Any bitcoiners out there?
- Thread starter cloneluke80
- Start date
Wow I guess I should've bought some, its through the roof! And now apparently overstock.com accepts it?
This is not true. I know this is bringing stuff up, but the whole concept makes little sense to me
19 year old econ student.
Maybe if someone explained it better, but it seems way to complicated for the average person.
It's legit for now. Will it work and be successful forever? Probably not, but neither do a lot of ideas/fads.
I wish it could have been something I got in on early, as it's pretty mainstream now.
I wish it could have been something I got in on early, as it's pretty mainstream now.
Agreed, what I do not understand is how one earns these. If you can just "mine" them, it doesn't make any sense to me because you are receiving something in return for doing nothing, and if the entire system is based on that then it would be entirely worthless. What is provided by the receiver of the bitcoin in exchange for the bitcoin?
You can't really mine by yourself, I think the mining process is pretty much dried up from being done by most people.
I think if you want to get into it now, you have to do it via a currency exchange (dollars to bitcoin).
But here is a decent answer for your question on mining.
[video=youtube;GmOzih6I1zs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmOzih6I1zs[/video]
I think if you want to get into it now, you have to do it via a currency exchange (dollars to bitcoin).
But here is a decent answer for your question on mining.
[video=youtube;GmOzih6I1zs]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmOzih6I1zs[/video]
Yeah the days of mining with your home PC are over, mining now is all about super specialized, very expensive, hardware designed just for mining bitcoins.
What is the purpose of solving these math problems? Does solving these problems actually do something or is it just like, "Hey, figure out this 8 star sudoku and I'll give you some money for it."
In order for people to send bitcoins they need someone to solve the equation of that particular transaction, which is what mining is. The miner uses their processing power to try to solve the equation, the first one to do it gets a reward of I think 25 bitcoins, I think it started at 50. So you're not doing nothing, but as far as being worth something, that's up to the people. If people are willing to accept bitcoins in exchange for goods and services then they're worth something.
Admittedly I'm only vaguely familiar with bitcoins, but this tells me there really isn't any inherent value behind the system. Essentially the value is based on CPU processor cycles. Now, there have been projects in the past to harness unused processor time while idle to solve actual valuable problems, and then, maybe I could see it, but as it's stated here, seems like a ponzi scheme.
On the flip side, I'm sure that over in the cave, there's folks that will tell you the US dollar is based on nothing more, and there's some truth to that, depending on how far you take the logic exercise, but this one's a little far for me.
There's no value in the actual dollar bill you have in your pocket either, it has value because you can use it to get things or to repay debts. That's basically true for any currency.
If you are looking to understand it a bit better Newsweek had a decent article about it last week or the week before.
I don't know if it is hear to stay as a currency or not, but I think they will be valuable as a conduit for moving money anonymously. I think everyone wishes they would have bought in at some point, but I am willing to guess that before it is over there will be some people that wish they would have sold a bit earlier.
I don't know if it is hear to stay as a currency or not, but I think they will be valuable as a conduit for moving money anonymously. I think everyone wishes they would have bought in at some point, but I am willing to guess that before it is over there will be some people that wish they would have sold a bit earlier.
As far as the dollar bill argument. A dollar bill has no value, but what it represents does, it has the backing of the US government. Now you can say the government is worth nothing, but I think and I believe most people still believe the US government is worth something. A bitcoin is solely worth what someone is willing to pay for it, not unlike ty beanie babies, Pogs, tulips, etc... We will see if the economy of bitcoins is sustainable, it is neat trial I think.
I pretty much said that in my post, but couldn't think of a good way to simply explain my thoughts further.
In the end, all currencies are only as good as their ability to get a large number of people to agree in their approximate value. Yes, the dollar is no longer directly equated to a certain amount of gold, but there's several billion people who agree to it's approximate value...or at least that it has some value. I would doubt that there are several billion people who even know what bitcoin is.
