1 bitcoin worth more than dollar • Hacker News Board

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#21

Post by trotsky » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:43 AM UTC

solipsist wrote: post #5

Anyone want to offer some insight into what a bitcoin is? (Sorry for my ignorance. I tried looking it up, can't seem to understand what it really is.)

A gentleman's agreement between a certain faction of econ-crypto-tinfoil-hat-botnet nerds to assign trade value to the wastage of increasingly large amounts of electricity.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#22

Post by sgornick » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:44 AM UTC

sabj wrote: post #11

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.

Ecosystem? How about the Payment portion of the ecosystem ... let's take a "competitor", PayPal, for example. When you send $100 to a business using your Paypal, the recipient gets $97, or less. With bitcoin, when you send $100, the recipient gets $100 (at least until fees are necessary ... but even when that starts being necessary the fees should be just a FRACTION of what Visa / MC / PayPal / etc. take.)

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#23

Post by mynameishere » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:44 AM UTC

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:/…

All of the above absolutely screams BULLSHIT harder than anything I've ever read before.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#24

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:44 AM UTC

trotsky wrote: post #21

solipsist wrote: post #5

Anyone want to offer some insight into what a bitcoin is? (Sorry for my ignorance. I tried looking it up, can't seem to understand what it really is.)

A gentleman's agreement between a certain faction of econ-crypto-tinfoil-hat-botnet nerds to assign trade value to the wastage of increasingly large amounts of electricity.

[deleted]

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#25

Post by s0urceror » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:53 AM UTC

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:/…

All I wonder is, what happens if you delete a portion of the wallets in existence. Given that the supply of bitcoins is limited, does that mean you've essentially permanently destroyed part of the bitcoin economy?

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#26

Post by hyp3rVigi1ant » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:54 AM UTC

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?

It's called the Subjective Theory of Value. That's what determines every market price. Learn it.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#27

Post by jackowayed » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:54 AM UTC

s0urceror wrote: post #25

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:/…

All I wonder is, what happens if you delete a portion of the wallets in existence. Given that the supply of bitcoins is limited, does that mean you've essentially permanently destroyed part of the bitcoin economy?

You haven't destroyed part of the economy. You've just made everyone else's bitcoins worth a little bit more.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#28

Post by arohner » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:56 AM UTC

Most of the comments here are "why bitcoin?" I'll ask again, but in a form that I hope is slightly more detailed:

Gold was valuable before it started being used as money. It started being used as money because it has several valuable properties: it's rare, it's portable, it's fungible.

Why would someone start using bitcoin? Who will accept a bitcoin in trade, and why is that bitcoin more valuable to them than $1?

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#29

Post by bdonlan » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:57 AM UTC

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…

These days there are 'pooled' mining systems in which you can receive payment for working on fractions of a block.

Re: 1 bitcoin worth more than dollar

#30

Post by jackowayed » Thu, Feb 10, 2011, 4:59 AM UTC

bdonlan wrote: post #29

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…

These days there are 'pooled' mining systems in which you can receive payment for working on fractions of a block.

But that doesn't change the fact that, since I was able to get $12.50 every 250 days and now I can get $50 every 1250 days, I'm getting less money per day than before.