Bitcoin - Know Anything About It?

[Angela273]

Hi Everyone.
My husband asked me to post on here and find out if anyone is familiar with Bitcoin. Do you know anything about it? What is the mining like for it when you mine for coins?
Thank you for your help.
Angela

[Natalka]

I thought it was just for drugdealers, money launderers, and nefarious types, since it's totally unregulated and anonymous.

It's kind of akin to a pyramid/Ponzi scheme, those that got in early might end up doing okay, and it might seem like the worth is climbing, but when that bubble bursts, it's going to be literally a virtual nothing for others.

Also, then there's the whole botnet thing -

http://www.businessinsider.com/malwa...itcoins-2013-4

As with everything, buyer beware!

[redhdlois]

I was listening to late night radio last night Coast to Coast AM and they had two men on the program discussing this very topic!

It is not a pyramid scam, that's what BIg Brother would like you to believe.....it's unregulated, which IMO is a good thing.....

It's unlike the central bank that just keeps printing money, further devaluing currency. Here's a link (if you haven't already read this)

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

[Darth Penguin]

I know there was some panic selling during the week.

The Bitcoin virtual currency lost half its value on Wednesday because of a panic sell-off.
From a high of $260 (£169) for each Bitcoin, the value dropped to about $130 (£84) in just six hours.
The selling frenzy began as Bitcoin's main exchange, MTGox, struggled to keep up with the volume of trade in the virtual currency.
MTGox said it was working hard to improve the exchange to avoid future trading problems.


The high of $260 marked the end of a steep rise in value for Bitcoins, which were worth only $90 each two weeks ago. On Thursday, values recovered slightly to reach about $160 (£104).
In a statement explaining what happened, MTGox said the delays in trading had not been caused by a hack attack. In the past few weeks the exchange, and the bitcoin community, has been targeted by hackers looking to cash in.
Instead, said MTGox, the "rather astonishing" number of new accounts that had been opened in the past few days caused a bump in trading volumes that it was unprepared for. In one day, the number of trades in Bitcoins had tripled, it said.

[Yurika]

My first time to learn about the word "Bitcoin".

[psilokar]

Sigh, why is there always someone calling it a ponzi scheme? It's absolutely nothing like a ponzi scheme, there is no one person at the top, there's no triangle, it's an exchange between two people, nothing more. If those two people agree on the value of that bitcoin then it has value. It's no different than trading with gold & silver, or fiat currency.

I personally have not traded with bitcoin, but it's an interesting concept and I have high hopes for it.

[Darth Penguin]

Winklevoss twins plans $20m Bitcoin trust fund

The Winklevoss Bitcoin Trust will initially sell $20m (£13m) worth of shares to investors, according to a filing with the US regulators.
The twins are among the key backers of Bitcoin, a virtual currency traded independently of monetary authorities.
Its value jumped earlier this year, but has been highly volatile.
In January its value surged from $15 for each Bitcoin, to a high of $260 on 10 April, before crashing.
Bitcoins are now trading at a price of about $90 each.

[alicia]

It's not worth your effort anymore. Essentially, if you knew about it about a year or two ago you could have made some decent money, but now it's being taken over by mining systems that have crazy rates of return...

Here's the general low-down. It used to be done with the CPU, and then they boosted it to GPU (AMD-based is best - nVidia sucks for the algorithms for whatever reason), and it's now moving to machines that specifically built ONLY to mine Bitcoin, such as the Avalon ASIC. The rate at which your computer tests algorithms is called the hash rate, and a good video card (GPU) has a hash rate somewhere between 150 - 200 MHash/s (700 if you have one of the fluky good cards at it). These new mining systems have hash rates around 50000 MH/s on the low end. Essentially, the higher (faster) your hash rate is, the more likely you are to find a bitcoin and contribute to the ledger, therefore earning more money. The catch? The speciality systems cost a pretty penny (up to 30k).

Realistically, Bitcoin is turning into someone only done by people who sink a huge chunk of money into start-up because these mining specific machines. The average person who has a nice video card for computer gaming (AMD-based), assuming they dedicated the computer solely to 24/7 bitmining would make about $1-3 per month (depending on electricity costs).

If people are interested in virtual currency mining, try another avenue like Litecoin... still won't make much, and they're not worth as much as Bitcoin, but the difficulty is much lower. You still only stand to gain $5/month or so though. Really not worth it in my opinion.

[Darth Penguin]

US makes Bitcoin arrests after Silk Road closure

The operators of two exchanges for the virtual currency Bitcoin have been arrested in the US. The Department of Justice said Robert Faiella, known as BTCKing, and Charlie Shrem from BitInstant.com have both been charged with money laundering.
The authorities said the pair were engaged in a scheme to sell more than $1m (£603,000) in bitcoins to users of online drug marketplace the Silk Road.
The site was shut down last year and its alleged owner was arrested.
Mr Shrem, 24, was arrested on Sunday at New York's JFK airport. He was expected to appear in court on Monday, prosecutors said.
Mr Faiella, 52, was arrested on Monday at his home in Cape Coral, Florida.

[Natalka]

The website of Mt. Gox suddenly went dark on Tuesday with no explanation, and the only activity at the company's Tokyo office was outside, where a handful of protesters said they had lost money investing in the virtual currency.

http://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/bit...1--sector.html

[walkonby]

surprise, surprise....

[FLA]

There is no real assets supporting these coins, so it can be gone just like air.

[HappyCouponSaver78]

This is bad investment poor souls should have knowledge about this hideous bit coin thing It's a scam all right
(That news broke and I am glad that I did talked with my brother and the office went away with the legit money
I pity (a) fools! Dumb move!

[Darth Penguin]

Bitcoin bank closes after $600,000 hacker theft

Flexcoin, the Canada-based Bitcoin bank, is to close after losing $600,000 in a hacker attack.
Its entire stock of Bitcoins stored on-line, in its so-called "hot wallet", were stolen.
Coins held in "cold storage" or in servers not connected to the internet were not taken.
Last week, the world's biggest Bitcoin exchange, Mt Gox, filed for bankruptcy protection after it suffered a $500m theft.
Bitcoin is a digital or crypto-currency which is bought and sold online, but not backed by any country's central bank or government.

[dyalect]

Hi Everyone.
My husband asked me to post on here and find out if anyone is familiar with Bitcoin. Do you know anything about it? What is the mining like for it when you mine for coins?
Thank you for your help.
Angela

>>

mother of all scams. if it is so good, why is the basis of it recruiting more people? no rich man is going to tell regular folk how to get rich. google bitcoin pump and dump. stay away from bitcoin.