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I Bought a Bitcoin

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Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#11

Post by paulhodge »

mistercow wrote: post #10
paulhodge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just want to dip your toes in the water, you could always start mining. Doesn't take any initial investment or bank information or anything like that, just processing power.

Aren't the odds of making a single bitcoin as a lone miner, with an ordinary computer, over any sane period of time pretty microscopic at this point? To make any money that way, you'd need to join a mining pool, and at that point you're not really just dipping your toes in the water anymore.

First question, yes, I think you'd be talking about a timespan of months before seeing a reward as a lone miner.

Joining a pool is pretty painless though. You just create an account, and probably give them an email address, and then start running GUIMiner or something. You also give them a Bitcoin address to send the rewards. That's it, no other personal information needed.

Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#12

Post by lwat »

mistercow wrote: post #10
paulhodge wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you just want to dip your toes in the water, you could always start mining. Doesn't take any initial investment or bank information or anything like that, just processing power.

Aren't the odds of making a single bitcoin as a lone miner, with an ordinary computer, over any sane period of time pretty microscopic at this point? To make any money that way, you'd need to join a mining pool, and at that point you're not really just dipping your toes in the water anymore.

Mining on your own is playing the lottery. You probably won't get anything but if you do strike it lucky you'll have $3000 worth of bitcoin.

Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#14

Post by throwawayG9 »

account_taken wrote: post #5

Not sure if Bitcoins are a good investment. All it takes is a western country (say Switzerland) to create an online currency and Bitcoins will sink faster than a Carnival ship.

Do you even Bitcoin? One of the main features of Bitcoin is that it can't be manipulated by a central authority like a bank or government (ie: they can't steal from the people by printing money).

Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#15

Post by AdamTReineke »

lwat wrote: post #12
mistercow wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Aren't the odds of making a single bitcoin as a lone miner, with an ordinary computer, over any sane period of time pretty microscopic at this point? To make any money that way, you'd need to join a mining pool, and at that point you're not really just dipping your toes in the water anymore.

Mining on your own is playing the lottery. You probably won't get anything but if you do strike it lucky you'll have $3000 worth of bitcoin.

How many do you get? Isn't it just one?

Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#16

Post by 31reasons »

Bitcoins are just a right to participate in a digital crypto economy. They don't have any value in themselves. Its like holding passes to a show in the big theater. If the show doesn't start you passes are worthless. If there is any meaningful possibility of a show in the theater, you might get lucky for holding those passes. The main problem is that people who will participate in the show also need to get the passes to actually act out the show but if everyone just keep holding their passes for no good reason, well then there may not be a show.

From many bitcoins forums, people are hoping that its USD rate climb to $1000 or even $1 million, which is pretty ridiculous. People who have thousands of bitcoins, can probably keep holding on to them after selling 50% of them. But people who gonna buy it for more than $100 , they gonna panic at a first sign of decline. I suspect its not that far off.

Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#17

Post by vacri »

31reasons wrote: post #16

Bitcoins are just a right to participate in a digital crypto economy. They don't have any value in themselves. Its like holding passes to a show in the big theater. If the show doesn't start you passes are worthless. If there is any meaningful possibility of a show in the theater, you might get lucky for holding those passes. The main problem is that people who will participate in the show also need to get the passes…

Isn't that the same as a dollar bill?

Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#18

Post by 31reasons »

vacri wrote: post #17
31reasons wrote: post #16

Bitcoins are just a right to participate in a digital crypto economy. They don't have any value in themselves. Its like holding passes to a show in the big theater. If the show doesn't start you passes are worthless. If there is any meaningful possibility of a show in the theater, you might get lucky for holding those passes. The main problem is that people who will participate in the show also need to get the passes…

Isn't that the same as a dollar bill?

Yes, but dollar bill is running a successful show for the last 2 hundred years without any blackouts, while BitCoin need to START the show in the first place. It needs to sort of start a sustainable chain reaction. EDIT: But the bitcoin deflation has introduced so much resistance to this reaction. Each digital wallet is like an atom, there has to be some force to break the atom and keep the chain reaction going, but due to the deflation, each atom is requiring more and more energy to break (spend bitcoins).

Re: I Bought a Bitcoin

#20

Post by wyager »

31reasons wrote: post #16

Bitcoins are just a right to participate in a digital crypto economy. They don't have any value in themselves. Its like holding passes to a show in the big theater. If the show doesn't start you passes are worthless. If there is any meaningful possibility of a show in the theater, you might get lucky for holding those passes. The main problem is that people who will participate in the show also need to get the passes…

>people are hoping that its USD rate climb to $1000 or even $1 million, which is pretty ridiculous.

Is it really? Not too long ago, a Bitcoin was worth about $.0007.

130/.0007 = 185714

It's only four more orders of magnitude to get to the $1M range.

I don't think it's going to happen, but it's not all that far-fetched.

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