bitcoins

[snoorkel]

anybody heard of or traded bitcoins? the concept is genius. I'm thinking of ways to profit from them

[musica.cards]

What do you know already?

[Cookie]

I feel as though it's a little late to be investing in them. I find it very interesting and like the idea of a fixed amount of currency. I still don;t really understand who gives you bitcoins for mining into pools and stuff. Are there companies that pay you for mining or individuals or what?

[musica.cards]

I feel as though it's a little late to be investing in them. I find it very interesting and like the idea of a fixed amount of currency. I still don;t really understand who gives you bitcoins for mining into pools and stuff. Are there companies that pay you for mining or individuals or what?

No, it's commission-based.

[Cookie]

No, it's commission-based.

from whom? Who is giving you these bitcoins.

[Socks]

the concept is  genius

it's just another bubble. mechanism of manipulation. the concept is simple.

[musica.cards]

from whom? Who is giving you these bitcoins.

It's generated by itself. In the case of pooled mining, the current 50 bitcoin reward is split among all miners involved in the generation of a block.

it's just another bubble. mechanism of manipulation. the concept is simple.

Who benefits from such manipulation, if it truly exists? Is that to say that all currencies are a form of manipulation? It's gets you stuff and things (if you have enough currency).

[strongbad]

if you figure them out can you buy me drugs on silkroad pls

[silvertone]

It is meta-currency, not something I would put a good investment into.


Plus the currency value changes too frequently and too dynamically for their to be any long term investment.

[musica.cards]

It is meta-currency, not something I would put a good investment into.

Then don't invest. Earn them instead.

[silvertone]

Don't you have to buy the wallet and/or transfer some real money into bitcoins? You won't be able to make big money just by giving a few dollars a single bitcoin alone costs about 17 dollars[?]

[musica.cards]

buy the wallet

You won't be able to make big money just by giving a few dollars a single bitcoin alone costs about 17 dollars[?]

If you wanna spend your time trying to predict an investment's future, go right ahead (before 2011, 1 bitcoin was worth less than a dollar, but having reached $30 within this year, the price has been fairly stable at around $16.95, fluctuating just as much as stocks would, being traded 24/7).

But again, if you're somehow able to obtain bitcoins without buying them (maybe selling stuff, maybe doing something for someone, maybe mining), all you'd see is profit (if you're more interested in profiting on bitcoins instead of buying stuff with them).

[snoorkel]

But again, if you're somehow able to obtain bitcoins without buying them (maybe selling stuff, maybe doing something for someone, maybe mining), all you'd see is profit (if you're more interested in profiting on bitcoins instead of buying stuff with them).

Yeah exactly, 'investing' in them doesn't seem like a worthwhile use of money I already have, but I was thinking of starting an offshore hosting site with no ToS or content restrictions and payments accepted only in Bitcoin -- complete anonymity for clients and myself, and I'd amass coin while using hardware I already make (real) profit on from my other sites.

Or else colocating (to save electricity cost and have constant availability) some sort of awesome server (or rack even) with like 160 GPUs (or 4 lol) to mine my own blocks 24/7... this actually seems incredibly lucrative, because even though the 'difficulty' (which I don't fully understand yet except that it increases as more blocks are mined) would only make a block available every several weeks, 1 block equals ~$1000 at the moment so you'd make your hardware investment back in no time... and then have some 100s of Bitcoins when this shit bubbles.

it's just another bubble. mechanism of manipulation. the concept is simple.

I don't know if you get it, the p2p system it uses to regulate itself IS actually genius. I don't know if anyone even fully understands the algorithms behind it all, or else it would be completely manipulated and useless... the market value can fluctuate thousands in a day, yeah, but the way it's setup basically guarantees against deflation at any point in the currency's lifetime.

from whom? Who is giving you these bitcoins.

There isn't any sort of central issuing/'minting' organization, it's like if the dollar ran on bittorrent. To get bitcoins you either receive them from someone, trade 'real' currency through an exchange, or generate them yourself by 'solving' what's basically a huge algorithmic puzzle (this is the way more coins are put into circulation, with many complex rules about how difficult it is to do, so that the amount of bitcoins will cap eventually and become infinitely difficult to generate).

I feel as though it's a little late to be investing in them. I find it very interesting and like the idea of a fixed amount of currency. I still don;t really understand who gives you bitcoins for mining into pools and stuff. Are there companies that pay you for mining or individuals or what?

There's 6m out of 21m possible in circulation right now, seems like a perfect time to me.

Mining pools are just groups of people pooling their hardware to mine faster, the coins are created out of nowhere, and split among the pool members.

[snoorkel]

from what i've read about bitcoins from the government, it's a secret currency used to buy illegal drugs and download pirated music

Yeah the vendors I've seen who accept it seem to mostly sell services that buyers wouldn't want to be connected to, like illegal web hosting and drugs (not like there's anything wrong with that)... but if it can grow to be popularly known and successful, it's an incredible precedent.

[snoorkel]

I think we could see some government regulation on virtual currency

why...? a p2p, self-regulating digital currency is pure democracy.