Bitcoins

[Sionyn]

anybody tried this ?

http://www.bitcoin.org/

[FreeThinker]

Ok initial thoughts are pyramid selling/  letter scam. I may be wrong (probably am) but I have a gut scepticism of ANY scheme that promises loads of money for no effort, if it sounds to good to be true then it probably is. With these scams the only people that make money are the (very) early adopters. When it goes pear shaped who are you going to complain to? Some guy (?) no one even knows? How does it work? how is it funded? how is it regulated? 'I'm a geek I've read the code....' yea right I'll give it a miss.

[Sionyn]

its legit

supported by the EFF

its all based on PKI

steve gibson did a crypto analysis of it

[Mechatrommer]

i dont understand what it is. a new concept i think, sometime its coin, and then its a p2p, and then computer processing power.

[FreeThinker]

i dont understand what it is. a new concept i think, sometime its coin, and then its a p2p, and then computer processing power.

I don't understand either  . Don't think Steve Gibson does either, as much as he would like to have us believe otherwise. This is it's fundamental problem. What it is trying to achieve is a confidence in itself but like the flim flam man it is trying to convince by confusion (ie  people buy into because they DON'T understand but do not want to appear stupid and are greedy (free lunch syndrome)). Still looks like the old pyramid scam to me. Oh by the way I still have some JavaBeans I would like to sell if any one is interested (remember them?)

EDIT
Don't think they were called javabeans now I think about it but it was some java program that you ran and got 'points' for which could then be exchanged for something else, just a vague memory now (it was that good)

[Time]

All currency is based on confidence now.  If you can get a significant population to confide in your Java beans than it could be legitimate.

What they are offering is a transparent currency which can be closely monitored and controlled.  The appeal of bitcoin is its transparency.

[Sionyn]

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

[FreeThinker]

All currency is based on confidence now.  If you can get a significant population to confide in your Java beans than it could be legitimate.

What they are offering is a transparent currency which can be closely monitored and controlled.  The appeal of bitcoin is its transparency.

Agreed
But I can follow the thought process behind Barter > Gold > Paper money but cannot comprehend how hashing header can generate anything but bandwith? Is he an ISP?

[Alex]

8 connections and counting, generating bitcoins active! I also got my free bitcoins.

 I think botcoins are like normal coins in the sense they have no value but can be traded. I also think the whole computational bit is to generate the bitcoins in the first place.

I have NO idea what I am doing whatsoever. lol

[Time]

I hardly ever touch paper money these days.  I pay for things with a plastic card and everything is monitored/maintained through online banking.  Bitcoin is not much different in actuality.  It just has no tangible equivalent which gives rise to the problems with normal currency.

[Mechatrommer]

http://bitcoincharts.com/markets/

oh it got stock market?! aaah sux! if this is the new way of transacting money, buying stuffs etc, then this is big thing. and the effort to bring this to public and time needed should be exponentially big as well.

[Sionyn]

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

[jucole]

Did anybody actually invest in Bitcons?   Anybody working on some mean bad-ass FPGA mining rigs?

I missed the boat as always! -  but I don't feel so bad because I'm not convinced the boat has enough lifejackets! ;-)

[olsenn]

Apparently there are hookers that will blow you for a bitcoin... god this world is awesome

[metalphreak]

I had a look at all my old accounts and found I left 0.5BTC in an exchange from 2011. Cashed it in for $120 

At one point I had 8800 Litecoins (around when it first started). Got rid of them for BTC instead. At one point recently they were worth $45,000. It's crazy how these things have exploded in popularity. Never would have expected it (otherwise I'd have kept that LTC!) 

[8086]

I read that recently where was someone who invested $30,000 in bitcoins. He made about $250,000 I think.

Crazy. But he did get pretty lucky. There was a huge dip just after he cashed them out apparently.

[olsenn]

Seriously though; what stores accept bitcoins? What is the good of them? Are there ATM machines to convert bitcoins to cash?

[mariush]

There's people accepting bitcoin donations, a few stores accept bitcoins, you can put them on a market and get cash for them (see mtgox.com)

See http://www.reddit.com/r/bitcoin/ for news about Bitcoin , stores that accept them, etc etc...

Anyway, the currency is still somewhat at its infancy, there will be highs and lows but eventually it will become reasonably stable but as new bitcoins will be harder and harder to produce (and it's designed in such a way that the complexity constantly increases constantly so you can't just invent a magic number crunching machine to do them fast)  the value may increase more and more.

[EEVblog]

Wikileaks accept bitcoin donations, about the only way they can raise money now since Uncle Sam put pressure on everyone else to shut them down.
I'm thinking about accepting them for donations, but to what end? Can I feed Sagan with them? 

[MacAttak]

Quite a few places take them. I think even a hedge fund or two now dabbles in bitcoin.

There are also places like Silk Road that can only exist thanks to the anonymity capability of bitcoin.

[jucole]

Bitcoin is the real pioneer of the crypto currency concept!   I like the concept of Bitcoins but Bitcoin is very deeply flawed to me;  To try to understand it I started writing a Bitcoin miner over the weekend in C#.   

I have a slow GPU Miner running at 23M Hashes per second right now! looking for a golden ticket!!  If I find that golden ticket I won't buy into Bitcon!, instead I'll be straight down to the Rigol shop for a new scope!

[Hypernova]

There was an insane bubble just this past few weeks when a few cents a coin went up to $200+. Just goes to show what a truly fiat currency can look like. Personally I wouldn't touch something that's more volatile than liquid helium.

[Spikee]

Wikileaks accept bitcoin donations, about the only way they can raise money now since Uncle Sam put pressure on everyone else to shut them down.
I'm thinking about accepting them for donations, but to what end? Can I feed Sagan with them? 

I'm a small business owner and i accept bitcoins. I use the Bitpay service to process the payments.
Bitpays converts the euro value of a product to bitcoins (actual exchange rate) and the customer can pay it and be done in 20 seconds.
It has options, you can get all you money in fiat currency or x% in bitcoins and x% in fiat currency. Therefore you have no currency risk if you choose for it.

why i use it:
-The fee is only 1%(bitpay) (paypal takes 0.35 euro +3.4%) , Ideal(netherlands) takes 0.45 euro etc...
competition:
PayPal: 0.35 euro for each transaction + 3.4%
Ideal ( the Netherlands): 0.45 euro for each transaction

-Can transfer all over the world without extra fee's (the actual recommended bitcoin transaction fee is like 0.01 euro)
-No chargebacks,disputes,double spending
competition:
PayPal: Disputes (can lead to account lock)
creditcards: chargebacks

-Free "advertising" because my shop is the only one that accepts it.
-I have followed the development since the start and i understand how it works and how markets work.


The bitcoin crash happened because one of the main fiat currency to bitcoin exchange couldn't handle all the traffic. A lot of new users came because of the media attention and saw it as a get rich quick scheme and didn't understand the mechanics of the system. When the exchange system lagged because of the immense orders the newcomers panicked and sold sold sold. Because it is still in the early stages with a current market capital of 1.2B $ a panick change like that will disrupt the market big time (from 2.6B -> 1.2B now).

Bitcoin is still in the early stages, and a lot of things need to be improved to be considered a real competitor of PayPal etc...
What it really needs is people that learn how it works and more (small) businesses to accept it.
 

A practical example of the newcomers/get rich quick people: reddit.com/r/bitcoin days leading to crash: 24K people online
Days after the crash: stable few K of people (like before the crash).


As for dave, Mjlorton is one EE video blogger that accepts bitcoin donations. And as a Merchant or somebody that wants to collect donations there is little to no risk. Even for a service like bitpay you don't have to send your ID, sign contracts etc..
A great place to learn more about bitcoins and merchants that use it:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/

Bitcoin charts:
http://blockchain.info/charts

Main bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox:
https://mtgox.com/

Bitcoin current exchange rate:
http://bitcoinity.org/markets
http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/

[MacAttak]

It isn't all rainbows and unicorns though. Thefts have happened (sometimes pretty significant), and the whole system works only because there is currently enough incentive for bitcoin miners to outpace the "bad guys" in computing horsepower and connectivity.

If you are paranoid though, there is at least one or two precious metals dealers who accept bitcoin for gold/silver and lesser metals.

[kaindub]

All I can say is
who remembers Beanz?

Similar concept around 2000

Don't remember them?
That's because they died