@Shwaip - If I could give you a double helpful I would.
Fascinating, so it's really some guy's dream to overthrow the central bank's with play money or a terrorist plot to get everyone to overload the power grid...
I'll just sit on the sidelines and watch. Baseball cards and comic books are probably a better long term investment.
I think baseball cards (BBC) are a pretty good analogy for some of the problems with BTC. If you have two BBC lovers who agree on the value of a BBC, then you could buy (trade) a video card for a BBC of equal value.
Now, lets say only one person collects/values BBCs, and is trying to convince someone who doesn't like them to trade for a video card. He says: Oh it's simple. You can sell this BBC to someone who wants BBCs for $475, so I'll trade it to you for a r290. But there are a couple issues you'll need to deal with:
1) The only people who value the BBC at $475 are people who want to sell them. People won't buy them for that much. 2) The value of that BBC fluctuates from $400-$480 on a given day/time. BUT IT MIGHT GO UP TO $1200 IN A FEW DAYS, SO TOTALLY HOLD ON TO IT* 3) If you want to get $475 for it, you have to go a sketchy place, give them your bank info and wait a few days to get your $(475 - fees). 3b) This sketchy place can take your BBC and not give you money. This is a thing that actually happened with BTC and a lot of people 4) You can't use a BBC to pay for anything locally that you actually need to survive. This is slowly changing though, so you'll probably be able to buy coffee soon. Maybe If you're in a tech heavy area
*The value might also be $250
I think BTC has some interesting features and is an interesting idea. I think it also has some severe drawbacks that make it unfeasible as a currency.
I honestly have no idea what this Bitcoin mining is all about, I only saw the video I posted and thought it was pretty funny and bared resemblance to the currency's current state.
I think BTC has some interesting features and is an interesting idea. I think it also has some severe drawbacks that make it unfeasible as a currency.
I think that the stability of BTC is coming, but right now too many people see it as an investment instead of a currency. There's a lot of mine-and-hold going on due to the deflationary nature of it - it gets harder to mine over time so the value will go up, so why spend it now? That's great for value but crappy as currency, which works best when it's fluid and in motion.
However, I think crypto-currencies are the future for one reason. Look at your last credit card bill. Multiply the total by 2.9%. Now add in $0.15 for each transaction. That's how much stores paid credit card networks for you to use your credit card. Now imagine how much it is for an entire store. That's a lot of incentive to find something cheaper. And crypto-currencies are free ("as long as your time has no value").
TigerDirect has already started accepting BTC. Same with Overstock.com. It's a way for internet companies to be able to accept "cash". I'm pretty sure they immediately turn it into USD, but that's kind of the point. I see things like Bitcoin as a replacement for Visa & Mastercard, not the federal reserve note.
I think BTC has some interesting features and is an interesting idea. I think it also has some severe drawbacks that make it unfeasible as a currency.
I think that the stability of BTC is coming, but right now too many people see it as an investment instead of a currency. There's a lot of mine-and-hold going on due to the deflationary nature of it - it gets harder to mine over time so the value will go up, so why spend it now? That's great for value but crappy as currency, which works best when it's fluid and in motion.
However, I think crypto-currencies are the future for one reason. Look at your last credit card bill. Multiply the total by 2.9%. Now add in $0.15 for each transaction. That's how much stores paid credit card networks for you to use your credit card. Now imagine how much it is for an entire store. That's a lot of incentive to find something cheaper. And crypto-currencies are free ("as long as your time has no value").
TigerDirect has already started accepting BTC. Same with Overstock.com. It's a way for internet companies to be able to accept "cash". I'm pretty sure they immediately turn it into USD, but that's kind of the point. I see things like Bitcoin as a replacement for Visa & Mastercard, not the federal reserve note.
The average BTC transaction fee is about one cent.
everything i've read puts it higher. do you have a link?
edit:
i guess what i meant are fees to go from btc->usd are more than 1 cent, which is why it matters if people want to do transactions in btc and hold it, or just immediately go to usd.
As an indicator, one of the most popular is MtGox; their fee schedule is here with a maximum of 0.6%.
As an example: 99 XBT is roughly equivalent to $76,900 USD at today's rate, and is in the bracket assessed the highest transaction fee of 0.6%. The transaction fee to cash your 99 XBT out into US dollars would cost you $477 USD. For the same $76,900 USD transaction, PayPal would charge $2377. The average CC company would charge the merchant $1910.
A lot of the fees that @shwaip , I think, has seen range from 3-7%. Where the 7% represents the average guy walking up to the bitcoin ATM and converting. That 7% is extreme and someone actually created a personal one man business of shorting that down to one or two points in front of the ATM. Coinbase charges 1% on BTC to fiat conversion, or reverse. Which there is a lot of backing into coinbase given their corporate partnerships. On smaller businesses they can expect at least 2% to fees on transactions, from CC. The simple issue of reducing transaction fees on a subset of purchases for a business can help their bottom line a huge amount.
One of the things that actually came up in the last senate hearing is that the block chain is public thus private businesses have need for tumblers to hide their income from competitors. Funny how the hearings say you use that as money laundering but they skip over how it is a markets implementation of "false" companies to "protect" people and assets.
I realize that this was posted facetiously but it irks me to no end when I see shitty statistical analysis used to prop up arguments like this. You're modeling it with a quadratic basis function; the math can only permit the result to be parabolic.
As a fun thought experiment, use the same basis function to predict your genital size in 40 years based on data from the first 10 years of your life. The answer may surprise you!
Anand has a good write up on the situation this morning, for us Bitcoin noobs.
The last line from that article pretty much sums up why I've been skeptical of the cryptocurrency trend since I first heard about it.
Bitcoin fans wanted an unregulated currency free from government intervention? Well that's what they got.
The current regulatory framework in the States is far from perfect, but at least I know that the money I have in the bank is insured and the bank is subject to some form of oversight.
All sorts of controversy around that one. /r/bitcoin is going crazy about it. I have to say, I do kind of question the journalist's choices in publishing some of that material...
It's funny because the sort of off-the-cuff, silly way its used is likely to be the catalyst. People are actually using it and not hording it.
For real. I've ordered Japanese Kit-Kats with it, donated to charities, and tipped Redditors with it. Might buy a t-shirt with it soon, too. I have no illusions of getting rich over it, but I'm pretty pleased that my GPUs have bought me Kit-Kats. That's awfully nice of them.
The community and light-hearted meme-based nature of the coin has definitely made it more accessible, but for me, the fact that I could mine it productively with my old GPUs was huge. I get about 500kh/s out of two 5770s and a 6570. For the time being, that's still worthwhile.
Found out my 7970 GHz Edition uses the Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR memory chips, which have poor memory timings for crypto mining. After flashing a modified BIOS that puts them in line with the equivalent chips from Elpida, I jumped from 480 to over 700 reliably.
1100 Core / 1500 mem.
No more crazy memory overclocks or voltage tweaks. Just nice, easy, stable mining.
@Thrax said:
Now mining dogecoins at a stable 730kH/s. [...]
After flashing a modified BIOS that puts them in line with the equivalent chips from Elpida, I jumped from 480 to over 700 reliably.
Such wow! That's a whole 'nother world compared to gaming performance improvements I'd expect from flashing or OCing.
They even helped Dogecoin with a few things in the 1.6 update which you can read about here.
Possibly useful /r/dogecoin thread telling people to stop using Cryptsy. I'm still new to crypto-currencies so I'm not sure what to make of this but some of you might.
Comments
Now, lets say only one person collects/values BBCs, and is trying to convince someone who doesn't like them to trade for a video card. He says: Oh it's simple. You can sell this BBC to someone who wants BBCs for $475, so I'll trade it to you for a r290. But there are a couple issues you'll need to deal with:
1) The only people who value the BBC at $475 are people who want to sell them. People won't buy them for that much.
2) The value of that BBC fluctuates from $400-$480 on a given day/time. BUT IT MIGHT GO UP TO $1200 IN A FEW DAYS, SO TOTALLY HOLD ON TO IT*
3) If you want to get $475 for it, you have to go a sketchy place, give them your bank info and wait a few days to get your $(475 - fees).
3b) This sketchy place can take your BBC and not give you money. This is a thing that actually happened with BTC and a lot of people
4) You can't use a BBC to pay for anything locally that you actually need to survive. This is slowly changing though, so you'll probably be able to buy coffee soon.
Maybe
If you're in a tech heavy area
*The value might also be $250
I think BTC has some interesting features and is an interesting idea. I think it also has some severe drawbacks that make it unfeasible as a currency.
*The value is now $880
I also know BBC has a hilarious other meaning.
*The value is now $476. Sell quick!
I honestly have no idea what this Bitcoin mining is all about, I only saw the video I posted and thought it was pretty funny and bared resemblance to the currency's current state.
However, I think crypto-currencies are the future for one reason. Look at your last credit card bill. Multiply the total by 2.9%. Now add in $0.15 for each transaction. That's how much stores paid credit card networks for you to use your credit card. Now imagine how much it is for an entire store. That's a lot of incentive to find something cheaper. And crypto-currencies are free ("as long as your time has no value").
TigerDirect has already started accepting BTC. Same with Overstock.com. It's a way for internet companies to be able to accept "cash". I'm pretty sure they immediately turn it into USD, but that's kind of the point. I see things like Bitcoin as a replacement for Visa & Mastercard, not the federal reserve note.
edit:
i guess what i meant are fees to go from btc->usd are more than 1 cent, which is why it matters if people want to do transactions in btc and hold it, or just immediately go to usd.
As an indicator, one of the most popular is MtGox; their fee schedule is here with a maximum of 0.6%.
As an example: 99 XBT is roughly equivalent to $76,900 USD at today's rate, and is in the bracket assessed the highest transaction fee of 0.6%. The transaction fee to cash your 99 XBT out into US dollars would cost you $477 USD. For the same $76,900 USD transaction, PayPal would charge $2377. The average CC company would charge the merchant $1910.
//edit: math and accuracy
One of the things that actually came up in the last senate hearing is that the block chain is public thus private businesses have need for tumblers to hide their income from competitors. Funny how the hearings say you use that as money laundering but they skip over how it is a markets implementation of "false" companies to "protect" people and assets.
http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/2014/02/mtgox-2/
As a fun thought experiment, use the same basis function to predict your genital size in 40 years based on data from the first 10 years of your life. The answer may surprise you!
P.S. your R-squared value is shit.
http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1stcgm/bitcoins_value_on_a_bestfitting_growth_curve_we/
edit: I also like that he did it on the log(BTC->USD)
The community for Dogecoin is the best. Such wow. It's pretty shitty the way reporters have been swarming a law-abiding guy who wanted to remain anonymous.
The community and light-hearted meme-based nature of the coin has definitely made it more accessible, but for me, the fact that I could mine it productively with my old GPUs was huge. I get about 500kh/s out of two 5770s and a 6570. For the time being, that's still worthwhile.
Now mining dogecoins at a stable 730kH/s.
Found out my 7970 GHz Edition uses the Hynix H5GQ2H24MFR memory chips, which have poor memory timings for crypto mining. After flashing a modified BIOS that puts them in line with the equivalent chips from Elpida, I jumped from 480 to over 700 reliably.
1100 Core / 1500 mem.
No more crazy memory overclocks or voltage tweaks. Just nice, easy, stable mining.
Such wow! That's a whole 'nother world compared to gaming performance improvements I'd expect from flashing or OCing.
You must update your Dogecoin wallet to 1.6. The update can be found at http://dogecoin.com/
Don't forget to encrypt and back-up your wallets! Information here.
@BobbyDigi, there's a Digi crypto-currency. http://www.digibyte.co/
They even helped Dogecoin with a few things in the 1.6 update which you can read about here.
Possibly useful /r/dogecoin thread telling people to stop using Cryptsy. I'm still new to crypto-currencies so I'm not sure what to make of this but some of you might.