Bitcoins

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

So.. I'm starting to mine bitcoins, just curious if anyone here knows about them.

[Amit]

I understand it's a form of authenticated electronic currency, but how do you use it. I don't really understand what it's used for.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Its used for buying lots of stuff, like on amazon through various websites (http://spendbitcoins.com)

[Limited]

So its just another form of online money, whats so special?

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

you can get it free.

[n00b1n8R]

how?

[Phopojijo]

Set your computer to calculate hashes. You essentially compute the money to create it.

[Donut]

oh yeah now i remember this. dont you have to install this thing that runs in the background? iirc, you have to run it for a long time before you actually get anything, and even then once you start earning, its on the level of cents per day.

maybe im remembering a different program...
E: i just looked it up. if its open source and the file that contains your bitcoins is on your computer, what is stopping anybody from augmenting the number of bitcoins they have?

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

read above.

[Disaster]

You can buy drugs with them:
http://gawker.com/5805928/the-underground-website-where-you-can-buy-any-drug-imaginable

:cop:

[Guardian]

So your getting money, for nothing... is that not bad for the economy?

[InnerGoat]

There's a fixed limit on how many buttcoins there can be so it gets harder to mine them as we near that limit. It's at the point where only GPUs make enough btc to offset the power wasted crunching hashes.


ITT Pyong doubles parents' electric bill :downsdance:

[InnerGoat]

Oh wow it's nearing 19 dollars now.

[Amit]

So how can I get free money?

[Guardian]

Im still not quite getting it, probably because I dont fully understand what Hashes are. But I still dont get how getting your gpu to process a bunch of numbers formulates a currency, and how does this currency come to any real world value. It just confuses me.

[Amit]

Yeah same. I read up a bit more on it and I have RPC Miner on my computer now, but I have no idea of the use it. The Readme is of no help. What is the best way to mine on a Lenovo Thinkpad T510? Core i7 620M 2.66Ghz with Quaddro NVS 3100M.

[InnerGoat]

Join a pool and mine I guess? Can't do much without an AMD gpu.


https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison

Find your hardware and throw its mhash/s into this for some laughs:

http://www.alloscomp.com/bitcoin/calculator.php


Also I have no idea how accurate that wiki is :v:

[Nero]

Edit, better question: Is it possible to sell Bitcoins for real money?

[Amit]

Probably not? Unless you can order something from Amazon and then refund it for real money. Somehow I don't think that will work, though.

[Nero]

Probably not? Unless you can order something from Amazon and then refund it for real money. Somehow I don't think that will work, though.
I was thinking of reselling the item from Amazon on Ebay.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

you can sell them for $$

[InnerGoat]

Yeah you can get money for them. Some hardcore miners buy more GPUs to mine with lol.

[Donut]

so im not quite getting this. i understand that you can use them on amazon and all that, but about earning them directly... i read something about earning 50 bitcoins for solving a puzzle that 6 computers get right per hour? but when i ran that in-browser demonstration thing, it showed me a payout every certain amount of time, and it was fractions of one bitcoin.

so if i have this right, you crunch these hashes for hours on end, earning little fractions of bitcoins every certain amount of time, and you have an incredibly slim chance of winning a "jackpot" of 50 coins if you get this puzzle right? is that it?

and in terms of this as a currency: are you crunching these numbers for any specific reason? or is this just like breaking rocks for dollars in jail? basically what im trying to figure out is if there is any realistic hope of me making any sort of profit from this if i just make my computer go to work on this and leave it on all the time. is there?

[Amit]

You're better off setting a computer up with a really powerful GPU and coming back a year later to see what you got. In the meantime...get a job sounds like a good plan.

[Donut]

yeah, really. i figured that was the case. im working with a laptop with an integrated nvidea card from 2007 anyway. i didnt have high hopes, lol.

[InnerGoat]

Oh wow it's nearing 19 dollars now.

wait now it's 27 bux per

jhahahahasda

[LlamaMaster]

Alright, I'm trying to do this right now, but I'm confused about something. I've signed up for slush's pool, but it's asking me for a wallet address. What is that? Is it the same thing as my bitcoin address? I tried google, but I can't find anything useful. Also, Goat, which pool are you in right now?

[Cortexian]

I started awhile ago and I have about 10.20 coins right now heh.

however it seems that I didn't make a digital backup of my wallet.dat, hopefully I burned it to a CD or something.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

i've got approx 300 mhash/s going on right now :)

[LlamaMaster]

I'm only getting 88Mhash/s while running at 94 degress Celsius.

....fuck

[Warsaw]

Lol, my hardware isn't even on the list. I also find it strange that AMD hardware absolutely rapes Nvidia AND Intel. The best consumer AMD CPU performs on par with Intel's best consumer CPU. And Nvidia is generally much better at compute tasks than AMD, so what gives? Is this purely about clocks?

[InnerGoat]

Alright, I'm trying to do this right now, but I'm confused about something. I've signed up for slush's pool, but it's asking me for a wallet address. What is that? Is it the same thing as my bitcoin address? I tried google, but I can't find anything useful. Also, Goat, which pool are you in right now?

Probably is. Also I don't mine.

[InnerGoat]

Lol, my hardware isn't even on the list. I also find it strange that AMD hardware absolutely rapes Nvidia AND Intel. The best consumer AMD CPU performs on par with Intel's best consumer CPU. And Nvidia is generally much better at compute tasks than AMD, so what gives? Is this purely about clocks?

AMD's simple unified shaders are not as complex as nvidia's, but there are a lot more of them. In this case the sheer number of them wins. They're also really good at cracking passwords I believe. :-3


see here:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Why_a_GPU_mines_faster_than_a_CPU#Why_are_AMD_GPUs _faster_than_Nvidia_GPUs

[InnerGoat]

http://buttcoin.org/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/buttcoin-panic-1024x614.png


:allears:

[Phobias]

http://www.youtube.com/user/BitcoinChannel#p/a/u/0/QfolESzFabg

An explanation of what happened, to summarize; a major bitcoin trader got lolowned.

[CodeBrain]

It also got compromised with someone stealing emails, encrypted passwords, account numbers and the account logins.

[Limited]

So yeah, bitcoins are now worth $236.00 each. Fucking wish I had jumped onboard early.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

good thing i got some
c:

[Btcc22]

Waiting for it to burst. Again.

[InnerGoat]

don't worry a modacity member has 1000 of the things still lol

[InnerGoat]

i hope jcap loses his moneys

[Limited]

1000? BS :P

Trying to buy 0.2 of one :D

[InnerGoat]

jguy is loaded

[TVTyrant]

I wish I had dropped the cash when I could have. I'd be rolling in bitcoin right now.

[Tnnaas]

I wish I knew about this when it rolled out. Eh, who knows, hopefully "better late than never" would apply here.

[InnerGoat]

yes invest in bitcoins it's going to 1000 just like AAPL :allears:

[Donut]

I have a friend who left his computer on for pretty much the entire year he was at university. he was part of a big mining group, and managed to accumulate about 4.5 bitcoins in that time.

from what i understand though, unless you have AMD hardware, are part of a large mining pool, and mine constantly, youre not going to make much progress. on top of that, youre likely to spend more money on electricity running the damn computer than you are on the bitcoins you mine. i feel like the stress it puts on your hardware probably isnt worth it either...

part of me wishes i got into this when i first heard of them a couple years ago. on the other hand, ive always had intel / nvidea hardware, and im footing the bill for my own power, so i guess nothing would have come from it anyway. oh well...

[ThePlague]

I just mine in a pool when i'm away from it.

[Zeph]

and managed to accumulate about 4.5 bitcoins in that time.

O_o

just how long does it take to mine a single bitcoin?

[Amit]

Assuming 10.5 months = most of the year...10.5/4.4= 2.3 months to earn one bit coin. Fuck that. Might as well go get a job and get more money.

I stopped doing it after 6 months even while I had all AMD gear. Went out and got a job instead to get real money. That was before bitcoins became orgasmically high in value.

[Donut]

he was off at school for at least 8 months, and i dont think his computer was even on the whole time. he said he "did it for lols" since the electricity was free.

the amount of money people invest into bitcoin mining is fucking absurd. ive heard of more than one person who bought multiple of the most powerful AMD cards on the market, put them in quad (or triple, dont quite recall) crossfire, set the machine up in a closet somewhere, then just closed the door and let it do its thing.

the moral of the story is that it really isnt worth it. assuming i used my current rig, i would make nearly 10 times as much money working part time minimum wage at a mcdonalds.

[Btcc22]

the moral of the story is that it really isnt worth it. assuming i used my current rig, i would make nearly 10 times as much money working part time minimum wage at a mcdonalds.

However, one takes effort and the other just requires you to leave your machine on.

Having said that, with dedicated mining hardware (http://www.butterflylabs.com/) out there, it's not worth getting into at this point unless you have cash you can afford to lose.

[Patrickssj6]

What I never understood was, the computed information does not serve any purpose other than rewarding bitcoins? So basically, you are turning electricty into (virtual) money?

[Btcc22]

What I never understood was, the computed information does not serve any purpose other than rewarding bitcoins? So basically, you are turning electricty into (virtual) money?

Pretty much, yes. Also, it's crashing.

[Limited]

O_o

just how long does it take to mine a single bitcoin?
I find it funny that people spend tons of money to purposefully buy a mining setup, when they clearly don't understand the system.

There is a finite amount of coins to be generated. There is a set limit and once that is hit, there won't be any more coins given out when a block is generated. The money after that will be from transactions, yet that won't be a significant amount compared the the bitcoin per block.


What I never understood was, the computed information does not serve any purpose other than rewarding bitcoins? So basically, you are turning electricty into (virtual) money?No, the computed information is critical to the whole entire bitcoin system. If everyone stopped running the bitcoin machines/miners or whatever today, all at once. The system couldn't work at all.

To summarise the system - transactions are sorted in a list, this list is given to everyone in the network. These operate as blocks, there is X amount of transactions in a block. The reason for the computing power is to generate a hash of ALL the previous blocks with the addition of the new transactions, resulting in a new block with a hash. This is referred to as a chain. The reason it progressively gets harder computationally wise is because you are generating the hash for all previous blocks, so it grows exponentially - that said there is systems in place to stop chain getting too big, after so long it can drop the first parts and keep the hash and rest of chain.

The power comes from every person running the clients generating the same hash, in essence you are working on the same file, the hash then gets checked against other peoples (the 'majority') then wins after the check. Its why attacking the system is pointless, you'd need to out power the system and even then you could only work on your own transactions, you'd need to crack it, fake data, then hash and then catch up all the blocks after the one you faked, against the other people in client. Which scales over time and makes it near to impossible.

The whole vagueness of bitcoin is actually moot when you discover how/why the system works and it really isnt that complicated (unless you dive into the algorithms used).

[ThePlague]

People are also hiding data in the blockchain:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bw9xg/data_in_the_blockchain_wikileaks/

A[/URL]nd I guess that may not have been a bubble that caused the crash, Exchanges are getting DDOS''d [URL]http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1c2v6c/ddos_timed_with_mass_selloff_anyone_think_this/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1bw9xg/data_in_the_blockchain_wikileaks/)

[Patrickssj6]

No, the computed information is critical to the whole entire bitcoin system.
Yes I meant that with "serves no other purpose other than rewarding bitcoins".

My problem is that computed information is wasted unlike e.g. folding@home.

[Limited]

Yes I meant that with "serves no other purpose other than rewarding bitcoins".

My problem is that computed information is wasted unlike e.g. folding@home.
Yes, but that is not why Bitcoins exist. The sole purpose of Bitcoins is to be a P2P version of a electronic cash. The purpose isnt to make money. Is it a waste? thats debatable, you could then question these mega machines that banks use for security/transactions and all that jazz. They could​ be put to better use too, yet they fit their intended purpose.

Managed to buy 0.1 bitcoins real cheap :D

[Amit]

Well, that was quick: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-plunges-2013-4

[Zeph]

Well, that was quick: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-plunges-2013-4

The chart below shows Bitcoin prices from April 9 through today.
Yeah, and the chart from April 8 to April 9 pretty much show the opposite.

Sensationalism in BI.
They're acting like it's a big thing when it's raised in value by hundreds of percent over the past week.

[Patrickssj6]

Yes, but that is not why Bitcoins exist. The sole purpose of Bitcoins is to be a P2P version of a electronic cash. The purpose isnt to make money. Is it a waste? thats debatable.

Not saying that Bitcoin is a waste but that the computed information is wasted. All the currencies in the world were/are backed up e.g. in ancient times by salt/food, then gold and nowadays a combination of gold and GDP.

But Bitcoin is only backed up by hashes which do not serve any purpose at all (arguably gold does not either...) but the information could at least be put to use.

[Kornman00]

Gold is a 'precious' metal. There's only so much on Earth, and it has actual applications. Fucking hashes are just hashes. Got hashes out the asses

Well, that was quick: http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-plunges-2013-4
Guess jpop sold all his coin, flooding the market and lowering the overall value. That silly jbilly

[ThePlague]

The USD isn't backed by anything nowadays except hopes and dreams. You don't have to mine bitcoin yourself either, you can buy and sell it just like you could with stocks, and the only way it is going so far is up (except for the recent crash thanks to Mt. Gox).

Guess what I found out yesterday, Mt. Gox was the Magic the Gathering On-line Exchange before they changed to bitcoins.

[Limited]

The USD isn't backed by anything nowadays except hopes and dreams. You don't have to mine bitcoin yourself either, you can buy and sell it just like you could with stocks, and the only way it is going so far is up (except for the recent crash thanks to Mt. Gox a well planned attack).

Guess what I found out yesterday, Mt. Gox was the Magic the Gathering On-line Exchange before they changed to bitcoins.ftfy

[=sw=warlord]

But Bitcoin is only backed up by hashes which do not serve any purpose at all (arguably gold does not either...) but the information could at least be put to use.
Except gold is used in high performance electronics due to it's low resistance in comparison to other conductive metals.
Gold has a lot more purposes than being used in jewelry like rings etc.
Soon enough Copper is going to be around the same rarity due to its use in electrical and electronics.

[Limited]

Except gold is used in high performance electronics due to it's low resistance in comparison to other conductive metals.
Gold has a lot more purposes than being used in jewelry like rings etc.
Soon enough Copper is going to be around the same rarity due to its use in electrical and electronics.
Well at least I finally have a usage for the thousands of pennies I have lying everywhere.

(yes I realise it actually has a low quantity of copper as they are only plated in copper :))

[Kornman00]

Except gold is used in high performance electronics due to it's low resistance in comparison to other conductive metals.
Gold has a lot more purposes than being used in jewelry like rings etc.
Soon enough Copper is going to be around the same rarity due to its use in electrical and electronics.
Raw raw, return to the gold standard!

Also, rape and pillage all the radiators!

[Patrickssj6]

Except gold is used in high performance electronics due to it's low resistance in comparison to other conductive metals.
Gold has a lot more purposes than being used in jewelry like rings etc.
Soon enough Copper is going to be around the same rarity due to its use in electrical and electronics.
Yes true and this further supports my statement. Though the primary value of gold remains its rarity.

[Cortexian]

Also, once the Butterfly Labs miners start shipping it will be exponentially harder to earn coins since the collective difficulty will increase to counter the huge jump in Terahashes/s. I've seen estimates stating that the estimated current Terahashes are around 45, when the Butterfly products go out that will jump to something like 450.

I feel bad for the guy that came into work on Tuesday and got some dudes to build him a bitcoin mining rig with four HD 5870's.

[Amit]

I feel bad for the guy that came into work on Tuesday and got some dudes to build him a bitcoin mining rig with four HD 5870's.

LOL! Fools be jumping into an abyss.

[ThePlague]

Shit is still crashing.

[Timo]

lol bitcoins

[Warsaw]

Bitcoins: wasting world energy reserves since 2009.

Honestly, no better than regular money. Whoever has the most gets to determine who gets the rest through some means whether that be lobbying government officials or simply buying machines to farm more coins, faster, and thus make it harder for everybody else to catch up.

[n00b1n8R]

guys i just bought $3000 AUD in bitcoins (that's about $5500 USD) i'm going to be rich now right?

[ThePlague]

Why would you sell now? The prices are still going to go up.

[InnerGoat]

Why would you sell now? The prices are still going to go up.oh my god