friends of mine have been mining for ages; they make enough to recoup their energy bills, the equipment costs (it's all about GPU not CPU) and plenty more besides.

It's clearly not as easy as it was, but importantly they've lost nothing. I was able to generate half of the 40bc back in the day "reasonably easily", the rest was bought. I lost nothing even then but thought it as a fad.

 

 

** quick edit - It is of course nothing more than gambling and very much not worth it as it stands currently!

Edited by synaesthesia
Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted
Is it worth buying some Litecoins while they are still cheap?

 

Probably not. Litecoin is just another implementation of Bitcoin which uses a Scrypt based algorithm for mining, which is supposed to make it impossible to design special mining units for. In reality people just build GPU rigs and mine that way, comlpetely defeating the point of the way Litecoin has been designed. In my opinion, it's not going to take off as a currency without something like a Litecoin Silk Road backing it (SR was one of the only places you could actually spend your BTC on actual things, illegal or not). There was one I think, but it never took off so the owner closed it down.

 

I mean, if you want to drop £20 on 5 litecoins to see if they spike up to £500 each go ahead. I just don't think they ever will.

Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted (edited)
Rubbish. Few friends of mine have been mining for ages; they make enough to recoup their energy bills, the equipment costs (it's all about GPU not CPU) and plenty more besides.

It's clearly not as easy as it was, but importantly they've lost nothing. I was able to generate half of the 40bc back in the day "reasonably easily", the rest was bought. I lost nothing even then but thought it as a fad.

 

You've not been following bitcoin news, my friend. Once ASIC machines hit the market in a big way, the difficulty is going to increase so much that running a GPU mining rig won't even cover the cost of electricity, let alone equipment. Even the few which are running now have affected the difficulty so much that GPU rigs aren't really profitable anymore (they just about cover running costs), and they certainly aren't worth investing in. If you're thinking "well I'll just invest in ASIC machines then", don't bother. The number of ASICs set to flood the market will increase the difficulty so much that it's extremely unlikely that you'll actually recoup your investment. I should have rephrased that to say "If you're not already mining, don't start mining".

 

In fact, check this out: Bitcoin Statistics - Blockchain.info

 

Total Miners Revenue

 

$2,795,707.24

 

Electricity Cost

 

$11,130,713.31

 

This is using data taken directly from the blockchain itself.

 

Edit: Or maybe you have, just saw your edit!

Edit Edit: I should also clarify that those numbers are slightly skewed by the fact that they're calculated using the electricity consumption of the average GPU, when most of the mining power now is coming from ASIC based machines which use a lot less electricty. They're still not really what you'd call profitable though.

Edited by Sdrawkcab
synaesthesia

synaesthesia

Posted
Posted

Aye, think people caught onto it in more recent times and have of course been throwing money at it. One of my friends setup is entirely self sufficient still but it's aided with solar energy (paid for by his last windfall).

Looking outside though, I think wind energy may have been better for him ;)

Garacesh

Garacesh

Posted
Posted
Is it worth buying some Litecoins while they are still cheap?

BitCoin has only boomed because of all the attention it's been given - it might be worth passively mining Litecoins just-in-case (I think I might look into it!), but I'm not convinced buying any would be a good idea because I guess Litecoin will suffer because BitCoin is so well heard of now.

Absolutely kicking myself for not investing in BitCoin right now, but by the time I started actually paying attention to it, it just wasn't worth it.

Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted
it might be worth passively mining Litecoins just-in-case (I think I might look into it!)

 

It's not - the difficulty is already too high to make CPU mining viable, and you really need multiple GPU rigs to be able to recoup the money you put in. Mining isn't something you can do for profit on any major alt currency anymore, it's much more of an enthusiasts/hobbyists thing now.

 

Here is how you make money mining cryptocurrencies: Get yourself over to bitcointalk (if it's back up) and have a look at the "new currencies" section. Get your GPU ready to mine by launch day for these currencies, and then mine as many as you can while the difficulty is extremely low. Then you just sit on them, and if they get put on BTC-E you can sell them for actual money. Otherwise, you haven't invested anything and you still have a GPU you can use for things like videogames

  • 3 weeks later...
Sdrawkcab

Sdrawkcab

Posted
Posted

 

This is what I have been waiting for. The crash was always going to come once the chinese government banned bitcoins, which was inevitable since they've banned other online currencies in the past. Watch the prices for bitcoins start to slip, then other alt-currencies like litecoin will start to crash (they're just propped up by the confidence in btc at the moment, once that goes people will realise the other alt currencies are worthless), then the price of bitcoin will plummet and lots of people will lose money.

 

It's Tulip Mania all over again!

Sirbendy

Sirbendy

Posted
Posted

I had a proposition from the upper sixth yesterday - "can we borrow the IT suites over here or the whole building to do this bitcoin thing? Just for a weekend? We'll cut you in.."..

 

I had to chuckle.. :) 600 Dual/Quad/8 core systems in parallel? I salute you..heh.

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