Certainly not as many as value the dollar, but it's only been around for a few years and at the time was basically a completely original idea. The dollar has certain advantages because of its acceptance by the US government, for instance you can't pay taxes in bitcoins, but bitcoin has other advantages also.
Any bitcoiners out there?
- Thread starter cloneluke80
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I guess I am 39 years old and can't figure this stuff out. I will just stay old fashion. Sounds very complicated. Good luck to those of you who do it though
I think the most complicated part is the whole mining thing, but most people won't be involved in that, especially not now.
Glad I got in on this early. Got myself a little under 7 Bitcoins from mining.
Mining is just a term for processing transactions. That's all it is. And once a block of transactions is complete, which was like a million transactions. I don't know what it is now because I don't have free electricity and it just isn't worth it with my current hardware. After a block is "solved" a number of bitcoins gets released to whomever solved it.
Mining is just a term for processing transactions. That's all it is. And once a block of transactions is complete, which was like a million transactions. I don't know what it is now because I don't have free electricity and it just isn't worth it with my current hardware. After a block is "solved" a number of bitcoins gets released to whomever solved it.
I just spent approximately 3 minutes trying to educate myself on bitcoins and I've come away incredibly confused.
Yeah I think so, you get certain fees depending on what transactions were in the Block that you mined, in addition to the standard reward which is 25 bitcoins right now, I think that gets halved like every 5 years or something.
It won't last because 99% of the world exists outside it's sphere of influence. Having anonymous people set up math problems for a currency is far too complicated for the average consumer. Where does the money come from - what gives it its value? At least with the dollar we know there is backing of the United States. What's to stop some team from MIT to create the data necessary to just create a million bitcoins? With paper money there are tangible safeguards to counter-fitting and doing it really isn't worth what the penalties are for most people. Who controls bitcoins? Who regulates it? Who determines if we need to expand or reduce the supply based on external factors?
Yes, anything is worth what people are willing to pay for an item. But how is this different than baseball cards?
Yes, anything is worth what people are willing to pay for an item. But how is this different than baseball cards?
I don't know if it'll last, but like anything else it has value because people think it has value. I'm far from knowledgeable but you can't just create bitcoins, bitcoins are only created from mining new blocks and this happens once roughly every 10 minutes. If you had enough processing power, meaning more processing power than every other bit coin miner on the planet combined, then you could do some sneaky stuff like reordering transactions, or spending the same coins twice. It would take an astronimical amount of computing power though, and as more people mine bitcoins that means the power needed to disrupt the process also increases.
As far as who controls it that would be nobody, one of the main features is that it's decentralized. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoins created.
We're starting to see some higher profile businesses start to accept bitcoins though, Overstock, Tigerdirect, the Sacramento Kings just announced they'll accept bitcoins to purchase tickets.
Cyclonepride
Thought Police
Anyone catch the article that Germany is getting upset because they were trying to repatriate gold reserves from the NY Fed and it is taking forever? Any bets on whether the gold is actually there?
The main features of bitcoin is that it is anonymous, it is digital, and it is not controlled by any sort of centralized authority. The "mining" process is how new bitcoins are created, and this is not done by any central authority like a bank. Although one could argue those that are best at mining bitcoins are the ones who control it, just like any other currency. Also note that the mining algorithm is written so that there is a maximum of 21 million bitcoins that will ever exist.
That was possibly one of the most ridiculously confusing, but at the same time perfectly marketed, videos I have ever watched. :err:
anytime people say "they wrote the algorithm so only X coins can be minted" i laugh because there has never been software or a computer system that people can not overwrite, hack, or otherwise disable. Never in the history of the world.
