Quinny wrote:Some people might make money out of this but it seems like a whole load of bullshit to me!
PrestonSturges wrote:I think the thing about bitcoins is that they exist as some sort of encrypted file and only a couple hundred thousand were made. That's why the value keeps going up.
PrestonSturges wrote:Well it goes back to the question of "What is money?" which seems to be a philosophical as well as economic question.
The secret Hong Kong facility that uses boiling goo to mine Bitcoins
The mine is the size of a shipping container, and filled with 1-meter-high glass tanks in which banks of blades are immersed in roiling liquid. Each tank can hold 92 blades; the blades themselves are kept at a temperature of 37 degrees Celsius or below by "open bath immersion" technology. Open bath immersion cools computer components by submersing them in liquid with a particularly low boiling point. The heat the components generate mining for coins boils the liquid, causing it to turn gaseous, rise up to a condenser at the top of the tank, and fall once again, removing heat from the components in the process. The ASICMINER open bath immersion system was reportedly built by Hong Kong-based company Allied Control, and operates at a Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.02, which "would make it one of the most efficient designs in the world."
The cooling system is state of the art, but Cao reports that the mine uses common equipment — including racks and valves — found "in local markets easily." This enabled ASICMINER to build its facility quickly and comparatively cheaply before setting it to its mining task. The tanks, when filled with 92 circuit boards, cooling liquid, and an array of racks and rails, each weigh about 200 kilograms. They're pushed into place by a forklift truck.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/12/2/5165428/bitcoin-mine-in-hong-kong-uses-jelly-to-keep-cool
I think this was posted in another thread on PO.com :longpig wrote:Bitcoin is stupid to invest in, you are best off buying gold. There are no real gold substitutes for money but for Bitcoin there are hundreds of near to identical types of crypto currencies. Yes Bitcoins are limited in supply but the number of other crypto currencies that are identical or similar to it can be unlimited.
The fact is when people see Bitcoins as too expensive they will move to buy other 'cheaper' crypto currencies instead. I am surprised it hasn't greatly happened yet.
Bitcoin vs Gold boils down to this. There are no real gold substitutes but there are plenty of bitcoin substitutes and the number can be unlimited.
Gold = Toilet paper limited in supply and can not be reproduced.
Bitcoin = Major brand of toilet paper that is very expensive only because people are too stupid to switch to a cheaper brand yet. Other crypto currencies are producing plenty and is only a matter of time before the market place is flooded with crypto's and they all become worthless.
Possibly someone could come up with a crypto currency that does not have this scalability issue, in which case it would replace bitcoin and bitcoins would be worthless.Bitcoin has gone through the roof in the past several months rising from around $200 to over $1000 in November of 2013 alone. This is obviously a speculative bubble, and like all bubbles it will pop. There is a lot of chatter on the internet as to when it will pop, and how low it will fall before stabilizing. Optimists like to compare the current bitcoin bubble to the dot com bubble of the late 90s. After all, the dot com bubble may have burst but the internet survived. Bitcoin could do the same thing right? On the surface it sounds like a reasonable comparison however there is a variable in this equation that almost no one is talking about: Bitcoin has a fundamental design flaw, and fixing that design flaw will require completely changing the way the Bitcoin network operates.
In its current form the Bitcoin system is able to facilitate transactions without a centralized database by requiring each client on the network to download a copy of the blockchain. What's the blockchain? The blockchain is a record of every transaction ever made using bitcoin from 2009 to present. With every transaction this file gets bigger. You can find a record of the blockchain size over time at blockchain.info.
At first the file size was negligible. It stayed below 1 gigabyte until mid 2012. However with increased interest in the currency the blockchain began to grow exponentially. By September of 2012 it had jumped to 2 gigabytes, in September of 2013, just one year later, the file was over 9 gigabytes, and by the end of November it had passed 11 gigabytes. If interest in the currency continues to increase and the number of transactions continues to grow at its current rate the blockchain will easily reach 50 gigabytes within a year and 250 gigabytes within 2 years.
http://stormcloudsgathering.com/bitcoin ... being-told
(video)
longpig wrote:The fact is when people see Bitcoins as too expensive they will move to buy other 'cheaper' crypto currencies instead. I am surprised it hasn't greatly happened yet.
If bitcoin "takes off" ...Sixstrings wrote:The thing to watch is, WHICH crypto currency takes off and gets widespread use.
...
the one that got to critical mass first stays #1.
What good is another cryptocurrency if everyone is using bitcoins? So just saying that's the thing to watch here, if it really takes off and you see that pay by bitcoin banner next to every paypal banner.
This will soon be too big for portable devices and even desktops (not to mention the bandwidth required). That means you will have to trust someone else to verify your transactions, meaning it is no longer a distributed peer-to-peer system.If interest in the currency continues to increase and the number of transactions continues to grow at its current rate the blockchain will easily reach 50 gigabytes within a year and 250 gigabytes within 2 years.
- you just have to know what these do, not their inner workings.To understand the post, you need to be comfortable with public key cryptography, and with the closely related idea of digital signatures. I’ll also assume you’re familiar with cryptographic hashing.
there are some good reader comments and questions.My strategy in the post is to build Bitcoin up in stages. I’ll begin by explaining a very simple digital currency, based on ideas that are almost obvious. We’ll call that currency Infocoin, to distinguish it from Bitcoin. Of course, our first version of Infocoin will have many deficiencies, and so we’ll go through several iterations of Infocoin, with each iteration introducing just one or two simple new ideas. After several such iterations, we’ll arrive at the full Bitcoin protocol. We will have reinvented Bitcoin!
Elliptic says its tool, built by 4 PhD holders, can make a hugely accurate guess as to who each wallet belongs to — and it can do so in real-time. Using machine-learning, its software crunches through the web and dark web, skimming references to wallets and other digital clues to build up a picture of the owner.
Tom Robinson, Elliptic's cofounder, told Business Insider the tool could be a "game changer for the institutionalisation of bitcoin." If banks can satisfy anti-money laundering regulation then they can start to think about handling bitcoin. The tool was created after conversations with dozens of lenders.
Elliptic has today released a visualisation tool showing the flow of bitcoin between entities over the entire six- year history of bitcoin, naming the 250 largest entities where bitcoins are sent to and from.
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
(1/8/2015)BitStamp, which runs the world's third largest bitcoin exchange, announced on Tuesday that $5.4 million worth of the cyber currency had been lost to a security "breach."
(2/25/2014)Bitcoin's Mt. Gox Goes Offline, Loses $409M
Alfred Tennyson wrote:We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Tanada wrote:I was hoping out of the hundreds of people who lurk and post regularly around here at least one or two would have some actual experience with the product. Seems like years ago there was a bitcoin donation box on the side menu for this corner of the internet.
careinke wrote:1. There is only a finite amount of a crypto currency and the amount is known.
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