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Two things I wish everyone knew | 1. DeepBit is not the only pool.
2. MtGox is not the only exchange.
That is all. | Word to this. Join Reddit's Mining Team, we could use a hand. | Bitcoin |
What do you see as Bitcoin's biggest obstacle at this point? What needs improvement? | null | Software that helps shops to be able to accept and handle Coins easily.
| Bitcoin |
U.S. Bitcoiners, What's your preferred method of buying and selling Bitcoins? | I was looking into the different markets and am not really sure which ones I should take more seriously. Obviously mtgox.com was having some issues this morning. | MtGox is used as *the* indicator of value for most people, particularly those in the USA. It's also where most of the significant volume takes place, if I understand correctly.
I like Tradehill - apart from the fact their API is missing some critical stuff, for some reason I just like their site. If you dig up someone's referral number they knock 10% off your trade fees too. I'd post mine, but then I'd feel like a shill. | Bitcoin |
Um...Bitcoin is skyrocketing again guys... | null | Stopped looking at prices for about 20 minutes, and it went up about $5. | Bitcoin |
Rally! | null | nah, i think this is in reference to btc being in the mid-20's again. | Bitcoin |
Up down, Up down, Up down, Up down life's like a jumprope | Bitcoins are a daytrader's dream. That is all. | If you learn to jump that jumprope, you could be a millionaire :D | Bitcoin |
Some questions I'd like your opinions on | 1. Am I correct in presuming mining will become increasingly less profitable? Will profits be only a small fraction of what they are now, in a few months?
2. Will the price per Bitcoin eventually converge on the average production cost per Bitcoin? And would this lead to an inevitable crash in the Bitcoin currency, since the current prices are ridiculously high compared to production costs.
3. Would the only cause of a fall in difficulty be a reduction in the mining effort?
Thanks.
Edit: Some great responses, thanks again. | 1 & 2 - No one knows/can tell... it's all guess work.
3 - Correct, the only way for the difficulty to decrease is if there is less power put into mining. | Bitcoin |
MTGOX IS DOWN | No trades, ask or sell orders for 15 minutes now. Rumor is there was an SQL error...
Any guess as to what's gonna happen when it's up again? | I didn't mean to cause panic (I have a few hundred BTC), I just wanted to know what was happening and what people's thoughts were. | Bitcoin |
HORY SHET!!! Almost 200k BTC traded through MtGOX today... and there are still over 6 hours left in the trading day. We have almost doubled our largest daily volume EVER. | Yay? | "Trends are confirmed by volume.."
..Or I could just be saying that to stoke more exuberance into the market. Your call. | Bitcoin |
Motherboards with no case? | I noticed that in some peoples rig's, they have their motherboard just laying on a table or slab of something or other.
Is this ok? Doesn't risk static shock and potentially screw up the components? | The only downside is that it no longer has a protective cover (and it's an eyesore). People go without a case to maximize airflow, or to save money (or both). Static isn't an issue so long as you're not constantly rubbing your socks on the carpet and touching it. The same advice applies as with any time you would normally deal with electronics: ground yourself before touching anything. Obviously it's also more exposed to things like water, cats, dogs, and other common enemies of electronics. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin: Spectacular Slaughter | null | "Update: bitcoin trading at $22 again, nothing to see here" | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin miner who reported brain damage tells all | null | Now, or before? :/ | Bitcoin |
Somebody just moved 432,000 Bitcoins... giant incoming sell? | null | that's like 6% of all bitcoins ever and at 20$ each that is $8.6 million
edit: I more and more come to the realization that bitcoins is an oligarchical system, just like all the others, where maybe 1% of the users own 90% of the resources. | Bitcoin |
How do people who actually sell real goods accommodate for instability in the bitcoin market? | Like if someone is selling $100 worth of something for 10 bitcoins when prices are $10/BTC, then the price goes up to $30/BTC, nobody is going to pay $300 in BTC for a $100 item. But a seller isn't going to trust the $30 price based on fluctuations in the price already seen, so they have no incentive to lower their prices to accommodate.
Is bitcoin deflation shutting down the markets that bitcoins were intended for?
| Right now I think people are pegging their bitcoin price to a 5-10 day average of the BTC/USD exchange rate. This way their bitcoin price isn't swinging wildly every time the market moves. Once they take payment, they can either close their bitcoin position immediately to lock in that exchange rate, or hold the bitcoins in anticipation of continued deflation. | Bitcoin |
MtGox DOWN and moving ~432k BTC (4 to 12 million $) to a single address | null | MtGox has been down for more than 2 hours, and now I read this:
http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=15998.0
Something is wrong. | Bitcoin |
How media spins news: Bitcoin example | The case of two senators pushing to shutdown Bitcoin.
Original letter and press release from senator: [Joe Manchin]( http://manchin.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ContentRecord_id=aeae6e96-7d88-4fed-811b-f0d7f3bc1636&ContentType_id=ec9a1142-0ea4-4086-95b2-b1fc9cc47db5&Group_id=e3f09d56-daa7-43fd-aa8b-bd2aeb8d7777)
Nowhere is this press release or letter anything about wanting/asking to shut down Bitcoin. Only mentioning that Bitcoin is the only currency accepted, and that it is P2P and anonymous. Please read it.
Media spin by reuters, notice the title already says that senators want to shutdown Bitcoin: [Senators seek crackdown on "Bitcoin" currency](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/06/08/us-financial-bitcoins-idUSTRE7573T320110608)
Even more spin by pcworld, bitcoin is already a currency of "INTERNET DRUG TRADE": [U.S. Senators Want to Shut Down Bitcoins, Currency of Internet Drug Trade](http://www.pcworld.com/article/230084/us_senators_want_to_shut_down_bitcoins_currency_of_internet_drug_trade.html)
Thanks to [/r/economics](http://www.reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/hxtf6/us_senators_want_to_shut_down_bitcoins_currency/) | From his own mouth:
"[It's a online form of money laundering, used to disguise the source of the money, and disguise who's both selling and buying the drug](http://www.wpix.com/videobeta/f76e263d-8ab3-4028-bf42-1b18c3eb9b5d/News/RAW-VIDEO-Sen-Schumer-On-Silk-Road)" | Bitcoin |
Stumbled on BitCoin this weekend... | I read a post on reddit and someone mentioned BitCoin in passing. I googled it and it seems like a good idea. I downloaded the program so I could get an address and that was neat. How do I get coins though?
Then I stumbled into mining.... and I haven't been off my computer since Friday night.
What's the deal guys? What's the catch? I have a rig specced out that can pay for it in 12 days @ $15/btc and make 12k dollars a year. What am I missing? What's the catch? With the very few amount of vendors that actually accept bit coins, this is basically a fake market and everyone is buying and selling a currency that doesn't really have any value. Nevertheless the profits one can make from doing this seem to be too good to pass up.
tl;dr- Bitcoin mining: What's the catch?
| One simple catch: You have to pay for electricity. | Bitcoin |
[Chrome Extension] Add Mined BTC Value to your pool balance. BTCGuild, deepbit, slush, BTC Mine | null | Built this over the weekend to make it easier to see what my mined coins were worth. Added BTC Guild, deepbit, slush, and BTC Mine.
Todo list includes
* Build FireFox version
* Add BitcoinPool
* Add MtRed (had problems connecting my miners to it last time I tried, could be delayed)
* Possibly add mybitcoin or other sites like it.
Donations welcome
14B3GFdtBZqxgNp3VnXioUYd27kGKoKwFS
| Bitcoin |
The Guardian on "Bitcoin: the hacker currency that's taking over the web" | null | Great article up until the very end. My only strife with it is that it cowardly ends with "due for a crackdown." There is no counterpoint, no objection raised, it simply ends on that note. It implies illegality or at least problematic nature; whereas in reality it is a return to the days of cash, with the added superiority of its infrastructure and ease of use.
Ruth Whippman, go suck a nut. | Bitcoin |
We need an alternative to Mt.Gox | Hello all,
Following the latest news, one thing has become very clear.
We need an alternative to Mt.Gox. Now, I'm not going to insult or attack the exchange. I think, given the infancy of bit coins, it has done an excellent job. But the over-reliance of the bitcoin market on one, limited exchange creates instability. Worse, this consolidation in the bitcoin to USD exchange market creates a fatal flaw for the entire bitcoin trading network.
So I have a humble proposal. We create a company, call it Redbitexchange, that hosts its own version of a USD to bitcoin exchange market. Basically, it would be a friendly competitor to Mt.Gox. I don't have the computer background to design and build this site, but I am interested in co-ordinating a group of us in designing, building, and running such a site.
If we are successful in this, we can create a domestic alternative to Mt.Gox. Through competition, we can lower the costs of transaction fees and break Mt. Gox's near monopoly.
Who's in? | Bitcoin Market, BitMarket, Tradehill | Bitcoin |
Interested in becoming a miner | So I have known about bitcoin for a little while, and I figured that when I built my new computer I would start mining...low & behold that time has come!
My worries are whether or not it would be worth it. I am about to be a college student, and I am going to be using a combination desktop/netbook at school. If I was going to tailor the desktop to mine bitcoins, the best I could afford would be a radeon HD 6970 coupled with an i7-2600k. In addition, the machine would not be 100% dedicated to mining. I would use it for school work & the occasional game.
**tl;dr** Essentially I would like any pertinent advice, thanks! | Your best bet is going to be reading the mining section on http://forum.bitcoin.org/ when it comes back up (currently down). There's a lot of good advice, just use the search function and you can find all of the details you need to fine tune your card.
As for the processor... doesn't even matter, mining with CPU is crap compared to graphics cards. | Bitcoin |
It's been a full week, wtf MtGox? | I went to withdraw my money to my Dwolla account a week ago thinking I would have it in my bank account by Friday. However, I haven't seen a trace of it since withdrawing it last Sunday. I heard about the MtGox -> Dwolla problem middle of last week, and saw that it was fixed Friday. I put in multiple support tickets, and haven't gotten a response. Seems like you should give me some idea where my money is.
Or perhaps you should give me my money? | I put in a transfer for Mt. Gox -> Dwolla earlier today, and got the money in my Dwolla account in under an hour. Check out /r/MtGox and message Adam. | Bitcoin |
How large do you guys reckon the bitcoin network is in processing power now? | Bitcoins have really taken off, and looking at the size of various pools I'm guessing pretttyyy big. Any guesses to the total processing power? | BitcoinCharts says 6.396 Thash/s. | Bitcoin |
Ask /r/Bitcoin: Will the US government eventually shut down MtGox like they shut down e-gold? | I can't help but think that eventually they'll find a reason to close down any major US based Bitcoin exchange. That will be devastating to the BTC and I don't know if it will ever really recover from such a move. What do you guys think? Am I just being paranoid? | MtGox is legally registered in Japan, while they are dependent on US bank accounts for some of their operations and are currently hosted in the USA for cheaper server costs, they're basically a Japanese operation. | Bitcoin |
I have some questions on MtRed | I recently switched pools from Deepbit to MtRed, some people where warning that you should either get out of there or wait until the owner achieves a certein % of the share ownership or that they don't trust PPS method because of vulnerabilities...
I switched because MtRed is better, and the more hashing power the better, right?
Anyway, what I don't understand is that although it seems my "Estimated reward" went up quite fast, it has also gone down.
A few minutes ago the estimate was .26BTC, now it stands a .24BTC. What gives? Help me understand this new pools workings. | More hashing power in the pool == less variance in payouts.
Given a long enough timeline, your return will be the same (fees etc notwithstanding) - if you have two fee-free pools, and one is 400GH/s and one is 40GH/s, then over a long enough timeline you as an individual will get about the same return from both. But one may only find a block every few days, and one may find one every few hours.
Your estimated reward will go up and down based on how many blocks you've turned in, and how fast other people are turning them in. If you join a round when the pool is weak, your reward will shoot up - if a sizable amount of juice joins the pool after, your estimated reward will lower. | Bitcoin |
How I feel watching the bitcoin hysteria | Reading the forums, /r/bitcoin and hanging out in IRC, this joke keeps coming back into my mind:
An [insert stereotypical dumb person] goes to get his/her car inspected.
The mechanic hops in and says 'tell me if the turn signal is working'
"Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, yes, no." | The price is still way to high IMO. There's no way I can see that those buy orders on MTGox are enough available money & interest to be propping up these exchange rates. Unless MTGox & the other exchanges are sitting on a whole lot of cash that's waiting to buy when the price falls, but I doubt there's enough of that. | Bitcoin |
Can somebody answer a simple question for me re:
backing up wallet.dat. | Sorry to ask simple questions but Google isn't helping me here.
I'm following the security advice [here](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Securing_your_wallet)
My question is... If I back up my wallet.dat file to an encrypted flash drive (using truecrypt) and then were to lose my laptop with the original truecrypt program on it, could I download another version of truecrypt and open the flashdrive using my original password? Or will I need the "keyfile"(?) from the original version of truecrypt that i used to encrypt the flash drive?
thanks.
| You should be good to go. | Bitcoin |
If the block chain can grow infinitely long, won't it eventually take up infinite disk space, making the bitcoin protocol unusable? | I'm downloading the chain, and it is taking a very long time. Can it grow without bound, or is it limited in size somehow? | That is why if you look at newer bitcoin material it no longer says 'free transfers' it says 'cheaper than bank' transfers. Theres a tiny fee, so if you do it a ton, there is a cost that would add up. | Bitcoin |
Miners, watch what you buy from Hong Kong on eBay... | The PCI-E cable extensions I have purchased have worked wonders.
[I bought a 10A 250V rated c13-14 power extension for my mining rigs since I have a server power box splitter...](http://cgi.ebay.ca/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=300491603025)
Turned the rig on, no problems... great.
Turned on the miners... going good for a few minutes.
After about 5 minutes the cable started smoking and melting. I quickly flicked off the power splitter circuit breaker and everything looks good still...
This is the second time I have almost set my place on fire with cheap products. Be wary, you aren't saving anything.
Pics: [http://i.imgur.com/CMjBA.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/CMjBA.jpg) | Not to mention that parcels from Hong Kong take about a month to arrive state side. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin's "Groupon" site ETA 5 days! | null | Are you just copycatting http://bitcoinaction.com/ ?
...wow... | Bitcoin |
Interview with the lead developer of Rain Droplet | null | It's nice that he's doing interviews but he seems to have abandoned ripplexchange.com which is the main hub I've found for discussion about ripple. Daniel has the majority of the posts there but his last post was 10 days ago. He also hasn't authorised my first post to the forum or responded to a request that he do that either. | Bitcoin |
Canadian Bitcoiners: I would just like to re state that CaVirtex is a great exchange for us. | I've used [CaVirtex](https://www.cavirtex.com) a bunch and while it is still in beta, it has worked great. I don't work for them in any way, I just want more people to know about this service cause it can be a bitch to try to get $$ to MtGox from Canada. | Yes, it is very awesome. I can buy or sell and have cash in hand in *hours*. | Bitcoin |
Is there a tutorial for this? I don't quite get it yet. | Title says it all. Interested in making money, I guess. | There's a wiki you can always start on, or you know the links on the right hand side. | Bitcoin |
For the Bitcoin faithful: How can you defend the use of "Dark Pools"? | This is the biggest red flag for me that makes this whole thing seem like a huge scam.
How can it be a good thing that there is huge amounts of trading going on in the Dark Pools that no one can see? How can this be a good thing for the stability of the currency? Hiding the transactions distorts the real value of the coins and leads to extreme market manipulation. How can I trust a currency where you can't see all of the trades going on?
Example: A group of buyers buy significant amounts of coins over time to slowly raise the price. They then take all the coins they have bought and sell them in the Dark Pool for a nice gain. Since they sold in the dark pool no one realizes the price of coins should have gone down because of the large sell off and the cycle repeats. This allows them to pump and dump infinitely. | How come there are billions of cash transactions with US dollars that I cannot see. USD looks like such a scam. | Bitcoin |
What's the best place to maintain a BTC wallet? Is it safe to use something like MyBitcoin.com, or should I be holding my coins on my local machine? | Also, say I'm taking payouts from mining pools at my locally hosted address. What happens when a payout gets sent to me while my client is offline? Is there any risk of losing those coins? | Archive the file (zip or rar) and password protect it and store it somewhere you will always have access to.
You will still receive the payouts even if the client is off. The best way to check if you have received it is to check the blockexplorer for your walletID | Bitcoin |
Question about blocks | So I have always known the general idea of the block... it is very difficult to get but they are worth 50BTC. If I am in a pooled mine would it be possible for me to get the block (50BTC)? | You get the part of the block that you mined.
Payment Formula: 50BTC * (Your Round Shares / Total Round Shares) | Bitcoin |
three questions | 1) are you involved in bitcoin for the geek factor or the libertarianesque ideals?
2) are you trying to make a quick buck or are you investing for the long haul?
3) how many Mhash/s are you getting? | 1) Mainly the geek factor. It's a fun little experiment - I have no interest in anonymity, tax avoidance or any of that paranoid bullshit.
2) We've accepted BTC payments for services, which we basically wrote off (from our perspective, so as not to gamble, we're viewing it as no different than giving out free services). I then took some of the earnings, and played the market for a fun weekend of short-selling the shit out of them.
I was actually disappointed when the market didn't tumble back down again this afternoon, I sold some of the weekend's earnings off at $20 and was optimistic for another drop to about $12 or so. The USD market on Tradehill had almost no support (I think I'm using these terms right, I'm new at this) from $20 all the way down to about $13 or so - no more than 25BTC being sold would have sent it crashing back down... but I think all the panic sellers this weekend have already left the market - anyone holding BTC apparently still has balls. :(
3) Almost nothing. On the bright side though, I'm using the profits from a decent (or was it lucky?) weekend trading to help pay for a new GPU, assuming the price goes up. Worst case scenario I've bought an AMD instead of the Nvidia I was gonna buy but couldn't really afford. In that sense, Bitcoin is a currency backed by FPS in TF2. | Bitcoin |
What kind of programs can interact with MtGox's trade API? | I have little programming experience. I learned HTML as a kid, a small amount of Javascript and PHP (I also learned some JASS for making custom WC3 maps). I've forgotten most of what I know but have been meaning to learn again.
I have been following and doing a bit of day trading of Bitcoins and was wondering what kind of programming language I should learn to be able to iteract with Mt. Gox's trade API? | it's what i'd call ad-hoc json. it's about equally bad in all languages, though json stands for javascript object notation, and since you know javascript that should be fine. what is more important is choosing a good language for the app you want to build | Bitcoin |
Really great in-depth article: "Cracking the Bitcoin: Digging Into a $131M USD Virtual Currency" | null | This is a very well written article for those just getting into bitcoin, and as a link to use when explaining to others.
Good find | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin now on my mail login page. | null | It's victorian prose compared to the comments. | Bitcoin |
Slush's Pool is Down, Change Over Your Miner's! | Or just join MtRed, it's wayy better than Slush's pool which seems to be a big target these days. | I tried getting on MtRed, can't figure how to open port (whichever one) in Windows 7. | Bitcoin |
With the volatility in the bitcoin markets, here is a tracker
that updates in real time for several trading sites, to let you
know the value of your bitcoins | null | For being worth nothing, people keep buying them from me for a nice chuck of change. | Bitcoin |
How much USD do you have invested in Bitcoin? | I'm really curious about this. I have a feeling most poeple only have a few hundred dollars at most in Bitcoins, but after some recent posts I'm not so sure anymore.
1) None
2) $1-100
3) $101-500
4) $501-1000
5) $1001-2000
6) $2001-10000
7) $10001- 30000
8) $30001-50000
9) $50001-100000
10) $100000+ | The first time I heard about Bitcoin was on a review site that debunked all the illusions that the cryptocurrency was trying to pass off so I was safe. (1) | Bitcoin |
Revenge of the idiots -As more people adopt bitcoin these are the sort of challenges it faces | null | Got the crazy eyes down pat doesn't he? | Bitcoin |
What would an anti-bitcoin law look like? And what would it accomplish? | Bitcoin exchanges are declared a violation of federal law. Sentences are stiff and the currency is smeared by association with terrorism, drugs, and most damning, child porn. Will it survive? Yes, in certain countries and in the criminal sub-culture where lawbreaking is already the norm. But will middle-class white kids in the suburbs with mining rigs continue to use it? Doubtful.
I truly hope this doesn't happen. I have 4 cards and $5k in bitcoins and I'm sticking with it for the medium-term for ideological reasons, and for fun. But is it ever smart to bet against the banks? | What are you expecting people to say? Yes laws can hurt it potentially. No one is capable of saying in what capacity though.
My thoughts which have no backing are that worse case no legitimate business that pays taxes will be able to accept bitcoins, in countries that inact such laws at least. It will probably be a long time before majority of countries do, so there is still international purchases.
Even without real businesses, person A can by something off of person B, person B will be more than happy to accept BTC as long as they are sure they can buy some other item off of person C for BTC, and the cycle continues. There will always be person D willing to sell person C some kind of giftcard (or mail a cheque and/or cash) for BTC, allowing person C to sell the gift card for real money, and allowing person D to trade BTC for what they want. And the cycle continues.
This is how i think bitcoin can survive while not being accepted by any legitimate businesses
Unless of course all pools and exchanges get shut down, but like i said this requires a bunch of countries enacting laws. And there will surely be a couple who dont. | Bitcoin |
Anonymity/Difficulty "Back-tracing" | Do I increase my anonymity by shuffling my bitcoins among a bunch of addresses that I control? My understanding is that if someone were to try to discover an identity of a bitcoin user who participated in a questionable transaction, he would have to start with the transaction of interest, and then walk back through the coins' histories until he was able to identify an address. At this point, he would try to use information from that individual to begin tracing the transactions forward until discovering the individual of interest.
If I were to buy some bitcoins, and then repeatedly transfer them among different addresses, would this confound the tracing process? Or is there a flaw in my thinking? | > If I were to buy some bitcoins, and then repeatedly transfer them among different addresses, would this confound the tracing process?
No. If law enforcement is after you, you'd buy a day tops with this.
There is a solution to this 'problem' however. There are sites out there called bitcoin mixing sites. What you do is, you send bitcoins in, and then they come out the other end again, but in between, the transactions have been splintered up into tiny transactions and shuffled and swapped with transactions of other people.
So when you send 1BTC in, it's broken down into small random parts, all of which have been targeted at other output transactions other than the one you entered. Your output transaction is then built up of small fractions of other input transactions. The result is that your actual transaction path has been completely broken.
Still, if you plan on doing something illegal, there are tons of other methods that law enforcement has at its disposal to eventually find you. The money trail may be untraceable, but any physical goods or services aren't. | Bitcoin |
Anyone have any experience with BitcoinRigs.com or other alternatives? | I'm considering renting a rig, $500 for 3 months it looks like, but the site doesn't seem the most reputable and I'm not able to find too much in the way of feedback from the community.
Are there alternatives? Do you have personal experience with them? Are they working well? | $500 for 200Mh/s? You could build something faster for the same price, and you'd have the hardware at the end of the 3 months, or could sell it if the price of coins makes mining unattractive. You might not even earn $500 worth of coins in 3 months the way difficulty has been increasing. | Bitcoin |
I've tried BTCGuild.com for about 3 days, and after today I'm switching back to deepbit.com unless someone can recommend a better pool. | The reason I switched around and stayed on deepbit.com for so long is that other pools I've tried are either super inefficient or they are somehow skimming. Looking at BTCGuild's block log, there are to many 2 and 3 hour block generations when compared to the number of 1 and 2 hour blocks found on deepbit.com. (Yes, deepbit.com has more hashing power, but even when you multiply that down, BTC should not have so many 2 and 3 hour block generations.)
So, unless someone can recommend an efficient pool, I'm happy to pay the 3% on deepbit.com. | all of the big pools seem to get ddos'd. today i started mining on reddits pool (mtred.com) we're at around 80 ghash or so. so far so good. the big pools are nice for continuous income, but ive had connection issues with btcguild/slush/deepbit all within the last couple of days. Slush is down right this moment actually. | Bitcoin |
Tradehill is down | Site reads:
"We unfortunately need to go down for a few hours. Sorry :-("
An estimated time until fix would be nice... Also no explanation of what the problem is. | looks like it's already back up:
06/13/11 05:00 EDT - We had some technical issues early this morning and had to halt trading for a few hours. Everything should be stable now. Apologies! | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin Mining, where does the money come from? | So the big question I have with regards to bitcoin money, is the source of the wealth.
Bitcoins are a zero sum system, there's no inherit wealth in the system, so when jimmy miner and his graphics cards generates a fresh new bitcoin and sells that off for USD, that $30, $10, $20 has come from someone else's pocket?
For every $ a person makes out of bitcoin someone else in the world has lost an equal amount and surely this ingress of fresh money has to dry up at some point?
If I've misunderstood please correct me. | the source of the wealth is the fact that people are willing to accept it and trade it, as proven by the fact that people are buying/selling it on mtgox.
There doesn't have to be, "inherent wealth."
The only thing a currency needs is for people to trust it and accept it THATS IT. There are many reasons why people trust and accept a currency (good store of value, medium of exchange, unit of account etc).
Those 3 attributes make bitcoin FAR SUPERIOR than USD/ERUO. Why? Because USD/euro grows expotentially, while bitcoin grows geometrically. (please look up those concepts to understand fully)!!!
"Bitcoins are a zero sum system"
So are traditional fiat systems. When was the last time you saw someone burning bank notes, or eating them? Fiat currency is PRINTED up out of thin air, in-fact most new money issued is simply in the form of digits on a computer.
| Bitcoin |
The primary reason people can't understand bitcoin. | To sum it up in one sentence:
People don't FUNDAMENTALLY understand :
* What money is
* What currency is
* What function money serves in economics.
* What fiat money is
* The difference between exponential growth (fiat currency) and geometric growth (bitcoins).
Since they don't understand the fundamentals they rely on false concepts and treat these concepts as if were true.
This video explains exactly what money is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U8dq1bH1X6s
| MO MONEY
MO PROBLEMS | Bitcoin |
Get a load of this guy's rig | null | >radon | Bitcoin |
What's the best way to buy ฿ using £ ? | null | I've been using britcoin.co.uk for weeks now and have no complaints whatsoever. Always been very fast and reliable for me. | Bitcoin |
No, we are not cracking passwords for the CIA. Since this comes up so often, I improved the FAQ entry about the actual mining process. | null | Is nonce really a ASCII number or just a binary stream of bytes? Does nonce has to be started from 0? | Bitcoin |
Why did the bitcoin price crash? Here is the explanation from a Harvard University professor. | null | uh, this is about enron and spice trading. | Bitcoin |
Noobie Guide: The 4 hurdles to mining | I am 'working' on my first bitcent right now and for all the noobies, here is what I have learned to far about the hurdles to get there. So that you know what you get into.
1) You can not mine alone. You will never win the 50 Coins, so you have to join a mining pool.
2) Your mining pool first has to win, which can take hours, or days.
3) Even if your mining pool won, the block of the pool still has to be confirmed by the network, which can take even more hours/days.
4) Even if your pool won and the block is confirmed, you will get your share of 0.00043256 or something, it is still only on the mining pool website, because you need to reach a threshold (0.01) before you can actually transfer it into your bitcoin wallet. So all of the above starts again.
Despite that, it is still great fun and interesting.
edit: 5) if have encountered just now, I finally have my first 0.01 and it was send to me by the mining pool, but the transaction itself takes hours to be confirmed as well. So far it is just sitting there as unconfirmed. | 1) True
2) Yes, but keep in mind that finding a block is always a combination of luck and computing power. The bigger pools find blocks faster because they have more hashes per second. The payout in a big pool will consist of small, regular payouts. This is the case because the processing power you invest will be only a tiny fraction of the total power of the pool. The payouts of a smaller pool, such as the Reddit pool (mtred) will be irregular but bigger, because the power you invest will form a larger portion of the cake. In the end it should even out, whether you choose a big or a small pool. Also pay attention to the fees some pools will ask. Deepbit is a very big but very expensive pool, whereas btcguild and mtred are 0% fee pools, meaning you get what you mine.
3) True, it will take about a day to confirm a block.
4) True.
5) May I add: it is important for the bitcoin network that the mining pools are divided. One large monopoly could "fork" the bitcoin blockchain. Because it is a p2p network, every addition to the block chain, aka a "found" block (a certain hashing outcome), has to be verified by the other people in the network (p2p). If one pool has an absolute monopoly in the hashing power, they can start creating "fake" blocks, and thus "forking" the block chain. This can happen because it is the majority of bitcoin clients that decides if a block is valid or not. This is the power of a 2p2 network and at the same time one of the weaknesses. Deepbit is currently the biggest mining pool and I would like to advise anyone to not join their pool but look for alternatives.
Also, deepbit charges a fee.
edit: spelling | Bitcoin |
Uh guys... How come all of a sudden I'm getting an "untrusted certificate" message from cavirtex.com? | Never had this happen before-- a little weary of signing in now...
EDIT: FALSE ALARM-- sorry cavirtex people, didn't mean to give the site a bad name. Works now, no clue what happened. | check the time/date on your computer | Bitcoin |
A better (?) way to visualize Mt. Gox transactions | null | In the interest of market transparency, I think it's important for everyone to be able to understand as much as possible what's going on in the currency exchanges.
In contrast with traditional charts, this one shows the volume of each trade (the area of each circle is proportional to the amount of money exchanged). The circles are transparent to allow viewers to appreciate the density of trades at a given time point.
Hopefully this chart should allow people to better understand what's going on the next time the exchange rate swings widely, and to differentiate small jitter from big movement. Assuming I didn't bork my cron command, it should get updated every hour. | Bitcoin |
DAE think we should create r/bitcoin-speculation... ? | ... for people who are very interested in commenting on BTC price? I find it irrelevant -- I don't wish to be Bitcoin millionaire. I don't think there's any importance in the fact if BTC is currently worth 100$ or 100000$, only how useful it is for real life transactions, but I keep seeing too much posts and comments about only this.
For people who enjoy XKCD a relevant strip: http://xkcd.com/904/ -- good comment on (Bitcoin) market analysis. | Agreed!
Although I do like hearing about things you can spend them on, I really don't have much interest in people's opinion of the current price.
And that's one nice thing about markets: we don't need to convince each other of anything! If you think it's low, buy; if you think it's high, sell. Everyone will get exactly what they deserve. | Bitcoin |
Couldn't someone make a lot of money taking advantage of the disparity between the bitcoin's value of USD->GBP? | I've been looking at bitcoin exchange rates a lot the past week. I've noticed that the exchange rates generally do represent internationally accepted exchange rates. But if there's a quick drop in Mt Gox, which uses USD, this isn't reflected in the BTC->GBP exchange rate for a measure of time. Moreover, even if you didn't wait for such a disparity, the exchange rates never line up 100% with rates you'd see at a bank. If an individual had enough capital, couldn't they just filter their money back and forth endlessly, making immense profits? | Yes! It's called [arbitrage](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arbitrage), and people do it all the time.
I don't know what the margins are like though, the 0.0065% commission at mtgox might make it a non-starter. | Bitcoin |
Do you think FPGA mining will replace GPU mining in the near future? | How likely is it that running Bitcoin mining on FPGA mining will come to replace GPU mining? If it is likely, how long will it be?
Consider the following:
FPGA is more energy (and space) efficient than GPUs.
Cost and energy efficient GPUs are consistently out of stock (the 58xx series, for example, is next to impossible to find right now).
AMD isn't likely to produce substantial improvements to mining performance with the HD 7xxx series (just look at the lack of a 5xxx -> 6xxx series improvement, and consider that 7xxx is likely to use 6xxx architecture).
Therefore unless the price per BTC continues to increase in tandem with difficulty, we may reach a point where mining on most GPU hardware is no longer profitable (and hardware which IS profitable is impossible to obtain).
The only obstacles with FPGA mining seem to be 1) the willingness of individuals to share information. That is, FPGA mining seems to be falling victim to a ["trade secret" mentality](http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=8543.msg125582#msg125582). Although an [open-source FPGA miner](http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9047.0) was released recently so there is some willingness. And 2) the upfront cost which is significantly more than current GPUs. However, this cost may be largely due to a lack of optimizations which are currently kept secret (see #1).
Thoughts?
Would anyone be interested in starting a BTC bounty pool for a Dummy-proof guide to FPGA mining? Does anyone think a commercial venture will emerge selling kits? How long | The break-even times currently approach infinity for FPGA kits. If we got a custom production run from a company aiming at the bitcoin mining market, that could lower prices dramatically. This would require them to assume a lot of risk in R&D costs though, so it's probably quite a while away. | Bitcoin |
Sapphire 5830's back in stock @ Newegg, $110 with free shipping | null | These are gonna be gone in a couple minutes lol. Thanks for posting this, I picked up one.
Hurry Buy! | Bitcoin |
The difference between my 12yr old cousin and I | He mines for blocks in minecraft and I mine for blocks in Bitcoin | ... I do both :S | Bitcoin |
An explanation of some of Bitcoin’s workings | null | Amazingly detailed writeup! Well done. | Bitcoin |
Can someone please send me a fractional amount of bitcoin. I'm working on a project and I don't have any to test with. | Please. Any amount would work, I believe. Thank you.
1KBeLJVMVGHLyrmbRjjjdmhnBoduzDZhtH | There are developer bitcoin networks for this. Give me a minute and I'll provide a link.
Edit: [Here's](http://testnet.freebitcoins.appspot.com) something I quickly found, it may help out.
It looks like you need to start Bitcoin from command line with -testnet parameter or something.
Edit 2: [Here's](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Testnet) the last link. Probably the best one. It says you can even just testnet=1 in your bitcoin.conf file. | Bitcoin |
Just between you and I... | So I have 0.05btc and I missed the boat when the price was $0.60; like most of us we didn't expect to see $20 prices. Let's stop punching ourselves in the face over it, we gotta move forward.
My idea is to buy $500 worth when the price drops (when the large users cash out). It will eventually gain strength again like the stocks.
Before then, I plan on setting up 4 mining rigs.
Is this the simplest explanation of going into the future of Bitcoins in a smart fashion? | Can I just suggest that you don't buy into Bitcoins for the sole purpose of making money? If that's the only reason people are buying them, they're essentially valueless. What gives them real value in my eyes is the ability to trade them for goods and services. | Bitcoin |
MORE Sapphire 5830s for sale on Newegg!!! | null | And sold out again. 1:36 pm central | Bitcoin |
How many G/Hash's do you think you would need to start mining on your own? | Just wondering how much money / G-Hash's I would need to invest in order to mine on my own and be able to actually find a few blocks a month? Any ideas? | http://bitcoinx.com/profit/ | Bitcoin |
Something Awful article on their war against Bitcoin | null | Something Awful is hilarious. | Bitcoin |
Has there ever been a time where Bitcoin mining was efficient? Is it still? | If you factor in everything -- cost of the hardware, electricity, cooling, but also labour time for learning about bitcoin, setting things up and selling the BTC for fiat currency -- did it pay off? Do we have hard facts? [Using the resources you got for free in your mom's basement or from your college doesn't count. Won't scale.] | It will still pay off, even taking a difficulty increase into account, for the near future. If the price crashes (below $10 or so), it will cease to be profitable for most, but right now you can pay off your hardware.
That said, you're not going to get rich mining. You'll probably be able to pay for a graphics card, but that's about it. | Bitcoin |
FREE BITCOINS -- Environmentally conscious mining! | null | This is never going to pay for itself. Solar panels are insanely expensive, the power grid would be far cheaper for anything under 10 years or so. | Bitcoin |
How to Get Rich on Bitcoin, By a System Administrator Who's Secretly Growing Them On His School's Computers | null | Nice guy, spiking the electricity bill for his employer. ಠ_ಠ | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin's Black Friday | null | This is so 4 days ago. | Bitcoin |
How would I use Mining Pools on a Mac? | I was considering trying to use a Bitcoin mining pool recently. What would the best route of doing so on Mac OS X 10.6.7 be? I apologize about my lack of knowledge about this question in advance. | DiabloMiner works very well for me; tried a couple others but that one did the most MHash/sec.
NVidia GPUs aren't too well suited for bitcoin mining, unfortunately :( | Bitcoin |
The Economist covers Bitcoin: "Bits and bob" | null | Let's give it tons of link and comment love so it makes it into their print version ASAP!!!
- [Click here to register to their site.](http://www.economist.com/user/register?destination=node%2F21518611) (You must do so first before leaving a comment.)
- Go and confirm your email address by clicking on the link in your inbox (or possibly spam folder).
- [Click here to log in.](http://www.economist.com/user/login)
- [Click here to go back to the article and leave a comment.](http://www.economist.com/blogs/babbage/2011/06/virtual-currency)
- Be sure to click "recommend" in the top right hand corner of the page as well so it gets noticed by the editors! | Bitcoin |
Aaaaand we're tumbling again | Down to 18.2 now on My Gox, and the line is almost straight down. Ugh. Why do I always buy at the top? | If dropping from 19 to 18.2 makes you so nervous that you describe it as a "tumble" (it's back at 19 now FWIW), you might want to just get out (sorry). | Bitcoin |
Will crossfire work with any motherboard? | I picked up a card to mine with a few days ago, and have already made about 10% of my investment, so I was thinking of adding another one (I currently have a 6850). I want to put a 6870 in there as well. Will crossfire work on any motherboard? The board I'm currently using is a serverboard for Xeon CPUs, not designed for gaming or graphics at all. It has 5 free PCI-E 2.0 x8 slots, but I'm not sure if it's compatible. Am I shit out of luck? | you don't need crossfire at all to mine. | Bitcoin |
What's the best PSU-to-GPU ratio for mining? | In other words: Suppose I have eight cards, all in one motherboard. Would I get, say, a 500W PSU for every two cards, or a 1000W PSU for every four cards, or what? Anyone have experience with this? | https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison | Bitcoin |
I only just now realized the implications of what we're doing. | Although there is a chance this economic experiment will fail, *what if it doesn't?* We're effectively, maybe even quite literally, supplanting the established order of the world. An uncontrolled, untaxable currency, not regulated by banks or the governments they own? Some very powerful people are going to be extremely irritated with us. Like "Send Bitcoiners to Guantanamo Bay as Anarchist Terrorists" irritated. Yes I honestly believe it could get that serious, somewhere down the line. Scary thought, I know.
Now I'm gonna have trouble sleeping. Sweet dreams, Bitcoiners. | If we aren't willing to risk things for liberty, then we don't actually value it. | Bitcoin |
A Big Bang Theory Twitter account mentions Bitcoin | null | @TheRaj is one of The Big Bang Theory Twitter accounts run by the creators of the show.
This tweet was posted after an original tweet that got deleted: http://imgur.com/rNCfo | Bitcoin |
I'm a Canadian with about $50 USD in my Mt. Gox account and I don't know how to access it without insane fees. | I tried sending the amount to LR and exchanging it for PayPal but the site didn't want to do the transaction. This was on wm-center.com. Ideas? | I imagine someone in the otc exchanges might trade with you directly. I would do it for you, but honestly, $50 isn't exactly worth the trouble for most people and you'd have no reason to trust my reputation. | Bitcoin |
I have a bunch of servers lying around... | I've got a few (~4) pretty modern Xeon servers lying around doing nothing in my house, with 6-8 unused PCI-E slots apiece. I'm already mining on one PC, but I'm just curious whether you guys would set up a mining operation assuming all you had to buy was the graphics cards. They expel heat really well, and I'm not sure how they are on energy but I don't think they're too awful, even though they're loud as hell. | Just don't count on it paying your rent, and have fun! | Bitcoin |
What is the smartest way to get involved at this time? | I've been reading a fair bit about it but i'm still unsure as to the most efficient way to get involved. I have been thinking about building a mining rig, but is it worth it? Should i just wait for bitcoin low point and buy 400 bucks worth instead. What are your thoughts? | I didn't actually wait for a low point, bought at 18.6, but since the overall value despite the apparent volatility seems to be holding up I think it was still a nice investment. | Bitcoin |
People using Dwolla for exchanges? Safe? Easy? | Both of the major exchanges (MtGox and Tradehill) seem to use Dwolla as the easiest way to move money in and out. There is lots of talk about the security and usability of both exchanges, but little discussion of Dwolla. Is it safe? Should I be worried? Should I know anything before I link my bank account to Dwolla? | I don't know...and I'm not sure you really can know. Just look at Sony. | Bitcoin |
MtGox feed and MtGox website display different BTC price (!) | null | I have been watching this for about 20 mins and the feed price and price displayed on the website have gone out of synch as much as +-$3 - the feed went down for me earlier today for a few hours so I wonder is it related to that. Still this is pretty worrying.
**EDIT**:
Ok, reddit is killing me atm and mangled the last post I made and 502 another two. Apologies for the spamming - I have deleted the dupes.
anyway, what is also alarming is that there has been [huge price movements over this time](http://i.imgur.com/hG9ij.jpg) - I wonder are bots using the price feeds ? | Bitcoin |
Can this bit-crime mastermind be caught? | I enjoy thinking up crimes. This is my bitcoin crime:
[http://imgur.com/KjML6](http://imgur.com/KjML6)
Assume he is using TOR on a laptop at starbucks and split up his transactions into smaller ones and sent them at random times to the mixer. If a gritty determined detective used every resource he had at his disposal, could he catch this guy? | TIL: Crimes presented in rage comic format are hilarious.... ಠ\_ಠ
| Bitcoin |
Mt. Gox Account Got Hacked, Be Careful | Logged in today to discover that my 8K USD account balance had been used to purchase bitcoins, and sent to several addresses. I'm absolutely devastated, as that was my money for college. I don't really know what I'm going to do. Be very careful, people. Use very complex passwords. Your money isn't safe in Mt. Gox. Fuck the world.
Fuck the goddamn world. | Wait so... did you just use a bad password or something?
Also shame on you for using college money to speculate on e-currency. | Bitcoin |
Is BitCoin a Triple Entry System? | null | I'm not going to lie -- I took Financial Accounting in college and I didn't understand that on the first read-through. | Bitcoin |
everyone likes venn diagrams, right? | null | Hey, I may be an idiot, but I'm an idiot who has an extra $500 in his pocket and more coins waiting to appreciate (or not, I don't much care as I only bought $50 worth a couple months ago). You could say, "stupider like a fox!" | Bitcoin |
Downloading all the blocks ever maybe not the best option to do business... | If I understand it correct, validating blocks works by combining a hash of all the previous blocks with the new one (that's what mining does).
Let's consider the following:
1. We currently have 130K blocks
2. The average block size is 10k (from a quick check at blockexplorer.com)
3. The more traffic there is inside bitcoin, the larger the blocks are, and I've seen some 40K blocks already on block explorer
4. Individual users can create HUGE blocks without much effort, simply by sending from many to many accounts at once, and the amounts can be tiny
5. If a new user wants to start using bitcoins, he/she needs to download the entire history of bitcoin.
With the above said, and assuming it's true, we have ~130K blocks as of writing this, with average block size of 10k, we currently need to download 1.3GB of data just to start using bitcoin.
In a couple of years this number will easily cross the TeraByte line, and even faster than to PetaByte, if the network does make it big, that is...
So, what's wrong with my understanding of bitcoin? There is no way that in 2 years we are going to be easily downloading 1GB+ of data. The more popular bitcoin gets, the bigger blocks will become, the bigger they become, the harder it will be to start working with bitcoin, and thus will deter possible users.
Are we doomed to give control of our wallets to companies just because of that flaw? Please tell me I got something wrong... | If I remember correctly, they actually have an algorithm devleoped so that this will never happen, there's a way to shrink down the old irrelevant blocks. I don't think they've implemented it yet however.
EDIT: Hmm, perhaps it's just that only miners need the full blocks and users just need the block headers to verify. Much smaller, but still growing infinitely in size. Should look into this more as I was under the impression that was solved in the original bitcoin solution.
EDIT2: Aha! Found it in Satoshi's paper. Only 9 pages long, worth a read if you want to learn more. http://www.bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf Read the "Reclaiming disk space section" So yeah, this problem is solved, but the solution just isn't implemented yet. | Bitcoin |
Would you keep $500k of untraceable cash in your bedroom? | null | Encryption, backups, and secrecy. That's really all you can ask for.
But I agree, don't tell anyone.
(I'm not one of the bitcoin wealthy. I have just under 5 coins. Regardless, I keep them hidden. :P) | Bitcoin |
Mining with an Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, new to Bitcoin. | What would be the best miner to use with my rig?
* Hewlett-Packard p6654y
* Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit
* AMD Athlon II X4 630 Processor 2.80Ghz
* 4GB RAM
* Nvidia GeForce GTS 450
I'm fairly new to this whole concept and am currently reading the resources in the sidebar, so any help would be appreciated. | Guiminer says "No OpenCL Devices", is there something I am doing wrong here?
I'm doing this just as a hobby right now, not very serious about it, just curious. | Bitcoin |
I made a spreadsheet detailing the best bang-for-your-buck Radeon cards. Any suggestions on it? | null | I used Newegg and the [Mining Hardware comparison](https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison). I couldn't find the prices on some of them.
*EDIT: I'm not entirely sure how to allow guests to sort columns in the spreadsheet, but if you click View -> List, it will let you sort them in that view. | Bitcoin |
Bitcoin Goes Haywire - NPR | null | Heh, here comes the $100/BTC at the end of the month I was talking about, 17 more days to go :) | Bitcoin |
If you've got a 6870, give these settings a try. Also, post your own screenshots. | null | Here's the 'Extra flags':
* -k phatk platform=0 device=0 VECTORS BFI_INT AGGRESSION=13 worksize=128 FASTLOOP=false | Bitcoin |
So why, exactly, do AMD cards produce bitcoins at 4x the speed of NVIDIA cards? | I have a recently-purchased high-end NVIDIA card. It is near the top in all the gaming benchmarks. But an AMD card, with similar benchmarks and a similar price, will produce bitcoins at 4x the speed of mine. Why is this?
Will smarter software bring these things back to parity, or is there something about AMD design that's great for hashes but not really needed for gaming? | Are you saying that NVIDIA cards are better at floating point and AMD cards are better at integer calculations? And overall these even out for gaming, but the integer calcs matter more for hashing? | Bitcoin |
Use those bitcoins to cover your blank walls in fine art [10% Discount for buying with bitcoins] | In an effort to help legitimize the currency, I'm currently accepting bitcoins with a 10% discount.
Art: http://paradox.rambisyouth.com and http://escape.rambisyouth.com
Just inquire via the email listed on the site. | Cool, but by the time I convert my AUS$ to USD to BTC, I am loosing a lot more than 10%... :/ | Bitcoin |
Mt.Gox Logo Tournament | null | Very cool Adam, I just have one question. Is a .eps format absolutely required for submission? What I'm asking is, can I submit a tiff/jpg and if it's chosen to be a winner or final few, can I then upgrade it to an .eps file type? Until you plan to start putting these pictures on posters or banners an .eps really isn't necessary. | Bitcoin |
Now the transaction fee minimum is very low, could you spare a .01 Bitcoins or even LESS to the address on the right? Thanks. | null | Downvote for begging. | Bitcoin |
So I just bought my first two Bitcoins... | on mtgox. Aren't I supposed to have a bitcoin wallet and bitcoin address?
I don't know what i'm doing, help a newbie out. | When you buy on MtGox, it credits your account with a certain number of bitcoins which it manages in escrow. You need to withdraw bitcoins to your own address (which will be generated for you automatically when you install & run the client). Currently there's a limit of withdrawing $1000 worth of bitcoins a day, so you should be able to withdraw everything now. | Bitcoin |
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