Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own? • Hacker News Board

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#161

Post by dwaltrip » Thu, Nov 07, 2013, 11:55 PM UTC

yeukhon wrote: post #150

dwaltrip wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mining is a lost cause for the average Joe. The simplest way to buy for U.S. citizens is coinbase.com. Local bitcoins is pretty good too, and has somewhat of a global presence. Look up creating an offline paper wallet to securely store your invested coins (short version: disconnect internet, print out a few copies of paper wallet using offline version of bitaddress.org, and then reset computer before reconnecting the…

How quickly can you buy/sell your coin. Say you buy in at $100 and then sell $110 the end of the day, possible? And really, only USC? What about with SS? And doesn't it defeat purpose if you need to prove you are a USC?

You can do short term trading (as well as long term, of course) if you get an account at an exchange (bitstamp is good from what I hear, it's in the EU). I just mentioned Coinbase as it is easier than getting a trading account. Local bitcoins allows for anonymous trading, as it is peer to peer. All the large exchanges have to follow anti-money laundering laws and other regulations.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#162

Post by mcantelon » Thu, Nov 07, 2013, 11:59 PM UTC

maaku wrote: post #94

mcantelon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to buy $300 worth when they were 30 cents each. I didn't, though, as it involved travel to a nearby town and I was working on a book and thought I should be practical and spend the weekend on that. Ah well, one less house.

I hope your book sold well.

It did, although not that well haha.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#163

Post by mcantelon » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 12:01 AM UTC

sentenza wrote: post #131

mcantelon wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to buy $300 worth when they were 30 cents each. I didn't, though, as it involved travel to a nearby town and I was working on a book and thought I should be practical and spend the weekend on that. Ah well, one less house.

Dude, you made the right choice. Just because things have been heading up for many Bitcoin users doesn't mean it's not speculation. Bitcoin will always have large value fluctuations since it is, unlike "real world" currencies, decoupled from the rest of the economy. And if I was you, I'd do myself the favor of not torturing myself about what could have been.

Yes, there's definitely an element of speculation about it, but also of platform-building. I was depressed about it for awhile, but take it with a grain of salt now for the most part. It would nice to be financially independent, as some other friends of mine who were early adapters are, but hindsight is 20/20.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#164

Post by gibybo » Fri, Nov 08, 2013, 3:17 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #156

gibybo wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but this information is not published to the blockchain until you spend it. The address is literally RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(public key)), plus a 4 byte checksum. To receive coins to that address, the sender publishes the amount they are sending and that address, they never see the public key. When the owner of the address wants to send bitcoins from it, only then do they publish the public key, along with a transact…

Ok, so I'm not a cryptography specialist, but I don't see how "address = RIPEMD-160(SHA-256(public key))" makes it impossible to derive the public key from the address if you have a quantum computer. Or is SHA-256 not vulnerable to quantum computing the way public/private keypairs are?

Yes that is correct. SHA256 is not known to be vulnerable to quantum computers[^], ECDSA (Bitcoin's public/private key algorithm) is.

[^] There is a known quantum attack against SHA256 that reduces the brute force search space from 2^256 to 2^128, but that wouldn't really break the Bitcoin protocol. The ECDSA quantum vulnerability, however, would make ECDSA essentially useless.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#165

Post by throwaway0094 » Sat, Nov 09, 2013, 6:37 PM UTC

jafaku wrote: post #67

throwaway0094 wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. Some of my co-workers do algorithmic trading as a hobby.

I've read that only works to a certain degree, not much more than 50%. Is that right?

No idea how well they do.

Re: Poll: How many Bitcoin do you own?

#166

Post by rcthompson » Sun, Nov 10, 2013, 2:35 AM UTC

sliverstorm wrote: post #51

rcthompson wrote: post #48

So, given that article about a guy that bought $17 in BTC in 2009 and found out recently that it was worth 5 figures, should I feel like an idiot for not getting in on this while BTC were cheap a few years ago? My logic at the time was "I don't really know that much about Bitcoin, so buying some would basically be speculating, which seems like a bad idea."

If you didn't bet on a roulette table and it came up black, would you say "God damnit I feel like an idiot, I should have bet on black"?

I guess what I'm really wondering is: just know that Bitcoin existed already put me in the minority. Was there something I should have caught on to that would have told me that it was going to succeed? From this and other answers, it looks like that is not the case. Thanks.