Anyone know much about Bitcoin?

[BillsCarnage]

I've heard of its use, but didn't know much about it and found this article.
BitCoin: The Currency Of The Future?

 

[Gaddabout]

They'll get taken down by the Fed eventually.

You also have to think of your investment as buying currency against the dollar. Against that standard, bitcoin is like throwing money away. The only people who find value in it are digital pirates.

 

[Gaddabout]

They'll get taken down by the Fed eventually.

You also have to think of your investment as buying currency against the dollar. Against that standard, bitcoin is like throwing money away. The only people who find value in it are digital pirates.

And here you go:

http://pandodaily.com/2013/05/14/de...s-between-dwolla-and-bitcoin-exchange-mt-gox/

In the first governmental action against bitcoins, the Department of Homeland Security served the Dwolla mobile payment service with a court order requiring it to immediately cease all account activities with the Mt. Gox bitcoin exchange. Dwolla has complied with this order.

 

[azonaback]

about $320.

 

[elindholm]

I thought about getting some for my brother as a gag gift. There's a very complicated identify verification process, there's a huge markup if you're buying a small amount, and you have to keep your "holdings" in some "virtual wallet" thing that makes sense only to techies. It's a non-starter for 99% of the population.

 

[BillsCarnage]

So Bitcoin is still going strong and there are only 5 or 6 million left to be released by 2020 if i heard right (21mil total) and it's closing in on $1k.

Sounds like China and India are responsible for the recent rise.

It should be noted that there are other coins in, and coming into circulation, too.

 

[dreamcastrocks]

Damn. I had a bitcoin about 3 months ago and it was only ~600.

 

[puckhead]

Nice, simple article for the uninitiated.

http://ktar.com/story/1846153/phoenix-based-expert-breaks-down-blockchain-technology/

 

[gmabel830]

I don't see Bitcoin making it big, but blockchain (what it is based on) will be big once the big banks are able to come up with viable use cases for it.

 

[Linderbee]

I don't see Bitcoin making it big, but blockchain (what it is based on) will be big once the big banks are able to come up with viable use cases for it.

Bitcoin hit $9k this weekend; what is "big" to you?

 

[Russ Smith]

The thing that scares me about Bitcoin is you hear horror stories of people trying to sell. They either get fleeced by some scam, or the bank refuses to take the deposit because the bank doesn't consider bitcoin viable. In one case a guy waited months for the bank that had blocked all his deposits, he went after the buyer who actually had done nothing wrong. Eventually the bank decided to approve the deposits and even gave him extra money because they had made it so hard for him to make the deposit.

Square is one of the stocks I own, they were allowing people to buy and sell bitcoin using their system and Square was up nearly 100% since I bought it. I had a sell order for 50, it hit 49.56 and then yesterday some analyst said that Bitcoin is a bubble and too much of the run by Square was because of Bitcoin, so square fell 16% in one day for nothing but that analyst comment. I'm still way up on it but that is the downside to Bitcoin, there's lots of people who just don't trust it.

 

[Superbone]

I bought blockchain technology a little over a month and a half ago. $1000 of Etherium and $1000 of Litecoin. They are currently up over 50% combined. This is totally speculative. I'm prepared to lose it all.

 

[puckhead]

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Just as gold bars are lost at sea or $100 bills can burn, bitcoins can disappear from the Internet forever. When all 21 million bitcoins are mined by the year 2040, the actual amount available to trade or spend will be significantly lower.

According to new research from Chainalysis, a digital forensics firm that studies the bitcoin blockchain, 3.79 million bitcoins are already gone for good based on a high estimate—and 2.78 million based on a low one. Those numbers imply 17% to 23% of existing bitcoins, which are today worth around $8,500 each, are lost.

While others have speculated about the number of lost bitcoins, the Chainalysis findings are significant because they rely on a detailed empirical analysis of the blockchain, where all bitcoin transactions are recorded.

http://fortune.com/2017/11/25/lost-bitcoins/

 

[thirty-two]

I simply cannot understand what Bitcoin is. Software wallets, mining, etc. I can’t grasp it. I know it’s a from of currency and that some dude started in 2009. How do you mine it? Is it only worth money because other people want it?

Can someone seriously dumb it down for me? Like, 3rd grade level?

 

[Dback Jon]

I simply cannot understand what Bitcoin is. Software wallets, mining, etc. I can’t grasp it. I know it’s a from of currency and that some dude started in 2009. How do you mine it? Is it only worth money because other people want it?

Can someone seriously dumb it down for me? Like, 3rd grade level?

yeah that

 

[AsUpRoDiGy]

I simply cannot understand what Bitcoin is. Software wallets, mining, etc. I can’t grasp it. I know it’s a from of currency and that some dude started in 2009. How do you mine it? Is it only worth money because other people want it?

Can someone seriously dumb it down for me? Like, 3rd grade level?

No one actually knows who created it...it was created under an alias of a person/group that actually doesn't exist on paper. If you look up the definition of bitcoin mining...it literally makes no sense...other than some hacker sitting on a computer for hours writing codes. It's such a volatile "asset" -- I don't even really see how it has any relevance.

 

[BillsCarnage]

I simply cannot understand what Bitcoin is. Software wallets, mining, etc. I can’t grasp it. I know it’s a from of currency and that some dude started in 2009. How do you mine it? Is it only worth money because other people want it?

Can someone seriously dumb it down for me? Like, 3rd grade level?

xc_hide_links_from_guests_guests_error_hide_media

Miners both approve transactions and 'mine' for new coins by answering math problems. The catch is that the more miners the more complex the math problem. It's actually the computer doing the work, which is why you see vast networks of computers mining and in some instances certain websites using your processor via the browsers mining. The Pirate Bay got dinged for this recently.

Whoever answers the problem first gets a coin.

The whole system is essentially an honor system in the sense that if someone were trying to trick or lie about their worth or amount of coins the entire network of miners would need to be tricked; virtually impossible. Peer-to-peer in a sense.

xc_hide_links_from_guests_guests_error_hide_media

 

[gmabel830]

I bought blockchain technology a little over a month and a half ago. $1000 of Etherium and $1000 of Litecoin. They are currently up over 50% combined. This is totally speculative. I'm prepared to lose it all.

I am thinking of dipping my toe in the water with the same mindset... a few months late, but still very early in its lifecycle

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[gmabel830]

Bitcoin hit $9k this weekend; what is "big" to you?

Big would be a significant disruption to the traditional financial system. I see blockchain technology having this impact, and perhaps a cryptocurrency that the banks control, but not the existing unregulated cryptocurrency out there. It is still a fraction of a fraction of a percent of the overall monetary system, and I just don't see it totally replacing the current banking system in its current incarnation like some die-hards do.

Bitcoin's scarcity makes it an intruiging investment opportunity, and I think there's still lots of room to grow with cryptocurrency, but it will always be niche without the financial system on board.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

[puckhead]

LONDON (Reuters) - Bitcoin rebounded on Friday to hit the day’s highs above $10,500, recovering from an earlier dip below $9,500, after the U.S. derivatives regulator said it would allow CME Group and CBOE Global Markets to list bitcoin futures.

The announcement by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) paves the way for CME and CBOE to become the first traditional U.S. regulated exchanges to launch trading in bitcoin-related financial contracts, a watershed moment for the cryptocurrency that could lead to greater regulatory scrutiny.

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-...-u-s-regulator-approves-futures-idUSKBN1DV4XI

 

[Dback Jon]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...ty-consumption-ethereum-energy-climate-change

One Bitcoin Transaction Now Uses as Much Energy as Your House in a Week
Bitcoin’s surge in price has sent its electricity consumption soaring.

Bitcoin's incredible price run to break over $7,000 this year has sent its overall electricity consumption soaring, as people worldwide bring more energy-hungry computers online to mine the digital currency.

An index from cryptocurrency analyst Alex de Vries, aka Digiconomist, estimates that with prices the way they are now, it would be profitable for Bitcoin miners to burn through over 24 terawatt-hours of electricity annually as they compete to solve increasingly difficult cryptographic puzzles to "mine" more Bitcoins. That's about as much as Nigeria, a country of 186 million people, uses in a year.

 

[Dback Jon]

https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/...g-transaction-electricity-consumption-bitcoin

Ethereum Is Already Using a Small Country’s Worth of Electricity
The entire network could be using slightly more than the country of Cyprus.

Digital currency ethereum's massive price spike has sparked an online gold rush. The price per token has topped $300 lately, soaring from around $10 at the outset of 2017. Amateur miners worldwide are jumping into the action from home, using computer graphics cards to generate new ether (units of ethereum) and secure the blockchain, the public ledger of transactions.

This mining frenzy has a side effect: Ethereum is now consuming a small country's worth of electricity.



A new real-time index from Alex de Vries, founder of cryptocurrency analysis site Digiconomist, shows that each ethereum transaction could now represent as much as 45 Kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity spent mining. That's about as much juice as the average American household uses in a day and a half. For comparison's sake, De Vries has estimated that a Visa transaction requires 0.00651 kWh. The entire network could be using as much as 4.2 Terawatt-hours (tWh), or slightly more than the country of Cyprus.

 

[Russ Smith]

You can actually trade in Bitcoin without buying it, there's an ETF of sorts called GBTC that's publicly traded. It's incredibly volatile like Bitcoin, up over 9% yesterday, down 8% today. It trades at a premium to the underlying Bitcoin because of ease of trading it.

Even that said the volume is not very high on it which always makes me concerned what if you own it and want to sell how easy is it to sell?

In january it was 108.50, today it's at 1650.

 

[Southpaw]

Bitcoin has just as much relevance as Federal Reserve notes.

As long as someone takes your dollar or bitcoin as exchange it is relevant.

Neither one is backed up by anything except good faith.

 

[Mainstreet]

I simply cannot understand what Bitcoin is. Software wallets, mining, etc. I can’t grasp it. I know it’s a from of currency and that some dude started in 2009. How do you mine it? Is it only worth money because other people want it?

Can someone seriously dumb it down for me? Like, 3rd grade level?

I need an even lower level.

Seriously, I know this stuff is out there but is it only real because people do mathematical equations to verify it. Sounds like astronomy.

Maybe bitcoin is in it's infancy but I prefer something that is based upon something tangible.