Bitcoins

[Herr Tubthumper]

But currently, bit coin is very popular amongst the deep web, which includes the black market I.e Silk Road. I would imagine the police can infer the use of bit coin with that of the currency of the black market.

I imagine they have little to no idea about Bitcoin. As was demonstrated at the last demos in London, in the world of varying social media their idea of mass communication is to still hand out leaflets.

 

[Notters]

Couldn't someone with access to a supercomputer just use that to break the puzzles?
It reminds me of that Folding@home thing that Stanford University do/did, where you can contribute your computing power - using a laptop, PC, PS3, etc - to compute the folding of various proteins, which can go towards helping to understand and develop cures for diseases.

From what my friend (who knows a lot more about it than me) has said, it would reqire a quantum computer to do this, and these don't exist. The complexity of the problems and the security is constantly reviewed as well.

 

[beorhthelm]

People are not buying bitcoins to do their grocery shopping, but what does that tell you? That people are not using it as an alternative currency, but rather as a safe store of wealth like buying precious metals or commodities.

well that exactly the issue i'm raising. its in effect a commodity in itself, rather than a currency. but as a way to store wealth its far too volitile and unknown. for example, why has it risen 500% in under a month? with established commodities, currencies etc you could at least point to some macro economic news or apply from analysis to say that's the cause. with Bitcoins its seems a bit of Cyprus ( though that was weeks ago), a bit of fear of the next "Cyprus", a bit of Russians need to hide money somewhere, a bit of people reading about it and jumping on. in themselves valid reasons for a rise, but that large? i looked up the volume, 2.1m on the major exchange over the past 30 days. for contrast BP shares have traded 23.3m already today. this highlights nothing more than that bitcoins is far smaller deal than being made out. I like it, as a means to transfer money i see its very usful. but im not buying into the "its going to replace money" hype, until i can use it for every day transactions it just a novelty.

and back to the mining, i tested my PC with GTX260 GPU last night, i would have generated 0.0026 bitcoins a day or about 1 a year. theres some people out there with serious hardware generating hashes.

 

[dingodan]

I know where you're coming from but I was told I was silly buying my first property back in '96 when the market was at its absolute top. 17 years later and during the worst recession in memory prices are still holding out and that flat is worth about 3 times what I paid. That said it surely has to stop somewhere? I have to say the UK property market is totally nuts though. Even now, given all the warning signs from the current financial situation the goverment are trying to kick start the economy with the very thing which caused the problem in the first place. Ludicrous.

Right. And when they can no longer patch over the holes, the bubble will burst. Those 17 years have just seen the bubble continue to expand, and since 9/11/2001 the U.S. housing market went crazy as the FED tried to stimulate a slowing economy. This was just to keep it going, it's like a smack addict constantly upping his dose to keep the high going. And it will work. Until the dose becomes lethal. Which is inevitable.

Look at this:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/Repo.asp

When interest rates correct we are screwed. When you consider the levels of "QE" the consequences could be unthinkable, in order to avoid hyper inflation interest rates may not only rise, they may go through the roof.

 

[GreersElbow]

Right. And when they can no longer patch over the holes, the bubble will burst. Those 17 years have just seen the bubble continue to expand, and since 9/11/2001 the U.S. housing market went crazy as the FED tried to stimulate a slowing economy. This was just to keep it going, it's like a smack addict constantly upping his dose to keep the high going. And it will work. Until the dose becomes lethal. Which is inevitable.

Look at this:

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/boeapps/iadb/Repo.asp

When interest rates correct we are screwed. When you consider the levels of "QE" the consequences could be unthinkable, in order to avoid hyper inflation interest rates may not only rise, they may go through the roof.

I thought the bubble in the U.S burst in 2005 which lead to the slowdown of the late 2000's....I could be wrong, but that's from my own interpretations of what happened.

well that exactly the issue i'm raising. its in effect a commodity in itself, rather than a currency. but as a way to store wealth its far too volitile and unknown. for example, why has it risen 500% in under a month? with established commodities, currencies etc you could at least point to some macro economic news or apply from analysis to say that's the cause. with Bitcoins its seems a bit of Cyprus ( though that was weeks ago), a bit of fear of the next "Cyprus", a bit of Russians need to hide money somewhere, a bit of people reading about it and jumping on. in themselves valid reasons for a rise, but that large? i looked up the volume, 2.1m on the major exchange over the past 30 days. for contrast BP shares have traded 23.3m already today. this highlights nothing more than that bitcoins is far smaller deal than being made out. I like it, as a means to transfer money i see its very usful. but im not buying into the "its going to replace money" hype, until i can use it for every day transactions it just a novelty.

and back to the mining, i tested my PC with GTX260 GPU last night, i would have generated 0.0026 bitcoins a day or about 1 a year. theres some people out there with serious hardware generating hashes.

Uh...GTX260 isn't that high-tech anymore. You can pick up a GTX 560 Ti for like £150 if you look far enough and that's arguably 2x as powerful. CPU and RAM also makes a difference.

 

[Stat Brother]

Ok so the prove why I don't understand what's going on, here's a question:-

Who has/owns the 'loose change' we all have sitting on our season tickets?

On occasion I could have £20+ sitting there, after loading up for Saturday/Tuesday matches.
I guess it could be quite a tidy sum, from 20,000 S/T.
The money has left our accounts, to whom.

 

[beorhthelm]

When interest rates correct we are screwed. When you consider the levels of "QE" the consequences could be unthinkable, in order to avoid hyper inflation interest rates may not only rise, they may go through the roof.

the QE hasnt gone into the wider economy though (half the reason its had so little noted effect), its gone into proping up the Gilt market and by extension bank balance sheets. theres very little risk of hyperinflation from this because the banks have to keep larger capital ratios, so the money isnt going to go anywhere. you will observe the lack of lending.

Uh...GTX260 isn't that high-tech anymore. You can pick up a GTX 560 Ti for like £150 if you look far enough and that's arguably 2x as powerful. CPU and RAM also makes a difference.

oh its awful for the purpose. an equivlient ATI card would be alot better, but even then only 5-10 times. i recall couple years ago bitcoiners thought they were responsible for causing worldwide shortages of particular ATI cards because they were buying them up to run 2 or 4 way rigs, then dumping them on ebay months later as the prices of bitcoins crashed. a GTX560 is apparently only twice as good, so still rubbish. its all to do with a particular hardware integer operator that the ATI use but Nvidia dont. now its all gone to custom, purpose built FPGA devices and now ASIC. i read that some firm is making these for $20k a pop

 

[dingodan]

I thought the bubble in the U.S burst in 2005 which lead to the slowdown of the late 2000's....I could be wrong, but that's from my own interpretations of what happened.

It should have burst. The market should have corrected. They didn't let it.

 

[jgmcdee]

Uh...GTX260 isn't that high-tech anymore. You can pick up a GTX 560 Ti for like £150 if you look far enough and that's arguably 2x as powerful. CPU and RAM also makes a difference.

Neither CPU nor memory will make any appreciable difference to Bitcoin mining nowadays; it all runs purely on the GPU (at least it does if you ever hope to actually contribute enough to get any). Although even with the best home computer you're not going to make a lot of money given the costs of buying and running computer. Historically, if you want to make money from Bitcoin then you've always been better off buying some than mining some.

As for Bitcoin itself, it's an attempt to provide a global currency which is not aligned with any particular government or organisation. If it succeeds then 1 bitcoin will end up being worth north of £300,000 (going on the current worth of the world's gold reserves). If it fails it'll fall to nothing. Will be fun seeing where it ends up, that's for sure.

 

[SeagullSongs]

Might be worth just buying one? If it doesn't work out, it's about £70 lost, but if it does work out then you could be onto a large sum of money in the future.

 

[jgmcdee]

Might be worth just buying one? If it doesn't work out, it's about £70 lost, but if it does work out then you could be onto a large sum of money in the future.

Well 1 is currently worth about £150, but yeah could be worth a punt. Or could go down the drain straight away. No-one knows...

 

[beorhthelm]

been revisiting mining (creation of new Bitcoins). at these prices its certainly worth looking into, and rather than spending £150 on a bitcoin, its worth buying an upgrade graphics card and leaving your computer on. digging around the AMD 7770 serious offer a decent performance for £80-90, might earn a bitcoin a month-5wks.

 

[beorhthelm]

just as i plan how im going to make a fortune on bitcoins, all went a bit pear shaped today. several of the bitcoin related sites have been offline and major exchange Mtgox was suffering from very long transaction times up to 20 min (read, you couldnt get your bitcoins cashed). prices fell to 105, back to 150. good store of wealth? though i have renewed my interest, simply because it seems like an interesting ride.

 

[The Maharajah of Sydney]

Market crashed yesterday .

Top Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox halts trading following massive price decline | VentureBeat

 

[Kosmonaut]

Bitcoin has all the features you don't want in a currency: excessive bubbly behavior diverting money away from socially useful activities or investment or anything that generates economic activity into excessive hoarding, wild fluctuations that make the currency absolutely useless to sellers (they would have to change the price of their product every minute to account for its instability in value), and most recently a gigantic crash in its value.

 

[Kosmonaut]

blah blah blah

Oh wow, people still buy into this thoroughly debunked Austrian school of economics crap? Even after their understanding of central bank operations have shown to be demonstrably untrue? Even after their constant predictions of imminent hyperinflation since QE1 have come false every single year since and shows no signs of coming true any time soon? The central bank's interest rate does not "correct" itself, it is at the discretion of.. the central bank. The only circumstance in which they would increase the rate is if demand in the economy were to absolutely surge ahead massively.. which it shows no signs of doing any time soon; but at the same time such a surge in demand would offset any significantly deflationary effect higher interest rates would have on its price. Austrian economics is dead, live with it and welcome to my ignore list.

 

[dingodan]

Oh wow, people still buy into this thoroughly debunked Austrian school of economics crap? Even after their understanding of central bank operations have shown to be demonstrably untrue? Even after their constant predictions of imminent hyperinflation since QE1 have come false every single year since and shows no signs of coming true any time soon? The central bank's interest rate does not "correct" itself, it is at the discretion of.. the central bank. The only circumstance in which they would increase the rate is if demand in the economy were to absolutely surge ahead massively.. which it shows no signs of doing any time soon; but at the same time such a surge in demand would offset any significantly deflationary effect higher interest rates would have on its price. Austrian economics is dead, live with it and welcome to my ignore list.

No, this system is dead. And this system is a Keynesian system. The Austrian school predicted that Keynesian economics would eventually fail, because central planning distorts the economy, because perpetually increasing credit causes bubbles, and because amassing public debt is destructive. All of this has been proven to be correct. It is Keynesian economics which is dying and if we are not careful it is going to take us all with it.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

There is a Bitcoin workshop going on in a conference room next to my office at the moment. Just been talking to the host.

 

[Hamilton]

Personally, I think it's all a load of cobblers.

I've tried to understand it and keep coming up with questions. If it seems like hogwash, it is hogwash.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Personally, I think it's all a load of cobblers.

I've tried to understand it and keep coming up with questions. If it seems like hogwash, it is hogwash.

There are number of businesses which accept them here, so I am going to buy some and see how it all works. I have been given some email address of sites where I can buy them, and also details of somewhere I can go and buy them in person plus a website of businesses willing to take them. I am clueless as well though.