The end of USD <-> Bitcoin convertibility

[remontoire]

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/05/feds-reveal-the-search-warrant-that-seized-mt-gox-account/

 

[Freelancer_Main]

not quite, there is still btc-e

anyways, i think this will get sorted out sooner or later, dont worry

 

[remontoire]

not quite, there is still btc-e

anyways, i think this will get sorted out sooner or later, dont worry

There is essentially no barrier to the same happening to any other agent dealing in dollars.

 

[NevadaJake]

I don't understand bitcoins

I keep hearing about them and how they require peer-to-peer computer connections and some sort of processing occurs in the background of your computer. What is that for? I have heard a reference to "mining" and bitcoins.

I checked out wikipedia. Still kind of confused. Anyone here use them?

 

[KaelMeuk]

I don't understand bitcoins

I keep hearing about them and how they require peer-to-peer computer connections and some sort of processing occurs in the background of your computer. What is that for? I have heard a reference to "mining" and bitcoins.

I checked out wikipedia. Still kind of confused. Anyone here use them?

Using bitcoins doesn't require for you to run any processing software in the background. Transactions you send from bitcoin address to another bitcoin address will be confirmed by the bitcoin miners in this peer-to-peer computer network. Bitcoin miners are rewarded certain amount of bitcoins for finding a new block and the transaction fees for transactions.

So, bitcoin mining is required for processing bitcoin transactions and bitcoin wouldn't exist without them.

well that is how i understand it atleast

 

[forgo]

I don't understand bitcoins

I keep hearing about them and how they require peer-to-peer computer connections and some sort of processing occurs in the background of your computer. What is that for? I have heard a reference to "mining" and bitcoins.

I checked out wikipedia. Still kind of confused. Anyone here use them?

From what I understood:
Basically they steal your unused processing power, and use it for who knows what. That processing power is essentially paid for with these bitcoins. Mining is the accumulation of processing power in order to convert the processing into bitcoins. The big bitcoin miners buy servers and load them up with GPU's to process more.
Free electricity for whoever is processing all that data, everyone else pays for that.... nothing is truly free.

There are now trojans and virus' that load these miners up on your computer and generate bitcoins for someone else, victims are usually unaware, and trying to troubleshoot sudden lag and slow responses.

There is a creator for this system, only they wont reveal themselves nor what it is actually for. Which is more than enough reason for me to never even touch it. People may be helping terrorists or 3rd world countries accomplish damage. There is no-one to account for funds or deny that statement.

Whatever needs this kind of processing is probably scary.

 

[tamlin]

Using bitcoins doesn't require for you to run any processing software in the background.

Correct, but it does require you to run processing software.

Whether you run it in the foreground or background may be of less concern.

 

[Freelancer_Main]

From what I understood:
Basically they steal your unused processing power, and use it for who knows what. That processing power is essentially paid for with these bitcoins. Mining is the accumulation of processing power in order to convert the processing into bitcoins. The big bitcoin miners buy servers and load them up with GPU's to process more.
Free electricity for whoever is processing all that data, everyone else pays for that.... nothing is truly free.

There are now trojans and virus' that load these miners up on your computer and generate bitcoins for someone else, victims are usually unaware, and trying to troubleshoot sudden lag and slow responses.

There is a creator for this system, only they wont reveal themselves nor what it is actually for. Which is more than enough reason for me to never even touch it. People may be helping terrorists or 3rd world countries accomplish damage. There is no-one to account for funds or deny that statement.

Whatever needs this kind of processing is probably scary.

Free electricity? Really? )))))

You have shown Bitcoin in a very black shadow, yet all of this is very inaccurate. They (who? you mean WHOLE BITCOIN community? ok..) dont steal your GPU/CPU/any other power to help them. All that mining power is used for proving all bitcoin operations and transactions were true and not hacked and changed in profit for somebody else. What bad people do with bitcoins is the same what would bad people do with dollars e.g. those terrorist actions.

If you can secure your computer, search a little more, get to know more and read more before you start doing it, then you should be fine. If you dont know what you are doing then dont do it

YES, there were occasions of some people trying to get into your unaware computer and use its power to mine bitcoins (or any other cryptocurrency), its your duty to see whats wrong with your computer and secure it so that it doesnt happen again, dont judge the whole community for doing so. Also there were some (imho pretty clever) people that made office computers mine bitcoins after working hours and do something similar to school computers.

be ready for cryptocurrencies my friend

 

[aridash]

I don't understand bitcoins

thats ok, most the people involved dont seem to either. theres lots of claims and lots of agendas in the community, really its just an experiment in creating a cryptographically secure currency that so far has progressed and gathers some momentum. it uses a network of the community to resolve/verify blocks of transaction, in the process giving the network coins to both introduce the supply and reward for the effort of running the network. its a little cyberpunk meets technorati elite have a utopian dream.

what it isnt is anonymous, user friendly, scaleable, a replacment for existing national currencies or a revolution from inflationary to deflationary economics.

 

[BruuD]

It's simple:
Bitcoin is a digital currency which works really good and has inflated insanely the last year and can't be controlled by any government.
Therefore, US government will try to take it down.

I think that summarizes the story

 

[AxeMurderer]

I learned few things about bitcoins:
1.If you are miner you will pay more for the electricity than you will get as bitcoins. (not to mention you can't use the PC while mining and your hardware life will shorten)
2.It is very easy to buy bitcoins, but almost nothing to buy with them. (just few virtual stuff you don't need)
3.Nothing can stop another cyrency for example shitcoins to be introduced tomoroy and another and another (and this is hapening all the time)

If only bitcoin (miners) knew about the CLD I think they will sale all their hardware and buy CLD, but don't tell them that

 

[BruuD]

I learned few things about bitcoins:
1.If you are miner you will pay more for the electricity than you will get as bitcoins. (not to mention you can't use the PC while mining and your hardware life will shorten)

That depends... check out this Bitcoin mining setup.
I bet they didn't set it up to make loss on electricity

It does get exponentially more difficult to calculate hashes so there will probably be a point in time where it's not interesting for a single person to mine bitcoins, it will just be a community task that is not done for profit (if i understand it all correctly).

 

[Mikass]

It's simple:
Bitcoin is a digital currency which works really good and has inflated insanely the last year and can't be controlled by any government.
Therefore, US government will try to take it down.

I think that summarizes the story

While US is bit hostile to Bitcoin, there are plenty of venture capitalists from US putting lots of money into Bitcoin startups. Peter Thiel, Paypal founder recently joined in with his fund for example.

Russia and China, on the other hand, are openly pushing Bitcoin on their state owned TV stations.

 

[AxeMurderer]

That depends... check out this Bitcoin mining setup.
I bet they didn't set it up to make loss on electricity

It does get exponentially more difficult to calculate hashes so there will probably be a point in time where it's not interesting for a single person to mine bitcoins, it will just be a community task that is not done for profit (if i understand it all correctly).

Not sure how much this cost, but I guess untill you return your investment it will be time to buy new hardware.
And show me something usefull I can buy with bitcoins, other than some Justin Beaber mp3 or something

 

[Futurama]

Not sure how much this cost, but I guess untill you return your investment it will be time to buy new hardware.
And show me something usefull I can buy with bitcoins, other than some Justin Beaber mp3 or something

Indeed... Can I pay my gas, electricity bill with it? Can I buy food at the grocery store with it? Can I rent a flat with it? Can I pay for drinks at the grocery store/bar? Can I pay for petrol at the station with it? etc. etc.

And the list of usefulness goes on.

 

[Mikass]

Indeed... Can I pay my gas, electricity bill with it? Can I buy food at the grocery store with it? Can I rent a flat with it? Can I pay for drinks at the grocery store/bar? Can I pay for petrol at the station with it? etc. etc.

And the list of usefulness goes on.

21 Things I Learned About Bitcoin From Living On It For A Week

 

[AxeMurderer]

21 Things I Learned About Bitcoin From Living On It For A Week

Quote from Forbes:
"5. It’s hard to convince someone who has never heard of Bitcoin before to accept it as payment. "

let me refrase that:

"It’s hard to convince someone to accept rocks as payment. "

 

[Xen]

That depends... check out this Bitcoin mining setup.
I bet they didn't set it up to make loss on electricity

I hope that dude's mom doesn't find that.

 

[KaelMeuk]

Correct, but it does require you to run processing software.

Whether you run it in the foreground or background may be of less concern.

Only bitcoin mining requires software running in the background.

Sending or Receiving bitcoins does not. You do not need to mine bitcoins or even know how mining bitcoins work to use them.

Indeed... Can I pay my gas, electricity bill with it? Can I buy food at the grocery store with it? Can I rent a flat with it? Can I pay for drinks at the grocery store/bar? Can I pay for petrol at the station with it? etc. etc.

And the list of usefulness goes on.

well, recently many even popular services has started to accept bitcoins indirectly.

for example on US you can use Gyft android version http://www.gyft.com/ to buy gift cards for many places including amazon cards up to $2000

you can also go to burger king in US, use gyft to buy gift card with bitcoin while waiting in line and use that gift card pretty much instantly now.

yesterday Webmoney at Russia started processing bitcoins aswell. Webmoney is accepted at Steam btw.

https://www.foodler.com/user/Bitcoin.do food delivery service in the US

I learned few things about bitcoins:
1.If you are miner you will pay more for the electricity than you will get as bitcoins. (not to mention you can't use the PC while mining and your hardware life will shorten)
2.It is very easy to buy bitcoins, but almost nothing to buy with them. (just few virtual stuff you don't need)
3.Nothing can stop another cyrency for example shitcoins to be introduced tomoroy and another and another (and this is hapening all the time)

If only bitcoin (miners) knew about the CLD I think they will sale all their hardware and buy CLD, but don't tell them that

on 1.
depends what hardware you mine on completely, CPU and GPU mining days are over but if you have ASIC miner today it will pay it self back within weeks even if the hardware costed you over $1000 half year ago when you pre-ordered it. Problem now however is that queue for getting ASIC bitcoin miner is so long you probably wont make much money anymore once you get it if you order now.

2. this is starting to change very fast as you can see in my reply to Futurama above.

3. This is completely possible that someone will invent better crypto-currency at some point that fixes some issues Bitcoin has, Before that i don't think there will be something similar to bitcoin that is as popular.

 

[Futurama]

What if I told you now everyone is from Murica?

 

[aridash]

And show me something usefull I can buy with bitcoins

dollars