bit¢oin$

but what IS bitcoin mining, can you like, produce new bitcoins by applying enough processing power?

i dont understand this at all im just realizing

Imagine it's like finding prime numbers. Not the same, but kind of the same territory

wiki that dawg

as president of the international bitcoin mining federation i wasn't going to reveal this yet... but perhaps the time is now. every machine that has been put under the task of mining bitcoins has, in fact, been contributing secretly and without their knowledge to a far grander and more enlightened undertaking: the world's most realistic 3D rendering of the penis organ of homo sapiens. thank you. we expect to unveil the rendering by christmas

i should pitch a treasure of sierra madre remake but with bitcoins

A thousand men, say, go searchin' for bitcoins. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of bitcoins, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.

I too did not know you could "mine" bitcoins.

http://bitcoinreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/bitcoin-miner.jpeg

I too did not know you could "mine" bitcoins.

― pplains, Saturday, March 30, 2013 5:14 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

where do u think they come from, pal. bitcoin trees???

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-1BbbTVdEHAI/T1GxWVAd1yI/AAAAAAAAD-k/b-bX9QbxdhM/s1600/pimpcoin.jpg

http://news.firedoglake.com/2013/03/29/as-bitcoin-becomes-billion-dollar-market-america-moves-for-crackdown/

where do u think they come from, pal. bitcoin trees???

In a way, yeah?

Like, How much is this sack of mushrooms? Well, it's 35 B$. Ok, in my world a sack of mushrooms is fifty bucks, so the exchange for me is 7-10, but in Saudi Arabia, it's $200, so the value of my $35 is worth $200 Saudi dollars.

I didn't really think it all out, sure. Kinda got stuck on that sack of mushrooms, tbh.

Bitcoins aren't a fiat currency, really, it's just that each coin is representative of a unit of work completed. Unfortunately, that work only created a bitcoin.

do you have any idea how much work went into mining this ounce of gold

bitcoins are fiat-like tho arrnt thry

Bitcoins aren't a fiat currency, really, it's just that each coin is representative of a unit of work completed. Unfortunately, that work only created a bitcoin.

― ☠ ☃ ☠ (mh), Saturday, March 30, 2013 7:59 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.

smiles

http://i42.tinypic.com/16583p.jpg

i thought this was really interesting, from the other bitcoin thread:

http://eprint.iacr.org/2012/584

Abstract: The Bitcoin scheme is a rare example of a large scale global payment system in which all the transactions are publicly accessible (but in an anonymous way). We downloaded the full history of this scheme, and analyzed many statistical properties of its associated transaction graph. In this paper we answer for the first time a variety of interesting questions about the typical behavior of users, how they acquire and how they spend their bitcoins, the balance of bitcoins they keep in their accounts, and how they move bitcoins between their various accounts in order to better protect their privacy. In addition, we isolated all the large transactions in the system, and discovered that almost all of them are closely related to a single large transaction that took place in November 2010, even though the associated users apparently tried to hide this fact with many strange looking long chains and fork-merge structures in the transaction graph.

Unreal hockey stick

Bitcoin’s programming ensures there can never be more than 21m coins in existence. Part of the “bubble” effect, no doubt, is linked to a realisation that we are quickly approaching that limit. According to the latest data from Bitcoin charts, for example, there are currently 10,986,175 bitcoins in issuance. Yes, we still have some room to go, but given exponential dynamics, the fact that we’ve reached the “half-way point” in supply is no doubt meaningful.

Wait, what? I've been reading about these things for a while and never knew this

http://www.visualcapitalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/bitcoin-encryption-standard.jpg

can someone explain to me the purpose of the mining thing? Does someone benefit from all these computers being used to "solve puzzles" or whatever?

the person who does the mining benefits? or am i misunderstanding you

i mean they get bitcoins for doing it

the mining is a way to limit the supply of bitcoins, making it more like gold or something, i think? btw please scrub my 'fiat' post from upthread i was confused there momentarily

So even if they had one each, the maximum number of Bitcoin users is 11m or something at the moment? Seems quite limited for an international currency.

the supply is limited by the fact of what a bitcoin is -- a value that can only be found by an intensive algorithmic process that takes a lot of computing power to complete. The bitcoins that "exist" aren't all found, yet, but due to the nature of the algorithm it's known how many will be found.

Imagine there's a mineral that we know for sure only exists in one mountain on the planet, and we know how it's distributed within the mountain, and the exact amount of it in there. Instead of abstract quantities, it's found in exact units that can't be broken down. The computers crunching numbers are like excavators, slowly strip mining the mountain. There's no shortcut to get directly to the mineral, and a particular amount of land has to be moved each time. The amount of land is greater, but the excavators will get more efficient over time, so there's somewhat of a balance.

And yeah, 11m bitcoins is rather limited

most of them are held by criminals, though

would it be correct to compare it to seeders in a torrent network? except that unlike torrents, you're not copying files but exchanging them?

oh noes criminals

yeah, the currency exchange is somewhat like that

http://maxkeiser.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Screen-shot-2013-04-04-at-17.40.44.png

"pretty cool" - al gore

coinbase leaks users name and email: https://encrypted.google.com/search?q=site:https://coinbase.com/checkouts/

Your search - site:https://coinbase.com/checkouts - did not match any documents.

Suggestions:

Make sure all words are spelled correctly.
Try different keywords.
Try more general keywords.

There is a limited number of bit coins but that's not an issue as they can be used in decimal values. If it becomes huge you'll see prices or whatever like .00013 bit coins

OMG SO CHEAP ONLY POINT OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH OH THIRTEEN OF A BITCOIN

Yeah, I think at the moment you've got 8 decimal places ('satoshis') to play with (even though some places aren't set up to take small fractions as payment). If it gets below that the protocol's got to be changed to allow it, as far as I can tell. Since ฿ is modelled on the way gold works, it attracts goldbug types, but it's essentially a speculative investment vehicle rather than a 'real' currency

The major problem as I see it is fractional reserve banking - if you can't create ฿s you can't loan them easily. So loans would have to be strictly transfers, unlike how it works now

Not a very noise post but I find this whole thing so fascinating

so loaning now isn't a transfer based business?

WE DO NOT INVEST IN OUTDATED FINANCIAL INSTRUMENTS: REAL ESTATE, COMMODITIES, BONDS, STOCKS

As far as I know, fractional reserve lending actually *creates* money which is then loaned - so I have cash in the bank at the same time that cash is travelling around. Some good comment threads around this

Here's a 'lender' right here - which I'd imagine is a transfer house rather than an actual lender

Just a reminder, fellas: Mother's Day is May 12.

lots of loans aren't fractional reserve actually! if i'm a private lender funding some business with a private loan, there's no fractional reserve component. fractional reserve isn't about loans (which involve actual cash transfer one way, then back the other) at all.

fractional reserve is about bank deposits and that's it. i deposit $100 in a bank. that bank then loans out e.g 90$. I still account for myself as having 100$, and the person that borrowed 90$ also now has 90$. They also have an obligation to pay that back in the future, but that doesn't net out from total money supply. So now there are $190 dollars circulating, effectively, since I can spend my money at any time, and the person with the 90$ can spend it too. This works because not everyone with deposits in a bank will be spending them at once. (sorry, econ 101 here). The same effect happens with any loan in fact. The difference is that if I hold a $90 IOU we don't count that as circulating currency, but my 90$ in the bank does count as such (because it is more fungible) even though effectively in both cases I don't have the actual physical cash but some financial obligation representing it. If I leant to a party whose IOU scrip was as good as currency, and freely exchangeable, then the same effect would occur with or without any government intervention or magic or anything. The crazies mystify the process so much that lots of misconceptions fly around regarding it.

There's no reason bitcoin is better or worse than dollars or gold or w/e else in being able to be banked fractional-reserve style.

Anyone could start a fractional reserve bitcoin bank tomorrow. The only problem is that people would have to trust them.

http://i.imgur.com/WYNgcYP.png

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-NMag6mhoh90/Te7LUEniH8I/AAAAAAAAfcg/WFAey0N8FBA/s640/BitCoin+vs.+Future+of+Online+Currency+1.jpg

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/Layout_BitInstant_Card-640x787.png

http://printcoins.com/images/gallery/ron_paul_bill.jpg

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