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1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

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Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#11

Post by sabj »

sgornick wrote: post #2

For those who are new to Bitcoin and would like to learn more: Bitcoin FAQ - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ Bitcoin Wiki - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page How Bitcoin Works - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_bitcoin_works Installing Bitcoin - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getting_started HowTo Mining Bitcoin: Fedora 14: http://bit.ly/fb54ye and Ubuntu: http://bit.ly/ewVzhu The Bitcoin Faucet (free bitcoins) - https:/…

I'm more confused than when I started. I understand the concept, but not the ecosystem or money supply... or exchange rate.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#12

Post by Charuru »

sgornick wrote: post #2

For those who are new to Bitcoin and would like to learn more: Bitcoin FAQ - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ Bitcoin Wiki - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page How Bitcoin Works - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_bitcoin_works Installing Bitcoin - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getting_started HowTo Mining Bitcoin: Fedora 14: http://bit.ly/fb54ye and Ubuntu: http://bit.ly/ewVzhu The Bitcoin Faucet (free bitcoins) - https:/…

OK, I understand how they're created and how many there are. But why?

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#13

Post by antimatter15 »

iheartmemcache wrote: post #3

I read the wiki on BitCoin and I still don't understand how the BitCoin forex market is made. Usually currencies are based on national GDP and that sort of thing, but I haven't the faintest as to what controls the strength of this currency. Can someone enlighten me?

I think I read somewhere that the value is derived from the amount of electricity and hardware required to mine for a bitcoin.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#14

Post by jackowayed »

Charuru wrote: post #12
sgornick wrote: post #2

For those who are new to Bitcoin and would like to learn more: Bitcoin FAQ - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/FAQ Bitcoin Wiki - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Main_Page How Bitcoin Works - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/How_bitcoin_works Installing Bitcoin - https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Getting_started HowTo Mining Bitcoin: Fedora 14: http://bit.ly/fb54ye and Ubuntu: http://bit.ly/ewVzhu The Bitcoin Faucet (free bitcoins) - https:/…

OK, I understand how they're created and how many there are. But why?

The idea is that it's not under any entity's control, and the amount of currency grows in a predictable (and decreasing) way. This should prevent the crazy inflation we've seen occur with normal currency where the government can always just print more.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#15

Post by sgornick »

antimatter15 wrote: post #13
iheartmemcache wrote: post #3

I read the wiki on BitCoin and I still don't understand how the BitCoin forex market is made. Usually currencies are based on national GDP and that sort of thing, but I haven't the faintest as to what controls the strength of this currency. Can someone enlighten me?

I think I read somewhere that the value is derived from the amount of electricity and hardware required to mine for a bitcoin.

Not really, but to make MORE bitcoins yourself you would need to expend a fair amount computing power that chews up a fair amount of electricity. Here's a chart showing that possibly as the price rises, the amount of computing power (and thus electricity) rises to match. http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=2399.msg42269#msg...

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#16

Post by jackowayed »

Wow. The value has roughly 4x-ed since I was looking at bitcoin for the first time a couple months ago.

Maybe it is worth it to implement my idea of writing something that tries to get free cycles out of EC2 Spot instances by predicting when the price will rise and spinning up instances before it does. (They don't charge you for fractional hours if they kill you due to a price increase.)

EDIT: I think it's actually gotten a little less favorable to generate bitcoins. My cheap VPS peaks at 1M hashes/sec, which according to http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php used to mean it would take around 250 days to generate a block, as I recall. Now, the value of a block has 4xed, but the average time to generate a block at 1M hps is now 1300 days, which is more than 5x as long.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#19

Post by [deleted] »

jackowayed wrote: post #16

Wow. The value has roughly 4x-ed since I was looking at bitcoin for the first time a couple months ago. Maybe it is worth it to implement my idea of writing something that tries to get free cycles out of EC2 Spot instances by predicting when the price will rise and spinning up instances before it does. (They don't charge you for fractional hours if they kill you due to a price increase.) EDIT: I think it's actually g…

[deleted]

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#20

Post by sgornick »

jackowayed wrote: post #16

Wow. The value has roughly 4x-ed since I was looking at bitcoin for the first time a couple months ago. Maybe it is worth it to implement my idea of writing something that tries to get free cycles out of EC2 Spot instances by predicting when the price will rise and spinning up instances before it does. (They don't charge you for fractional hours if they kill you due to a price increase.) EDIT: I think it's actually g…

CPU mining produces a tiny fraction of the level that GPU mining does. Even on Amazon's GPU clusters, it is a money loser: http://www.bitcoin.org/smf/index.php?topic=1793.0 If you got the GPU hardware, though, it can be worth it to mine! Read this Twitter stream: http://twitter.com/bitcoinminer
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