bit¢oin$

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

http://i.imgur.com/OGumtoL.jpg

1 bit coin is worth close to 90 bucks right now. Bought some a year or so ago for 5 bucks a piece. $$$

฿฿฿

A friend of mine told me last night that he made 250k off these.

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-28/bitcoin-may-be-the-global-economys-last-safe-haven

http://i.imgur.com/h6gl9nM.png

mining, always a hazardous occupation

omg

how much processing power do you need to have bitcoins?!?!

CPUs do a mediocre job of it, GPUs are mostly used. So you end up with computers with as many video cards crammed in as possible.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5850/Pages/ati-radeon-hd-5850-overview.aspx

what are they actually like ~doing~

rendering ultra-realistic images of them>??

No. At a high level, it's basically a certain type of math and algorithm that is similar to the calculations that need to be done to render 3d images also let you compare data much more quickly to find bitcoins. It's mostly a coincidence that GPUs are much better at this than a CPU, and a processor specifically designed to be good at bitcoin mining would be much better than that.

Historically this isn't that unique; the cell processor in the PS3 was a variant of an IBM design iirc, but putting together dedicated machines with those processors was less feasible than just buying a shitload of PS3s at the time as the processors weren't really built for consumers, so you ended up with server farms like this: http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ps3-air-force-usaf-playstation,news-5297.html

In the distant future, we'll obviously have 3d-printed processors on demand that you can customize for any particular task, but in 2013 that still isn't the case.

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

Like there's a thin line between actually believing the story and just believing it's a story you can sell to other people. And there's an incentive to at least believe that you believe the story.

yeah believing things is pretty easy if it benefits you, and they say theres no one easier to sell than a salesperson

in the end it doesn’t matter tho, because the guy will get off with a relatively light prison sentence and then inherit all of mommy and daddy’s money. hope he gets shanked

they spent most of their money on his quixotic defense

I mean so they claimed in a soft-touch profile anyway, I'm sure they've got something

he got 25 years and some people are saying its light but thats big chunk of even the longest life, and you have to serve at least 85% of yr time in the feds so its not like hell get out in 12 or whatever, things arent going that good for him

12 is a very long time, being in jail for a month sucks from what ive heard, were somewhat injured to all these numbers due to living in a police state but being incarcerated is not too great

yeah it definitely sucks for him. like imagine being in jail since 1999

caek posted in the other thread theres a recentish law that allows non violent federal offenders to serve as little as 50% of their sentences depending on circumstances fwiw 85% is somewhat out of date

yeah it definitely sucks for him. like imagine being in jail since 1999

― frogbs, Thursday, 28 March 2024 18:42 (twenty-two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

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