Is stuff for this forums indexed even if posts are deleted and not quoted? I have no idea how this forum works in that aspect. In addition, as long as you aren't going to be the next Pablo Escobar, no one is going to get warrants to check your internet activities and what not. Usually if you get "normal" sized quantities, the worst that can happen to you is a controlled delivery. I don't order anything, I just get most of my info from reading the SR subreddit since it is another place that is heavily involved in bitcoins and often mentioned in bitcoin related circles. The people on there are pretty careless with their posts since I wouldn't be surprised if that place gets monitored especially when people post inquires about amounts that go into the pounds.
Bitcoins/Litecoins/Virtual Currencies
- Thread starter Tripamang
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They don't need warrants to eavesdrop on your activities, in the US. Its actually easier to hide and stay anonymous with fait then bitcoins, if your spending.
Those mining boxes are pretty sweet. Makes it easy to mine in places that give out free electricity / wifi.
Depending on the value of the transactions, that is wrong. There is a reason why some bitcoin sellers limit their transaction to be under $10,000 and it isn't because of inherent faults with bitcoin but rather regulations on the USD end of things. In addition, how are you going to be anonymous with fiat currency when it requires hand to hand transactions. If it was actually true that fiat was more anonymous than bitcoins, places like SR would have been prominent ages ago. On this aspect you are simply wrong.
In regards to eavesdropping, like I mentioned before it all depends on volume. Rarely if ever will anyone go after Joe Shmoe for getting a few grams here or there. All of that is basic paranoia. Now if you get a bit ballsy and go after large volumes, then you will be in for a bad time because at that point it is actually worth it for you to be watched. That is how both US large scale MDMA busts happened as well as the recent NJ bust. They were being watched from Aug 2012 till April 2013. That is an insane amount of resources invested that will never happen to most nobodies.
There are ways of using bitcoins that can basically take you almost 100% off the grid, from acquiring them with USD to making a purchase of some good. It takes more effort than most people care for since bitcoins are already good enough with their anonymous features.
Now to see what happens to hashing power and bitcoin prices...
A couple friends are waiting for me to tell them to buy a graphics card miner that will pay for itself in a couple months (free electricity huzzah) but that wont happen if those Jalapenos go crazy!
A couple friends are waiting for me to tell them to buy a graphics card miner that will pay for itself in a couple months (free electricity huzzah) but that wont happen if those Jalapenos go crazy!
Arative
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I have 3 of those ordered, hopefully I get mine soon but I didn't order until August 31st, so not too hopefully I'll get mine before mid-may. Sounds like the 25 g/h and 50 g/h won't be shipped until they get new pcb boards to deal with power issues they have. I originally thought that if the jalapenos work out that I'll order some bigger rigs but it doesn't sound like those will be available for 6+ months if I ordered in the next month.
On the plus side bitcoin is up to $156 again. Going slowly this time, no wild jumps in price.
I doubt ASICs will have much affect on bitcoin prices, really. The rate at which coins are created will remain the same. Buyers won't care how they are created.
I also made the mistake of not buying a GPU to mine with back in 2011 because even back then, it was barely worth the trouble-- IF you sold the coins immediately. If you think the value of coins will go up, then mining them is essentially the same as buying some now a little cheaper and you get a free GPU out of it. People stopped mining bitcoin when it didn't make them back its cost in electricity, so difficulty actually went DOWN at times to maintain a certain rate. FPGAs and ASICs will permanently ruin it for GPUs, but litecoin won't have this problem any time soon. (if at all)
Buy a card and mine litecoins with it. I expect litecoin difficulty to shoot up soon as GPUs switch coins (it already has some) but if you think litecoin's value will also shoot way up, then it makes sense to mine it. It went back up to $3.7 today and at current difficulty a 7950 makes ~1.4 coins a day; as of right now, if you sold immediately, you're making almost $5/day. The only places you can buy the coin right now are from btc-e.com and Vircurex, which are pretty much for investors only and not the safest places to put your money. You can't buy it from Mtgox yet, but it's in their API, and its value could snowball if sites like bitpay, bitinstant, coinbase, etc pick it up after gox does. People won't let its value slip too far down relative to bitcoin either, because they'll simply convert bitcoins to litecoins as an investment if that happens. LTC/BTC has been a pretty steady 0.019-0.026 or so all through April.
That said, I bought into BTC after the crash and doubled my money in a week. I expect LTC to gain in the short term, but Bitcoin is the safer bet in the long term. I highly doubt Litecoin will replace Bitcoin. Bitcoin will probably be replaced with a better protocol at some point, but I don't think it has been invented yet. I'll likely convert my LTC to BTC at some point, or to a promising new coin. Of course it's possible that a need for an alternate cryptocurrency may arise-- the Bitcoin network becoming overwhelmed by mass adoption for example-- then Litecoin could explode overnight as it is currently the only real substitute. Diversify.
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Well, shit. That happened faster than I'd hoped it would. I only made back about $600. I'm guessing this will pretty much destroy any chance of turning a profit with GPUs, but we'll see how quickly they ship the lot and what it'll do to the various pools.
For those who are interested in playing the market via the alternative coins to increase your share of BTC, this guy does randoms pumpshttps://twitter.com/fontase
He announces what coin he is pumping prior to the event and then pumps around 750-1000 BTC raising the value before dumping it all again. The gains seem to be pretty insane. In addition using BTC-e to get all of the alternative coins and swapping back and forth to BTC is quite easy and safe. Today's NVC event was delayed due to the bot attacks on Mt Gox.
He announces what coin he is pumping prior to the event and then pumps around 750-1000 BTC raising the value before dumping it all again. The gains seem to be pretty insane. In addition using BTC-e to get all of the alternative coins and swapping back and forth to BTC is quite easy and safe. Today's NVC event was delayed due to the bot attacks on Mt Gox.
Arative
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He just started the NVC pump since BTC has stabilized after this afternoons bot fiasco. I put in 1.45 BTC worth of NVC just to play around with it and see how I make out.
Arative
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Nothing really happened due to the prior BTC issues. He didn't want to invest too much because BTC was too volatile at that moment so I bailed and jumped into LTC for now. I already more than broke even on my original two LTC buys at 1.30 USD and 3.99 USD, with the current value hovering around 4+ and still the Mt.Gox addition coming up, I think it is the coin to have at the moment
for pure profit.
Whenever he tries another pump in the future, I will probably throw another 1.0 BTC at it and see if I can double up.
for pure profit.
Whenever he tries another pump in the future, I will probably throw another 1.0 BTC at it and see if I can double up.
Actually, the argument is incredibly stupid because we know exactly how bitcoins are created. Thereistransparency -- unlike with any other global currency.
I've been reading about this whole bitcoin thing via articles in the paper recently, well for the past couple of months I would say. I think that it's fun but there are serious issues with it:
1. What's the point? Outside of something catastrophic happening I don't see such a thing ever being a better currency than the USD is.
2. What on earth is "mining" and why is it how the coins are created? It reminds me of the Stanford protein folding project, but that is doing something good with all of the resources being used. Does "mining" these bitcoins do anything good or is it just a drain on real resources?
3. How is this secure? We all know that things get hacked all of the time. Is it really impossible for bitcoins to be hacked and created somehow without doing any actual mining?
4. The volatility is insane. That's what caught my eye in the articles, well it's why the articles were written in the first place. Nobody is going to want to trade with you in a currency that can move so much.
5. Does mining increase as more people use and need the bitcoins? We all know vague things about fiat currency, inflation and deflation and how they work: The money supply grows with the economy and hopefully just a bit faster. Does mining take the demand for the currency into account? If there are only one million bitcoins and they grow slowly, then the value of them would continue to skyrocket as more people demanded them.
Honestly it's an interesting idea to make a new currency but I think there are a lot of failings with this bitcoin thing. To me it seems like the ideal currency would be tightly controlled and expand with the economy just enough so that there is always demand for the currency but not so much demand that prices skyrocket, while also not wasting resources on nonsense which is what mining appears to be.
1. What's the point? Outside of something catastrophic happening I don't see such a thing ever being a better currency than the USD is.
2. What on earth is "mining" and why is it how the coins are created? It reminds me of the Stanford protein folding project, but that is doing something good with all of the resources being used. Does "mining" these bitcoins do anything good or is it just a drain on real resources?
3. How is this secure? We all know that things get hacked all of the time. Is it really impossible for bitcoins to be hacked and created somehow without doing any actual mining?
4. The volatility is insane. That's what caught my eye in the articles, well it's why the articles were written in the first place. Nobody is going to want to trade with you in a currency that can move so much.
5. Does mining increase as more people use and need the bitcoins? We all know vague things about fiat currency, inflation and deflation and how they work: The money supply grows with the economy and hopefully just a bit faster. Does mining take the demand for the currency into account? If there are only one million bitcoins and they grow slowly, then the value of them would continue to skyrocket as more people demanded them.
Honestly it's an interesting idea to make a new currency but I think there are a lot of failings with this bitcoin thing. To me it seems like the ideal currency would be tightly controlled and expand with the economy just enough so that there is always demand for the currency but not so much demand that prices skyrocket, while also not wasting resources on nonsense which is what mining appears to be.
1. The anonymous factor is what attracts quite a few people. They do not want big brother looking over their shoulder in terms of what is going on with their money. At this point most people still have to go back and forth between BTC and USD, but in the future most true believers hope that wouldn't be the case. You would be able to pay for items/services directly and not need a USD middle man. Also the fact that there is no real controller/regulator attracts others, while it also might create drawbacks, it is still quite different versus anything else out there.
2. The comparison between folding and mining is probably one of the closest that can be made. The resources are purely used on the computational aspect. Mining is needed to prevent all of the coins being released at the same time. By 2140, 21 million bitcoins will be available. Depending on the mining and hashing speeds, the difficulty and rewards change. For example, the purpose built ASIC mining units that are suppose to come on the market in mass this year will allow for greater computing power in terms of mining. Due to this the difficulty to get rewards through mining will rise. This will keep the mining outlook the same.
3. As far as anyone knows, bitcoins are currently unhackable. Wallets/exchanges etc have been targeted due to their security issues, but never actual bitcoins. I read articles about Black Hat hackers trying their luck as well as others with no success. Someone did an article about Satoshi Nakamoto, the create of bitcoins, and they were quite surprised with his coding work. They stated it is unlikely that he was a programmer by trade due to the look of the code. With that said, they mentioned that the code was surprising clean and very well made. It seemed the he was a self taught coder/economist because he took so many considerations into the project and tried to make sure most if not all issues are addressed before hand.
4. All of the volatility issues are due to the dependency on the main bitcoin exchange, Mt.Gox. For them volatility is business since it pushes transaction numbers up. When trading stagnates, a DDOS attack on the exchange creates 1000s of frantic trades putting transaction fees in their pockets. Until more exchanges take the load off Mt.Gox and security issues are improved all around, it will probably continue. Mt.Gox supposedly has a new trading engine that is going to be released in late June along with new, more dependable hardware. In addition, the DDOS attacks are having less success now because all of the people with little knowledge have been removed. Most people at this point see an attack coming and just forget about it without going into panic buy/sell mode. This causes the price to fluctuate only 10-20 USD vs. 200 like it did earlier in the month.
5. Mining increasing is hard to explain. Like I mentioned before, more computing power equals more difficulty. For example, a year or 2 ago simpler and less powerful hardware could have been used to get a certain amount of bitcoins vs. now. I believe the rewards for a solved blocks (look at it as solving a math equation, right answer = reward) are still 50 BTC, but due to the in increased difficulty in solving the blocks, more hashing power is needed. I think it is safe to look at it this way, more people > more overall hashing power > difficulty increases. When ASIC mining units are going to be released, they will increase the difficulty so much due to their greater hashing power that GPU mining will be close to obsolete. You won't be able to break even with your power bills.
The things to know is that there will be a max 21 million bitcoins total in existence. In addition this number will probably be much lower due to lost bitcoins, once they are gone (deleted wallets/HDD crashes/etc) they are not recoverable. At this point bitcoins can be broken down to the 8th decimal place if need be.
I am not an expert on bitcoins and the above is just from things I read. If something is wrong, correct it.
2. The comparison between folding and mining is probably one of the closest that can be made. The resources are purely used on the computational aspect. Mining is needed to prevent all of the coins being released at the same time. By 2140, 21 million bitcoins will be available. Depending on the mining and hashing speeds, the difficulty and rewards change. For example, the purpose built ASIC mining units that are suppose to come on the market in mass this year will allow for greater computing power in terms of mining. Due to this the difficulty to get rewards through mining will rise. This will keep the mining outlook the same.
3. As far as anyone knows, bitcoins are currently unhackable. Wallets/exchanges etc have been targeted due to their security issues, but never actual bitcoins. I read articles about Black Hat hackers trying their luck as well as others with no success. Someone did an article about Satoshi Nakamoto, the create of bitcoins, and they were quite surprised with his coding work. They stated it is unlikely that he was a programmer by trade due to the look of the code. With that said, they mentioned that the code was surprising clean and very well made. It seemed the he was a self taught coder/economist because he took so many considerations into the project and tried to make sure most if not all issues are addressed before hand.
4. All of the volatility issues are due to the dependency on the main bitcoin exchange, Mt.Gox. For them volatility is business since it pushes transaction numbers up. When trading stagnates, a DDOS attack on the exchange creates 1000s of frantic trades putting transaction fees in their pockets. Until more exchanges take the load off Mt.Gox and security issues are improved all around, it will probably continue. Mt.Gox supposedly has a new trading engine that is going to be released in late June along with new, more dependable hardware. In addition, the DDOS attacks are having less success now because all of the people with little knowledge have been removed. Most people at this point see an attack coming and just forget about it without going into panic buy/sell mode. This causes the price to fluctuate only 10-20 USD vs. 200 like it did earlier in the month.
5. Mining increasing is hard to explain. Like I mentioned before, more computing power equals more difficulty. For example, a year or 2 ago simpler and less powerful hardware could have been used to get a certain amount of bitcoins vs. now. I believe the rewards for a solved blocks (look at it as solving a math equation, right answer = reward) are still 50 BTC, but due to the in increased difficulty in solving the blocks, more hashing power is needed. I think it is safe to look at it this way, more people > more overall hashing power > difficulty increases. When ASIC mining units are going to be released, they will increase the difficulty so much due to their greater hashing power that GPU mining will be close to obsolete. You won't be able to break even with your power bills.
The things to know is that there will be a max 21 million bitcoins total in existence. In addition this number will probably be much lower due to lost bitcoins, once they are gone (deleted wallets/HDD crashes/etc) they are not recoverable. At this point bitcoins can be broken down to the 8th decimal place if need be.
I am not an expert on bitcoins and the above is just from things I read. If something is wrong, correct it.
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Oh, now this should be cute.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/...tcoin-tax.html
I'd love to know how they're going to figure out that any one person has been trading in BTC (or any other virtual currency) in order to capture it on a tax return...
I love the comments on that story, too. Especially: "Oh and I also won an enchanted sword in "Dungeon Creepers" and bought new racing tires in "Burning Rubber 3". At the same time I loaned enough money to my imaginary friend Freddyboy to buy a Ghostcopter. Are any of these make believe items taxable by the Canada Revenue Agency?"
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/...tcoin-tax.html
I'd love to know how they're going to figure out that any one person has been trading in BTC (or any other virtual currency) in order to capture it on a tax return...
I love the comments on that story, too. Especially: "Oh and I also won an enchanted sword in "Dungeon Creepers" and bought new racing tires in "Burning Rubber 3". At the same time I loaned enough money to my imaginary friend Freddyboy to buy a Ghostcopter. Are any of these make believe items taxable by the Canada Revenue Agency?"
Arative
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Only thing I would add to Passenger's is that it is possible to hack bitcoins with a 51% attack. Meaning if you control 51% of the network's hashing power, it would be possible for you to double spend bitcoins. One of the strength's of bitcoins is that every single coin, every transaction, is known to the network. If you controlled 51% in theory it would be possible for you to reverse your own transactions, prevent other transactions and mine all the blocks. But since the bitcoin network is decentralized, it would be hard for that to happen. The pool I mine at, btcguild is currently about 40% of the network but he has a plan in place to mitigate the threat of his pool becoming 51% of the network should he reach over 45% of the network for 2 weeks.
As far as mining, what we are doing is solving complex equations using cpu or gpu of our pc's. The network is designed so that on average a block is solved every 10 minutes. The difficulty of solving this block goes up or down depending on the network hashing power, it readjusts about every 2 weeks. As hashing power increases, so does the difficulty so that a block is still solved every 10 minutes. There are two ways you can mine, solo or with a pool. I currently have 1gh/s of hashing power. If I solo mined, it would take me 446 days to solve one block, unless I was really lucky. I mine with a pool, so my payout is steady. I get 1.6 bitcoins a month at the current difficultly. GPU's are about to become obsolete because ASIC's are really hitting the market. ASIC's take mining to the next level. I'm not sure what comes after ASIC though.
At this point, if you want to get into bitcoin's you'd probably be better off trying to buy and sell them.
As far as mining, what we are doing is solving complex equations using cpu or gpu of our pc's. The network is designed so that on average a block is solved every 10 minutes. The difficulty of solving this block goes up or down depending on the network hashing power, it readjusts about every 2 weeks. As hashing power increases, so does the difficulty so that a block is still solved every 10 minutes. There are two ways you can mine, solo or with a pool. I currently have 1gh/s of hashing power. If I solo mined, it would take me 446 days to solve one block, unless I was really lucky. I mine with a pool, so my payout is steady. I get 1.6 bitcoins a month at the current difficultly. GPU's are about to become obsolete because ASIC's are really hitting the market. ASIC's take mining to the next level. I'm not sure what comes after ASIC though.
At this point, if you want to get into bitcoin's you'd probably be better off trying to buy and sell them.