Anyone got any bitcoins?

[Sdrawkcab]

conceivably there's a cutoff point where no-one at all can afford to mine the coins anymore?

 

True Believers will still mine even at massive losses to "keep the blockchain alive" - people have already discussed doing this in the past, and there's already a pretty large group of miners who aren't going to switch off their FPGA/GFX card miners even after they stop being profitable due to difficulty increase. Also many miners are convinced that the price of bitcoin is going to skyrocket exponentially, so they're going to keep mining because in their minds, even if the bitcoins can't cover costs now, they will next year when bitcoin is worth $100,000 per btc.

 

As @CHR1S says though, the hashing difficulty varies every 20 or so days (can't remember the exact number) so that the time to process a block of transactions is always 10 minutes regardless of the networks total hashing power. If people started switching off their rigs, or fewer people mined, the difficulty would drop and so potentially cause mining to be profitable again. This is incredibly unlikely to happen though. If it did happen, it would inevitably make the news and would lead to more idiots buying mining rigs to try and get money for nothing, so we'd just be back where we started.

 

For the record, the bitcoin network currently uses somewhere between 1.5 and 2 Large Hadron Colliders worth of power. That's a lot of people doing a lot of useless calculations for very little internet money.

 

Edit: Bitcoiners also say that it's the mining network is powerful supercomputer in the world. It can only compute SHA-1 hashes though, so it's completely useless in every possible way.

Edited December 6, 2013 by Sdrawkcab

[Arthur]

The crash is coming!

 

This finance expert thinks Bitcoin will fall 99 percent by June « Washington Post

[Garacesh]

Edit: Bitcoiners also say that it's the mining network is powerful supercomputer in the world. It can only compute SHA-1 hashes though, so it's completely useless in every possible way.

Once BitCoin crashes (and after putting a lot of thought into it, I do believe it will) maybe all these mining rigs should be repurposed into a huge zombienet dedicated to brute-forcing Cryptolocker encryption keys

[CHR1S]

The crash is coming!

 

This finance expert thinks Bitcoin will fall 99 percent by June « Washington Post

 

Commodities expert....

[Sdrawkcab]

Once BitCoin crashes (and after putting a lot of thought into it, I do believe it will) maybe all these mining rigs should be repurposed into a huge zombienet dedicated to brute-forcing Cryptolocker encryption keys

 

The thing is, the ASIC rigs can't be used for anything other than bitcoin. ASIC stands for "Application Specific Integrated Circuit", they're specialized chips that can only be used for bitcoin mining and nothing else. I guess FGPA/GFX card rigs could be repurposed, though they'd probably be more useful on something like Folding@Home.

 

Commodities expert....

 

Probably makes him more qualified to talk about Bitcoin than a "currencies" expert. The people using bitcoin as an actual currency are a miniscule minority because the deflationary nature of bitcoins encourages hoarding, most people are trading bitcoins as though they were a commodity like gold or another precious metal.

[CHR1S]

There is a downward trend predicted over the next 24/48 hours, some even say a crash.

I'm only learning to read the markets so posting it here more as a record of my prediction than anything. Lets see how my guess goes! (and no I have no cash invested in BTC)

[Sdrawkcab]

There is a downward trend predicted over the next 24/48 hours, some even say a crash.

I'm only learning to read the markets so posting it here more as a record of my prediction than anything. Lets see how my guess goes! (and no I have no cash invested in BTC)

 

Ooh, where are you reading this? Or is this just something you've sort of worked out from looking over the market history?

 

A crash is inevitable since the chinese gov have banned the currency, and before the ban the chinese exchange was trading in over 48% of the total trade volume worldwide.

[soveryapt]

So let me get this all straight..

 

There's this one secretive guy, who's come up with this crypto-currency idea that everyone is buying into, and recently it has been announced that not only could this be the go to solution for the pending 'debt-backed currency' doom, but it could also handle the exchange of legal documents (Stateless company puts legal documents into Bitcoin blockchain - Imperica - digital arts and culture magazine) and other such things to keep them present, correct and provable. Nah, that doesn't sound like the plot to a bad world domination movie at all!!

 

Seriously though, I mean, it's interesting as a proof of concept, and I wish all those (including a good friend of mine who won't shut up about it .. you can't actually have a conversation without it being mentioned that I should start a mining rig in one of my barns) good luck and hope that people are wise enough to (as with shares and such) sell at the right time to make their money, but a decentralised monetary system is surely only decentralised in the fact that it's a peer to peer network, so can't be closed down, but you still need a centralised system at present to be able to exchange these into sensible (read spendable) currency ..

 

There's just something that doesn't quite sit right with it all for me .. but I would love to be proven wrong ..

[jinnantonnixx]

This is interesting.

927 People Own Half Of The Bitcoins - Business Insider

[Sdrawkcab]

including a good friend of mine who won't shut up about it .. you can't actually have a conversation without it being mentioned that I should start a mining rig in one of my barns

 

Does he mine? Ask him what his overheads are.

 

Saw this article today as well: Bitcoin Is Broken :: Hacking, Distributed

 

I'm really not suprised there's a flaw like this in proof of concept software though.

[Theblacksheep]

A crash is inevitable since the chinese gov have banned the currency, and before the ban the chinese exchange was trading in over 48% of the total trade volume worldwide.

 

Incorrect - China have banned financial institutions from buying/selling/backing bitcoin as the Chinese government do not accept it as a currency.

 

Individuals and companies can still buy/sell/use bitcoin in China.

[Sdrawkcab]

Incorrect - China have banned financial institutions from buying/selling/backing bitcoin as the Chinese government do not accept it as a currency.

 

Individuals and companies can still buy/sell/use bitcoin in China.

 

Ok sorry, I should have fully explained everything. I forgot about how pedantic everyone is on here.

 

Functionally this is the exact same thing though. The main thing driving the adoptions of BTC in China was the fact that Baidu (chinese amazon) accepted them. After the ban they stopped taking them as payment which had a negative affect on the price, same as most other major chinese businesses.

 

Why would anyone buy bitcoins when they can't spend them anywhere? Oh wait that's exactly what most idiots are doing.....

[CyberNerd]

Why would anyone buy bitcoins when they can't spend them anywhere? Oh wait that's exactly what most idiots are doing.....

 

because right now, regardless of whether there will be a crash, people they are making quite a bit of money from them. My colleague paid one or two dollars back in December and sold for £83 when I posted this thread. I appreciate you don't like them but it isn't all bad for everyone.

[Theblacksheep]

Ok sorry, I should have fully explained everything.

 

Just getting statements accurate would be a start.

 

The main thing driving the adoptions of BTC in China was the fact that Baidu (chinese amazon) accepted them

 

Bitcoin was massive in China before October and Baidu only started taking bitcoing in October, so it wasn't driving the adoptions, just riding on the crest of a wave, but yeah you dont like bitcoin.

 

 

I mined at a massive loss in electrical costs and PC hardware for several months, what a waste eh? Turns out now its £700 profit.

Edited December 12, 2013 by Theblacksheep

[X-13]

Wow. Dogecoin is a Bitcoin alternative for mutt and meme lovers | News | TechRadar

[Theblacksheep]

Wow. Dogecoin is a Bitcoin alternative for mutt and meme lovers | News | TechRadar

 

must get on that!

[CHR1S]

Ooh, where are you reading this? Or is this just something you've sort of worked out from looking over the market history?

 

A crash is inevitable since the chinese gov have banned the currency, and before the ban the chinese exchange was trading in over 48% of the total trade volume worldwide.

 

I am learning the trends etc from here - Mt.Gox BTC/USD Charts - BitcoinWisdom

 

Also looking for news and market affecting issues here - Sharing of ideas, tips and strategies for increasing your Bitcoin trading profits

 

China still controls the other exchanges, watch ChinaBTC for an idea what will follow from the rest of the world.

[pcstru]

"Learning Trends" - sounds dangerously misinformed.

 

Paul Lutus has an interesting article on Stocks and Stockbrokers which is worth a read. Basically, you can classify any short term commodity trading as gambling (and no one has (or can have) "expertiese" which will beat the market).

 

If you are playing with tulips, don't play with more than your can afford to lose.

[soveryapt]

Does he mine? Ask him what his overheads are.

 

Saw this article today as well: Bitcoin Is Broken :: Hacking, Distributed

 

I'm really not suprised there's a flaw like this in proof of concept software though.

 

He doesn't mine himself, but there's a mutual friend who I think is doing..

 

Edit: @Sdrawkcab - mutual friend is reckoning they make $120 / week mining litecoins .. dunno what the overheads on that are though ..

Edited December 12, 2013 by soveryapt

[CHR1S]

"Learning Trends" - sounds dangerously misinformed.

 

If you are playing with tulips, don't play with more than your can afford to lose.

 

No, fully informed.

 

And when I say learning the trends, I mean learning the basics and how people respond to circumstances. They have a language of their own, Bullish or Bearish, whales - selling on the way down, three peaks, inverse head and shoulders.

 

Im dipping my toe in as they say

[Arthur]

Bitcoin hoax dupes Mac users into wiping their hard drives

 

http://i.imgur.com/sBrlYQQ.jpg

[featured_spectre]

Sorry but I have to laugh at that. Apple users (or Sheeple) tend to be seriously naive. Waterproofed iPhones, sudo commands, phone factory restores, bricking phones, bricking iMacs etc. Think they'd learn, but clearly not.

[Garacesh]

Why do people ever believe these things? And there's always some reply that's obviously 4chan that's like "whoah, wtf"..

 

People. Y u no learn.

(Could also be shills for the lulz, I guess)

[localzuk]

You can't just say its Apple users though... As people have been tricked by 4chan into bricking their Xbox Ones too. The commonality is 4chan users.

[featured_spectre]

Bulk of the users bricking xbox ones were kids, not saying all of them, but a bulk of them.

 

Thing is, if you dont know what you are doing, why trust something if it isnt from source (ie xbox backwards compatibility not being on ms site).