Bitcoin

[ARTgames]

I have been looking over Bitcoin for over a year now. I think its a interesting experiment that has really taken off. I still it has many flaws to overcome but I think some of the technology it popularized is going to stick around forever. As for market value I'm feeling bear about it and have been after the China high. I don't see it going like that again unless something major happens.

Wondering if any of you are into any.

Also if Stick Online had a Bitcoin donation addresses I would send some that way.

[Freeforall]

I bought three block erupters a while back, only got like 0.002 BTC. Oh, and did you hear about the Silk Road 2? All of the bitcoins from there were hijacked. Sucks.

[Loganvz123]

Honestly? I don't care too much for it. I kind of see mining it as cheating...you start off with a bunch of money, say you build a rig of 3 HD7770s and produce a bunch of bitcoins..you can now sell those bitcoins for money and you end up with even more money. There's no hard work or honest labour involved, you just have to have some money already, and crossfire a few budget cards and *boom* more money.
Apparently bitcoins are low at the moment due to some thefts, but it looks like it's steadily rising again, even while typing this the value has gone up by 60 cents again, perhaps it might be a good investment, but it doesn't particularly concern me and I wont be trying to obtain any.

As for the 'stick around forever', due to the way mining works (checking others' transactions), it halves the bitcoin yield every 210,000 bitcoins produced.
I believe someone did the math and it will be practically impossible to mine any more after 21 million have been created. Then they either have to start fresh, or move to another cryptocurrency.
(Before you guys start to yell at me for making a mistake, just remember this is not my area of expertise and I'm just saying what I know so far.)

[Matty_Richo]

I have been mining Dogecoins recently, I find it feels much more rewarding mining 500 coins in a few hours than mining 0.0001 coins (which is what I'd get from a few hours of Bitcoin mining.

But I am not really cure about cryptocurrency in general. It is very possibly just a phase that will die down after a while.

[Freeforall]

I don't even know how to mine the other coins, I just know how to do BTC. (Which has proven to be a waste of time for me.) My Nvidia GPU is garbage for mining.

[Titan]

I don't even know how to mine the other coins, I just know how to do BTC. (Which has proven to be a waste of time for me.) My Nvidia GPU is garbage for mining.

Mining made it to hard for me to find the AMD card I wanted, so I ended up going nvidia. Lots of people are buying up amd cards trying to get into the mining thing way to late.

I understand why bitcoins are popular and useful, but when you look at the darker side of them(Drugs from Silk Road/Silk Road 2, Illegal weapons, other such things) it paints a negative light on them as a whole.
I'm not sure about bitcoins themselves, but I can see crypto currencies staying fairly popular if not growing in the years to come.

[ARTgames]

Honestly? I don't care too much for it. I kind of see mining it as cheating...you start off with a bunch of money, say you build a rig of 3 HD7770s and produce a bunch of bitcoins..you can now sell those bitcoins for money and you end up with even more money. There's no hard work or honest labour involved, you just have to have some money already, and crossfire a few budget cards and *boom* more money.

The point of mining is to secure the network, process transactions, and distribute the money in a decentralized manner. Early adopters have made bank but they took more risk, if it was a fair amount that's up to interpretation. The 'work' you get out of mining is basically running the network by processing transactions and making them secure. Why its value the way it is is just what the market has done with it.

Apparently bitcoins are low at the moment due to some thefts, but it looks like it's steadily rising again, even while typing this the value has gone up by 60 cents again, perhaps it might be a good investment, but it doesn't particularly concern me and I wont be trying to obtain any.

It fell for many reason, the biggest exchanges have had problems with transactions because of how they did book keeping. Not too surprising considering how new it is. I find Bitcoin a really risky 'investment' because of this, that is how new and experimental it is.

As for the 'stick around forever', due to the way mining works (checking others' transactions), it halves the bitcoin yield every 210,000 bitcoins produced.
I believe someone did the math and it will be practically impossible to mine any more after 21 million have been created. Then they either have to start fresh, or move to another cryptocurrency.
(Before you guys start to yell at me for making a mistake, just remember this is not my area of expertise and I'm just saying what I know so far.)

Bitcoin wants to have a fix supply of about 21 million coins. Once block rearwards are less than worth while transaction fees are suppose to take over and is why mining will keep going. If this will work out that well who knows. Mining and how it was suppose to work have changed from the original idea I feel, but I'm not sure if that's really a bad thing.

Oh, and did you hear about the Silk Road 2? All of the bitcoins from there were hijacked. Sucks.

'hijacked', I would not be surprised if they took them and just said that because of the current news about exchanges having problems.

I bought three block erupters a while back, only got like 0.002 BTC.

Heh, thats neat. I also have one that I got for fun. They are not worth it for an investment at all. Anyway you should have kept them running, I mean why not. Unless you sold them, which is also not a bad idea if you wanted to make money. Anyway I got mine as a novelty.

Mining made it to hard for me to find the AMD card I wanted, so I ended up going nvidia. Lots of people are buying up amd cards trying to get into the mining thing way to late.

I can understand your frustration about the lack of AMD cards. I wish they had made more and I feel for gamers who wanted them. As for mining profitability, its actually not that bad for mining altcoins and exchanging for Bitcoin. Doge like what Matty_Richo is talking about was good for a while and made some nice money for a while.

I have made mining equipment with old hardware laying around for free and it was basically making money with stuff I was not using. And it was able to pay for the power the system was using and have profit after that.

I understand why bitcoins are popular and useful, but when you look at the darker side of them(Drugs from Silk Road/Silk Road 2, Illegal weapons, other such things) it paints a negative light on them as a whole.

Its true that Bitcoins have been used for all of this. But to be far so has your normal Dollar or whichever fiat you use. Its a tool that can be used for good or bad. Now does Bitcoin make it more easy to do bad things? I'm not 100% but I would say no. Considering what happen to Silkroad the original. And if you are not being perfect Bitcoin can be traceable.

[Titan]

But I mean I can't put money in my bank and order 5 kilos of weed, a kilo of coke, and a fully automatic ak-47 from amazon.

I mean if you live in a big city you can already get this stuff easy. But this way has no face-face interaction with the seller, which makes sure you aren't gonna get shot/caught in a sting. Its also(not impossible you're right) hard to trace.

The other issue is how much the value fluctuates. The 5 bitcoins you have now might be worth $4000, but maybe in 3 months they'll be worth twice that or maybe nothing.

[ARTgames]

But I mean I can't put money in my bank and order 5 kilos of weed, a kilo of coke, and a fully automatic ak-47 from amazon.

I mean if you live in a big city you can already get this stuff easy. But this way has no face-face interaction with the seller, which makes sure you aren't gonna get shot/caught in a sting. Its also(not impossible you're right) hard to trace.

I'm sure there are websites online that will sell illegal stuff in things other than Bitcoin, and as you pointed out you have to anonymize yourself in both to get it done. But I don't know how hard it is to do it for normal money vs Bitcoin. I never tried to do any of that. So my knowledge is lacking here.

The other issue is how much the value fluctuates. The 5 bitcoins you have now might be worth $4000, but maybe in 3 months they'll be worth twice that or maybe nothing.

Bitcoin's volatility is something that hinders its usability but its only something the market can sort out. If it gets bigger the larger swings are much more likely to go down and predictability will higher. Though traders will miss it. Many business that use Bitcoin convert to fiat as soon as they get it to avoid the volatility.

The Bitcoin payment system today is vary convoluted and ugly ways to pay money but one day some people hope connections will be made. But its only a start, there is not really a place with a closed Bitcoin payment loop. If it makes a better market for itself than it could be comes something more stable and useful than it is now. Its sort of a crappy prototype stage right now that takes more work to run it than it produces. I'm sure the light bulb seemed like wasted effort if we sat and watched all the failed attempts. Though I do have my doubts that Bitcoin will have its 'successful attempt'.