Bitcoins

[Theodore]

Www.bitcoincard.org

I have recently been considering moving to NH and came across this. Talk about screwing the frn.

[Theodore]

No one has any opinions?

[Brant Gaede]

No one has any opinions?

Nope. I've no time now to read and evaluate this stuff. If you could summarize I could comment.

--Brant

being literate means being able to say a lot to say not neceassarily about a lot but hopefully (No! No! Don't Use This Word!) it's worthwhile regardless if only for the preasure of the language

[Theodore]

The card and the bitcoin are both fascinating to me. The card creates a local network to exchange information. The purpose with which the bitcoin people are putting it to use is to establish a decentralized alternative currency. The bitcoin is a completely digital currency with an inflation rate about equal to that of gold. Its extremely subversive because for several reasons. One reason is that it is not held in banks, and the currency CAN be used anonymously. When the cards come out in January the people behind the project are going to make a big push to get as many of the cards out as possible to create critical mass, once enough of the cards are in circulation there will be no way for any government to stop it. The main reason I like it is because it takes control of the economy out of the hands of the government.

[dsaum]

Www.bitcoincard.org

I have recently been considering moving to NH and came across this. Talk about screwing the frn.

Events seem to have overtaken pyramining. Those of us who plodded along with bitcoin mining for years using Radeon video cards

despite the poor payback due to sub $10 coin value and energy/hardware costs, are now find ourselves sitting on a nice

profit due to the latest bitcoin price runup. As I write this the auction value of each bitcoin is around $143. See

https://mtgox.com/

The bitcoin mining algorithm makes mining more difficult as time goes on, moreover some clever folks have started building

ASIC processor machine that mines so fast that it will put us video card miners out of business in a few months. Right now my 3 video cards

running 24/7 take about a month to produce one bitcoin, as opposed to days a year ago.

For us miners, the big question may be when to cash out. The net value of the 11 million bitcoins already mined is about $1.5B

and if we assume that bitcoins must have a total value comparable to the dollar (~$10 trillion) in order to replace the dollar

as the world's currency, then each bitcoin's value has to increase by at least 1000x from todays seemingly high value. In my dreams!

[dsaum]

A few of interesting links about bitcoins

Misean analysis is interesting but conclusion does not follow

http://mises.org/daily/6399/The-Moneyness-of-Bitcoins

Funny take on difficulty of buying and using bitcoins

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/04/04/my-bitcoin-mis-adventure.html

google trends for "bitcoins" show interesting global hot spots

http://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=bitcoin&date=today%203-m&cmpt=date

[Kyle Jacob Biodrowski]

Www.bitcoincard.org

I have recently been considering moving to NH and came across this. Talk about screwing the frn.

It is a giant "fuck you" to the Fed, isn't it? A currency independent of the government manipulation makes me long for the days (if they ever come) of spaceships "out-running" government chasers.

Www.bitcoincard.org

I have recently been considering moving to NH and came across this. Talk about screwing the frn.

Events seem to have overtaken pyramining. Those of us who plodded along with bitcoin mining for years using Radeon video cards

despite the poor payback due to sub $10 coin value and energy/hardware costs, are now find ourselves sitting on a nice

profit due to the latest bitcoin price runup. As I write this the auction value of each bitcoin is around $143. See

https://mtgox.com/

The bitcoin mining algorithm makes mining more difficult as time goes on, moreover some clever folks have started building

ASIC processor machine that mines so fast that it will put us video card miners out of business in a few months. Right now my 3 video cards

running 24/7 take about a month to produce one bitcoin, as opposed to days a year ago.

For us miners, the big question may be when to cash out. The net value of the 11 million bitcoins already mined is about $1.5B

and if we assume that bitcoins must have a total value comparable to the dollar (~$10 trillion) in order to replace the dollar

as the world's currency, then each bitcoin's value has to increase by at least 1000x from todays seemingly high value. In my dreams!

I regret not getting in on this sooner, though I doubt my dinky XPS 400 could have mined anything even in easier days...

Oh well, I still think Bitcoins are awesome. They aren't totally risk-free (what is?), but being free from government manipulation is enough for me.

Also, there is a discussion going on, between potential (and actual, I think) "miners", over at RoR.

Here's a link: http://rebirthofreason.com/Forum/NewsDiscussions/3221.shtml

[dsaum]

Bitcoins jumped another $10 to $155 overnight.

Interesting serious article in Forbes

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/04/07/four-reasons-bitcoin-is-worth-studying/

[deanwins]

Hello Theodore and Kyle. Thanks for linking to my thread on RoR.

I'm happy to answer any questions you all have on Bitcoins. Given that Bitcoin is competition to the USD despite the Fed's wishes for USD to be a monopoly on money... I'm really excited for what bitcoin can do to overcome the corruption that is the Federal Reserve and the privilaged FDIC banks.

Below is a comparison chart I made comparing Bitcoin to previous money technology.

[deanwins]

Theadore, "The bitcoin is a completely digital currency with an inflation rate about equal to that of gold."

Invalid. The inflation rate of Bitcoin exponentially decreases until the money supply stops increasing whatsoever.

What you probably were referring to is that Bitcoin can be attained via performing work similar in nature to mining gold from the Earth.

Technical: Bitcoins can be attained by "mining Bitcoins". Mining bitcoins is performed by trying to discover an input to a deterministic bit diffusion algorithm (SHA256) where the output is a 256 bit number less than N. N is adjusted so that the entire mining network across the world only finds a solution about once every 10 minutes. The current reward for finding a solution is 25 bitcoins. This reward will drop to 12.5 bitcoins probably sometime in 2016.

[Jules Troy]

I should see if I can convince my wife to turn our hex core 64Gb ram machine into a miner.

[deanwins]

Jules,

Its been more than a year that CPU mining became unprofitable. Its been about half a year since GPU mining became unprofitable. Now you have to get something like this: KnCMiner Neptune to be able to profitably mine bitcoins. That mining machine uses custom specialized fabricated microchips (ASICs) that were designed specifically for efficiently finding Bitcoin block solutions. The machine is $10k, and last I checked it would generate about $40k per year, but of course mining for bitcoins is an extremely competitive market so its very possible that by the time you get the machine and have it running for a quarter of a year, it might not end up being profitable. It might be fun to try though, if you can put that kind of money down.

Cheers,

Dean

[Jules Troy]

I would probably have to leave my windows open in the winter from all the heat generated lol! I will stick to editing my photos in Lightroom and photoshop!