What is it? What do you know about it and should I start "mining" for it?

Crawling around the onion, I see. Are you wanting to buy drugs or something darker?

Computer generated money. They got a web page somewhere. I haven't looked at it in a while.

Crypto currency that actually seems promising. Like any other currency there are exchanges and exchange rates that vary over time.... when I have more time I'll write up some more on this

Well I had heard of it before but i just found this calculator thing.
https://bitclockers.com/calc

Looks like at current market price ~$13/BTC. That with an $150 investment you could make about $261/mo.

BUT, this is using a new kind of "computer" that is specifically tailored to mining BTC, none of these have come out yet, they're expected this month sometime. When they do come out, there is going to be an effect on the BTC value but people aren't sure just yet.

I don't know, for $150, even if the price plummets to $4 you could still make $80/mo.

Thoughts? (obviously, i'd be prepared to lose the $150)

If you are serious about it then read up a bit on it and know what you are getting in to before you press on. This site gives you a small but decent understanding of it.
http://www.weusecoins.com/mining-guide.php

As for me, I try to stay away from the deep web.

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Well I had heard of it before but i just found this calculator thing.
https://bitclockers.com/calc

Looks like at current market price ~$13/BTC. That with an $150 investment you could make about $261/mo.

BUT, this is using a new kind of "computer" that is specifically tailored to mining BTC, none of these have come out yet, they're expected this month sometime. When they do come out, there is going to be an effect on the BTC value but people aren't sure just yet.

I don't know, for $150, even if the price plummets to $4 you could still make $80/mo.

Thoughts? (obviously, i'd be prepared to lose the $150)

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If you're gonna be investing and prepared to lose it all, I rather put $150 on some pennystock than Bitcoins.

It's one of those things that was worth it when it first got started but is of middling value today and will probably drop in value in the future. The specialized chips are an interesting proposition, but eventually there won't be bonuses for computing new blocks... Although computing new blocks will still be necessary for transaction verification. It'll probably be up to the exchange houses to foot the cost of new blocks at that point.

If none of the above makes any sense, you need to do more research.

If you have some spare GPUs and can afford the electrical/hvac costs to run it 24h a day, and you're interested, I'd say get into it now before the block reward collapses when the specialized hardware comes out.

It's probably the closest to an independent international currency that the world has besides gold or precious materials. OTOH, the market swings have sometimes been violent and there aren't really legit ways to store the coins yet that aren't subject to hacking.

As more places accept them, I could see the value swing up. I could also see them banned in many parts of the world because they're an uncontrollable economy that's hard for governments that aren't tech savvy to tax and regulate, which might make them useless.

tl;dr, you're a few years too late to the revolution, comrade.

WIRED had a really good article about it a year ago

be careful with this stuff. Some brilliant minds came up with the whole idea of BitCoins, but they were not economists. There are ways (exploits) used by people to a) steal BitCoins from other people and b) cause the price to climb to a ridiculous degree.

It's like the PirateBay version of currency. Sounds neat and has an edgy/hacker feel to it, but it's really very unpredictable and not safe at all. From what I gather, it's typically only used for illegal online transactions (drugs, media, etc).

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It's like the PirateBay version of currency. Sounds neat and has an edgy/hacker feel to it, but it's really very unpredictable and not safe at all. From what I gather, it's typically only used for illegal online transactions (drugs, media, etc).

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This couldn't be more misleading and patently wrong. BitCoin is a currency and carries with it the exact same vulnerabilities of any other currency including theft. Your online bank account which houses USD can be hacked as readily as any BitCoin account (with plenty of evidence that bitcoin transactions are more secure and more anonymous than any USD online transaction).

Further, BitCoins are used widely and not solely for illicit activities. Don't believe me? Talk to WordPress, who has started accepting BitCoins for payment. proof.

Now, I'm not advocating the use of bitcoins or saying that they are "bad", but I think it's important to not spread hearsay that is flat-out wrong.

BitCoin is a currency whose value fluctuates based on the economy's view of its strength. Buy bitcoins if you think it will strengthen against the dollar in the coming years (which I think it will), but you should take the same precaution as you would buying euros or any other form of currency as an investment.

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It's one of those things that was worth it when it first got started but is of middling value today and will probably drop in value in the future.

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This is also completely wrong. When bitcoin first got started it had almost zero value because no one had adopted it. There are stories about some guy who was trying to get pizza delivered for 10,000 bitcoins. Now bitcoins are trading at 13 USD per 1 BTC.

Also, unlike the dollar, BitCoin supply is fixed and will never be greater than 27 million bitcoins. Therefore, if the demand for bitcoin continues to increase, its value should likewise continue to increase. Pretty ingenious if you ask me.

[This message has been edited by Aggie Q (edited 12/11/2012 10:16a).]

Back when I looked into it (I was thinking about making something similar), there was very little you could buy with them. Is that still true? For example, could I buy a car with BitCoins?

I'm curious, has anyone here been a "miner"?

So why wouldn't someone with an all bills paid apartment or dorm with free internet be into this big time?

I haven't, but I've considered doing it just to see how it works and to test some GPU clustering technology.

If I lived in a dorm, I'd totally be doing this... but I pay for my 'lectric.

What I said was not as wrong as you made it seem.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/17/the-clock-is-ticking-on-bitcoin/

http://money.cnn.com/video/technology/2011/07/18/t_bitcoin_currency.cnnmoney/

Google: "Silk Road Bitcoin" or click here:
http://www.google.com/#hl=en&tbo=d&q=silk+road+bitcoin&oq=silk+road+bitcoin

[This message has been edited by kbassil (edited 12/12/2012 3:09p).]

Both those articles are a year and a half old...

But you are absolutely correct in saying there are some serious risks involved. The Govn't could come out tomorrow and say that bitcoin transactions are illegal and completely devalue the currency.

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Your online bank account which houses USD can be hacked as readily as any BitCoin account (with plenty of evidence that bitcoin transactions are more secure and more anonymous than any USD online transaction).

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If someone hacks my bank account, it's the bank losing money, not me. The money will be reinstated into my account.

Does bitcoin remedy the situation if someone steals them from you?

One benefit of other currencies is that they have intrinsic value. Gold and Silver obviously can be made into jewelry and whatnot. So if the trading value of those loose all its value, you can at least melt it down and trade it for it's other uses. That's what made salt a useful currency a long time ago. Even though the dollar is no longer backed by gold, it still has some intrinsic value in the fact that the US government requires you to pay taxes in dollars.

Bit coin does not. I wouldn't be surprised if some day in the future, the use of BitCoins in the US is banned. Then everybody holding BitCoins will be sorta hosed. Even if you don't comply, you will have a hard time using them for anything, and the value of them would plummet.

Last two posts are great points

Bump

So I'm trying to figure out how to get some bitcoins. Is it not possible to do it with credit card? I thought bitcoins were supposed to have anonymity to it. I wouldn't trust who I am buying them from so I would want to use one of those prepaid credit card gift card things. Is this not possible?

What other options are there to safely and securely get bitcoins anonymously? I don't want the person having any of my personal details to be able to potentially do something shady...

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Crypto currency that actually seems promising. Like any other currency there are exchanges and exchange rates that vary over time.... when I have more time I'll write up some more on this

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Seems promising? HA!

Why couldn't someone to make an app for PS3 that could mine bit coins? Like a Folding @Home for bit coins.

Hereto - you can exchange cash/credit for bitcoins from any of a number of established online currency exchanges. You can either purchase a prepaid card from a retailer with cash, or you can make a cash deposit into an account for the exchange and once the deposit is verified, they will send you the necessary data.

Time for a revisit?

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Why couldn't someone to make an app for PS3 that could mine bit coins? Like a Folding @Home for bit coins.

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They could, but CPU and GPU mining are all but dead now. FPGA and ASIC mining is really the only profitable way to mine these days.

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The Govn't could come out tomorrow and say that bitcoin transactions are illegal and completely devalue the currency.

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False. There is absolutely nothing illegal about printing your own currency and trading with it, provided you aren't using "gold or silver or other metal, or alloys of metals". Just don't expect others to agree on its value. Google Liberty Coins and do some digging. Mostly for coin collectors, there are places that accept liberty coins as currency, and it's even in question as to whether they would be illegal as a currency even though they are metal, because their "true" intention is for collection, not currency. The real risk is that the government starts officially valuing them, and then tries to tax people who have discovered new blocks and thus earned money. Don't out it past them, these are the same people who now collect taxes on people who catch baseballs based on their expected value. Currently, it's 25 BitCoins for the latest block, which is quite a bit of money

Recently (more recently than this thread was started), the federal government has sort of acknowledged BitCoins with a new policy regarding "virtual currency". Specifically, that it must comply with money laundering regulations. I also read somewhere, and this article says similar, that if you are exchanging BitCoins as a business, you must register as a Money Services Business. This is a big step because BitCoins are more like cash than issued currency, and for this same reason it won't affect most people who are into this, since most are not in it as a business of currency exchange

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/03/us-regulator-bitcoin-exchanges-must-comply-with-money-laundering-laws/


EDIT- I checked the value again b/c it's been a while since I looked, and they are currently valued at over $200 each

[This message has been edited by kb2001 (edited 4/9/2013 12:13p).]

So how much can something like these make with the current rate of bitcoins?

http://www.butterflylabs.com/landing/landing-aw.php

My understanding is that you have to be one of the first to jump on new technologies for mining as they become available in order to keep up with the difficulty curve. Buying a rig like that would probably be profitable if you managed to snag one in the first few weeks of them being out. After that you'll end up losing money due to electricity costs.

And THAT, boys and girls, is why you don't mess with BitCoins.


http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-plunges-2013-4

Bored today?