i just got a note saying that the bit coin forum had been hacked as well
i think MtGox has been pretty much dead since their being hacked, they say they will update, but i doubt i would trust them even if they did...
there are other exchanges operating but given the history of bit coin, i would say "buyer beware"
i don't want to be to tinfoil-hat this early in the day, but i do kind of wonder if TBTB have something to do with hacks discrediting the bit coin? if it took off it is a potentially huge shift in method of exchange, with similarity's to barter and gold that gives control to the individual..
-Government 2020+ - a BANANA REPUBLIC - if you can keep it
-Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence
Just like with e-gold, a digital currency that allows people to transfer money around the world without any reporting requirements to the government attracts all sorts of savory and unsavory individuals. Also, the fact that your wallet is just a bunch of 1s and 0s on your computer that anyone can make a copy of and convert into cash attracts all types of criminals.
The problem the government has is that unlike e-gold, they can't just shut down a single company.
Bitcoin profitability has gone down recently due to loss of interest and high profile hacking of places like mybitcoin.com. I'm not out any money really because I already had the PC and I would have upgraded my graphics card anyway just to be able to play newer games. So, if anything, Bitcoin has given me a little return on a sunk cost.
If you found out your flat screen TV could make $5 a day while you weren't watching it, you'd probably be happy too. In the end I will have made at least a few hundred dollars to offset the price of my $1500 gaming PC. I'm not really bummed out about Bitcoin, although if I had spent a few thousand dollars on mining rigs I would be.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
I'm a bit disappointed... The inner geek in me is for sure. Even though I'm not involved in mining.
Isn't there some sandwich shop in NYC that accepts bitcoins? Wonder if they still do...
"Well, if you're gonna sin you might as well be original" -- Mike "The Cool-Person"
"Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man" -- The Dude
jmourik wrote:
I'm a bit disappointed... The inner geek in me is for sure. Even though I'm not involved in mining.
Isn't there some sandwich shop in NYC that accepts bitcoins? Wonder if they still do...
As far as I know the Meze Grill in New York still takes Bitcoins. The owner looks up the exchange rate when you have your meal, so where before you could probably get a meal with 0.5 BTC, now it might cost you a couple...
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Thanks for the update! It'll be very interesting to see where things go from here.
The hack back in June was catastrophic. Digital currencies rely heavily on trust and even though the fault was with Mt. Gox rather than with the bitcoin implementation, this sort of thing is very damaging. It'll take some work to turn that around.
Craigr suggested bitcoins for a potential suicide portfolio a while back. Sounds like it might have been a good call!
Storm wrote:
As far as I know the Meze Grill in New York still takes Bitcoins. The owner looks up the exchange rate when you have your meal, so where before you could probably get a meal with 0.5 BTC, now it might cost you a couple...
"Well, if you're gonna sin you might as well be original" -- Mike "The Cool-Person"
"Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man" -- The Dude
I'm still mining bitcoins, but I'm no longer selling them. I'm holding onto them as a speculative investment in a VP. I read a really interesting article comparing Bitcoin to the Gartner hype cycle:
You can read the whole article if you want. The main point is that it seems we are at about the trough of disillusionment right now:
I think the global deleveraging and money printing that is going on right now is very Bitcoin bullish overall. If we suffer catastrophic global currency inflation, people might turn to an alternative currency like Bitcoin that can't be inflated. They could turn to gold as well, but gold is hard to physically ship if you want to do business globally or internationally.
I'll collect a few hundred Bitcoins and if I'm lucky, they will be worth something significant some day.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
"Well, if you're gonna sin you might as well be original" -- Mike "The Cool-Person"
"Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man" -- The Dude
The Wired article was a great history of Bitcoin so far, but it sounds to me like an article written about the rise and fall of the Internet right after the dot com crash. We still don't know if Bitcoin will be successful, but I would be willing to bet that some form of decentralized digital currency will be successful. Bitcoin just proved that it could be done. Bitcoin could be the pets.com of digital currency, and some future version might end up being the amazon.com.
I am now able to mine about 1 bitcoin per day, since the difficulty has dropped. As you might know, the difficulty of mining rises and falls depending on how many people are mining. The value has been increasing lately and is now around $3 US per Bitcoin. In the winter, my mining rig also helps to heat my house, offsetting my heating bill somewhat.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Storm wrote:...In the winter, my mining rig also helps to heat my house, offsetting my heating bill somewhat.
Oh man, that made me laugh! Seriously? Though I must admit that I kept my PC humming a couple of days ago because I was too cheap to turn on the heater and the little extra heat of the pc helped a bit (maybe (I think))... Anyway, you must have a serious mining operation going! I'll have to skim this thread because I think you did mention it somewhere...
"Well, if you're gonna sin you might as well be original" -- Mike "The Cool-Person"
"Yeah, well, that’s just, like, your opinion, man" -- The Dude
I just have a single PC with a monster graphics card in it (ATI Radeon 6990). The PC set me back about $500, and the graphics card was another $729. But, it does generate a lot of heat. The PC draws about half a kilowatt when mining, and it is converted directly into heat energy into my apartment. This is terrible during the summer, but makes mining during the winter almost worth it...
The funny thing is - I can tell if the Internet goes out because the fan noise from my PC dies down and it becomes silent.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Storm wrote:
I just have a single PC with a monster graphics card in it (ATI Radeon 6990). The PC set me back about $500, and the graphics card was another $729. But, it does generate a lot of heat. The PC draws about half a kilowatt when mining, and it is converted directly into heat energy into my apartment. This is terrible during the summer, but makes mining during the winter almost worth it...
The funny thing is - I can tell if the Internet goes out because the fan noise from my PC dies down and it becomes silent. :D
Wow! That is a little frightening and also terribly awesome.
With Bitcoins at $3 or so a piece, it's still profitable to run that monster for one bitcoin per day? Do you know about where you break-even point is on mining costs with current complexity (and power rates)?
Storm wrote:
I just have a single PC with a monster graphics card in it (ATI Radeon 6990). The PC set me back about $500, and the graphics card was another $729. But, it does generate a lot of heat. The PC draws about half a kilowatt when mining, and it is converted directly into heat energy into my apartment. This is terrible during the summer, but makes mining during the winter almost worth it...
The funny thing is - I can tell if the Internet goes out because the fan noise from my PC dies down and it becomes silent. :D
Wow! That is a little frightening and also terribly awesome.
With Bitcoins at $3 or so a piece, it's still profitable to run that monster for one bitcoin per day? Do you know about where you break-even point is on mining costs with current complexity (and power rates)?
I calculated it out... My electricity costs are 20 cents per kilowatt hour, so a continuous half kilowatt is costing me $2.40 per day to generate 1 bitcoin. If you consider the heat offset that makes mining in the summer less profitable (because of the waste heat that must be cooled with AC), but mining in the winter is more profitable because my gas bill will be lower.
In any case, I decided selling the Bitcoins immediately is not really worth it... I mean who wants to go to all the trouble for just 60 cents a day profit? I'm going to hold onto them as a speculative investment just in case they are worth a significant amount of money someday.
By the way, my brother is a libertarian and crypto geek... When bitcoin was brand new one of his friends sent him 1000 Bitcoins. At one point, this was worth over $30,000... He's holding onto them for the long haul because he thinks that one day Bitcoin might be the default currency.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Storm wrote:
I calculated it out... My electricity costs are 20 cents per kilowatt hour, so a continuous half kilowatt is costing me $2.40 per day to generate 1 bitcoin. If you consider the heat offset that makes mining in the summer less profitable (because of the waste heat that must be cooled with AC), but mining in the winter is more profitable because my gas bill will be lower.
Unquestionably. Even if these things were to drop drastically in value, I think I'd have some sentimental value for a Bitcoin that I'd mined myself. Who would sell the first ounce of gold they panned themselves out of the river?
For the year of 2011, it finished up 1473%... But more interesting, it was trading at $2.00 each a month ago... and is now trading over $5.00... I'm stoked. I will keep saving my BTC to see if they are worth something someday.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
I don't see how BitCoins will ever become a currency/medium of exchange as its not price stable and the supply will not expand to increased velocity or population growth, but it certainly seems to be a speculative store of value for geeks with the built in deflation.
It's a bit tempting, but I think my processing power is still best utilized for crunching the financial markets which doesn't have liquidity or leverage limitations compared to BitCoin.
I have a 9800 GT. How many days would it take me to mine one BitCoin if you scale it from your video card?
MG
Storm wrote:
BTC just hit $5.27 each...
For the year of 2011, it finished up 1473%... But more interesting, it was trading at $2.00 each a month ago... and is now trading over $5.00... I'm stoked. I will keep saving my BTC to see if they are worth something someday.
Last edited by MachineGhost on Mon Jan 02, 2012 11:53 am, edited 1 time in total.
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes
Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet. I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
You can earn about 0.02 bitcoins per day by mining with your card... good luck to you! In all seriousness, you're probably better off buying BTC on the open market rather than trying to mine.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Just wanted to give an update, BTC is now $8.90 per 1 BTC. It seems like it's on the rise again. This is what I suspected as the difficulty of mining is expected to double this year, which should mean that the value of BTC at least doubles.
A very good play would have been to purchase BTC when it was below $3 and sell it now, or hold onto it for speculative purposes. I plan on holding onto my ~100 BTC until it is actually worth something (or nothing, perhaps).
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
I was thinking about selling 25% of my bitcoins... just to recoup costs and hardware investments. However, my bitcoin is purely speculative; perhaps I should hold on and wait for the inevitable rise in value... Anyone have an opinion? Should I sell or keep my bitcoins?
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
Storm wrote:
I was thinking about selling 25% of my bitcoins... just to recoup costs and hardware investments. However, my bitcoin is purely speculative; perhaps I should hold on and wait for the inevitable rise in value... Anyone have an opinion? Should I sell or keep my bitcoins?
Its always a good idea to play with the "market's money".
"All generous minds have a horror of what are commonly called 'Facts'. They are the brute beasts of the intellectual domain." -- Thomas Hobbes
Disclaimer: I am not a broker, dealer, investment advisor, physician, theologian or prophet. I should not be considered as legally permitted to render such advice!
1 Bitcoin is now worth around $34.60 USD today. The last few months have seen historic rises in BTC value as two things happened:
Coinbase offered a simple way to link a US checking account to a Bitcoin wallet and greatly simplified the process of buying and selling bitcoins - it's now as easy as PayPal.
Many gambling sites now allow you to play with Bitcoin in order to bypass federal government crackdowns on overseas gambling by US Citizens.
This is really a great time to be invested in Bitcoin. My measly 130 coins is now worth over $4,000. Needless to say, I keep an offline encrypted wallet now, because I don't want to lose that money due to a virus or hacker.
I also think it's great that gamblers have the privilege of doing whatever the hell they want with their money and the feds can't shut them down. Bitcoin is decentralized and totally immune to any government shutdown.
"I came here for financial advice, but I've ended up with a bunch of shave soaps and apparently am about to start eating sardines. Not that I'm complaining, of course." -ZedThou
A friend of mine bought one of those machines that makes them. ("Mines" them?)
Needless to say, I keep an offline encrypted wallet now, because I don't want to lose that money due to a virus or hacker.
That *is* a concern. It's enough trouble keeping an eye on my credit cards. Bitcoins seem like they were made to be stolen by hackers, made for this very purpose. Still, I'm intrigued.
