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Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

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Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#51

Post by nullc »

Retric wrote: post #23
joering2 wrote: post #18

Ok but given current pricing of GPUs, is it profitable to mine the coins, given I have access to free electricity (my office building does not charge for that).

They are cutting the rate of bit-coin generation in half in January. (The total bit-coin's always stay under 21million but they don't use an exponential curve just cutting the rate in 1/2 every few years.)

You probably know this, but for people that don't—

"They are" is the wrong pairing. The subsidy halves every 210,000 blocks (~4 years) as part of the innate core rules of the system enforced by every participant.

So it would be more accurate to say "They cut" (past tense as this was established years ago), or "The system will" (no human actor).

Also it looks like the halving will be early December to late November. (The block number is fixed, not the time, and because the difficult updates lag rapid increases/decreases in computing power can shift the date around a bit)

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#52

Post by vannevar »

javert wrote: post #43
vannevar wrote: post #25

Apparently we're in the "pump" phase of the Bitcoin pump-and-dump cycle. Really, the entire Bitcoin market would fit comfortably inside the volume of your average OTC penny stock. Does anyone not think the Bitcoin game is rigged?

Does anyone not think the Bitcoin game is rigged? There are significant reasons why having a deflationary, digital currency (or commodity) would be quite useful, at least for certain people and use cases. If there were no use case for Bitcoin, calling it a scam without presenting evidence would be much more reasonable. Given that there are use cases, calling Bitcoin a scam without presenting evidence is completely ar…

I didn't say Bitcoin itself is a scam, only that the market is so tiny that a single player could easily manipulate it. And if someone can, someone will. And while I see Bitcoin's legitimate use cases, few (very few) people are using it for actual trade. The market seems purely speculative, with no underlying Bitcoin economy to stabilize it (save possibly the money-laundering business).

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#53

Post by nullc »

sp332 wrote: post #42
petemc_ wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

http://www.butterflylabs.com/order-form-bitforce-sc-mini-rig... This might make a lot of GPU setups obsolete. Edit to add more info: I'm told the expected generation output, from 1000000 Mhps, at current difficulty 1751454.53534068, is 574.2818 BTC per day or 23.9284 BTC per hour.

$4,000/day at current exchange rates, it should pay for itself in less than 8 days. Of course the rate of BTC generation will go down over time, but it looks like these rigs would easily pay for themselves for several years yet.

The bitcoin system adapts itself to keep the rate of coin creation constant. So it's impossible to say what their return will be in the future. Perhaps a few monts later someone puts out a run of 28nm ASICS at 1/4 the price with 4x the performance and they're bought in massive waves.

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#54

Post by elliottcarlson »

nihilocrat wrote: post #45

Am I the only one who can't read this graph? It looks like it's rotated 90 degrees and there's no time axis so I don't see what this is representing. I don't understand what the legend for the Y axis means.

It's a market depth chart - the orange line on the left represents the cumulative standing buy orders, the blue line represents the standing sell orders, the green line is the historical price per trade with the latest trade (thus value) being at the bottom. The Y axis is a representation of the bitcoin value, and the X axis is the representation of the USD buy/sell prices.

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#55

Post by coderdude »

I've been asked in the past if I could accept Bitcoin. I believe there are even services that convert Bitcoin on the fly to US dollars for you when you accept a purchase. It doesn't really seem like a smart business decision though. What are the legal ramifications of accepting money that came from Bitcoin? Is the IRS going to come knocking at your door? My gut tells me to avoid BTC like the plague, but it does intrigue me.

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#56

Post by Karunamon »

coderdude wrote: post #55

I've been asked in the past if I could accept Bitcoin. I believe there are even services that convert Bitcoin on the fly to US dollars for you when you accept a purchase. It doesn't really seem like a smart business decision though. What are the legal ramifications of accepting money that came from Bitcoin? Is the IRS going to come knocking at your door? My gut tells me to avoid BTC like the plague, but it does intri…

Why would the IRS come knocking at your door? Take the same laws that apply to any other currency transaction and apply.

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#57

Post by jere »

joering2 wrote: post #18

Ok but given current pricing of GPUs, is it profitable to mine the coins, given I have access to free electricity (my office building does not charge for that).

Probably the best resource to answer these kinds of questions: http://www.bitcoinminer.com/

>Before investing significant amounts in mining equipment those operators who rent and plan to take advantage of utilities being included might wish to review the lease documents to become aware of any “commercial use” exclusions. Also they should be aware of the potential that a month-to-month lease could suddenly change where utility submetering or other cost transfer might be imposed.

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#58

Post by coderdude »

Karunamon wrote: post #56
coderdude wrote: post #55

I've been asked in the past if I could accept Bitcoin. I believe there are even services that convert Bitcoin on the fly to US dollars for you when you accept a purchase. It doesn't really seem like a smart business decision though. What are the legal ramifications of accepting money that came from Bitcoin? Is the IRS going to come knocking at your door? My gut tells me to avoid BTC like the plague, but it does intri…

Why would the IRS come knocking at your door? Take the same laws that apply to any other currency transaction and apply.

Would they/why would they, these are the questions I'm asking because I'm uncertain how these things even work. With currencies backed by nations I can see the IRS not caring, but Bitcoin isn't just "any other currency." It's a currency not made up or backed by any nation. In a way it's money out of thin air. That's what worries me.

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#59

Post by ChrisNorstrom »

I lost a lot of money in bitcoin. I learned a valuable lesson that's better than anything I learned in collage.

1) Easy to make, easy to lose.

2) Whatever you are thinking of doing, so is everyone else. If you're planning on outsmarting thousands of other people, just remember, they are planning to outsmart you.

3) Any market with a high volume of flippers (buys to resell and make money) vs users (actually use a product or service) might be a bubble. High rise bubble, mortgage bubble, housing bubble, Miami condo bubble

4) The worst time to make decisions is when you feel like you're going to lose out on something spectacular. When you have visions of grandeur. When the emotional side of you is most active, the logical side of you is being repressed. Watch out for that.

5) "This time is different!" is bullshit (when relating to bubbles and re-occuring events). Each new generation brings the same humanistic flaws of the last generation. Doomed to repeat itself forever and ever. Humans will be humans the same way sharks will be sharks. We are cursed with a primitive instinct that might have worked thousands of years ago in a tribal society but now is working against us.

6) Whenever you take a gamble, ALWAYS assume you are going to lose. If you're ok with the outcome of losing and find the gamble to be worth it go ahead and take a risk.

I didn't lose too much money in bitcoin but lets just say it was money that I was saving up for braces. That was the deal I made with myself. I'm still angry that I lost, there's no point in lying, emotions will be emotions. But the way I see it, I didn't lose the money in bitcoin, I invested it in some really good "real world economics" classes at a good collage somewhere...

Re: Bitcoin just crossed $7.00.

#60

Post by rbn »

kiba wrote: post #35
ulvund wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My guess is that bitcoins are mainly used for college students' and drug hobbyists' $50 purchases of LSD and the like on silk road and not for big transactions.

Silk Road is famous, but it doesn't mean that illegal activities are the main economic activities in bitcoin. The number of accounts is currently at about 22000, and the largest number of people online at any given time is 126 – a stable community, but much smaller than those who see Silk Road as being the single shadowy force keeping up the Bitcoin economy behind the scenes imagine. -- http://bitcoinmagazine.net/the…

The problem is that CCs and PayPal is much easier to use and it is much safer than Bitcoins.

So I for one see no reason to use bitcoin to purchase anything other than products that can only be purchased via bitcoins

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