What is with the bitcoin obsession?

Another potential problem I was thinking about is what would happen when we reach 2040 and the production of bitcoins stop, and the supply of bitcoins decreases because they're lost or some computers break.

It turns out the solution is very simple: Allow bitcoins to be divided into smaller fractions, i.e., into more than 8 decimal places.
 
hazek said:
AFAIK that's the plan if the need should come..
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Maybe by 2040 it would be technologically feasible to divide a bitcoin up to any fraction the owner wants to. That would solve the problem permanently. No further fixes would be required ever again.
 
As I've previously noted, I'm involved with the Canadian Pirate Party and therefore have to be aware of it - I'm also a computer programmer so I'm interested in it from that standpoint. So, a few thoughts ...

What bitcoin really is is software - bitcoin is a computer program. It is open source. It seems to me that it is therefore completely possible to go and get the source code, change a few of the values and have a completely operational program meant to do something. The question is what?

Probably a few minutes would have me a fully functional "RonPaulCoin" program. I don't know what it could be used for but I can't see it being hard to do.

I've been mulling over its potential use as a voting mechanism. Bitcoin (the software) attributes are (supposedly) anonymity and security. Privacy and encryption.

What about using it for a ticket distribution system? You would set total "concertcoins" possible to be the size of the venue, say 1000, and then people interested in tickets would start "concertcoinmining" to get tickets to ...... sell for bitcoins? I don't know.

If we can make "ronpaulcoins" then anybody can make a project with the bitcoin software. It doesn't have to be used to create an economy in much the same way as you can use wordpress to make a static website - it doesn't matter that it is "weblog" software. If we want to change the way that the code works we can and so maybe we want "ronpaulcoins" to be mined by, I don't know, doing volunteer work is a wild, unexamined idea, for an example. I don't know what use it might be to have a ronpaulcoin - maybe back the ronpaulcoins with actual meeting(s) with Ron Paul? Value it at 10 meetings at 100,000 ronpaulcoins a meeting so 1 million ronpaulcoins are needed - to get them you'd do volunteer work and I suppose that people would have to accumulate enough ronpaulcoins so maybe they'd pay actual cash for them and then we'd see what the market is - how much a ronpaulcoin is worth.

I just came up with that as I was typing so it is probably completely ludicrous and would encourage hoarding, etc but I was just imagining a fund raising vehicle that was driven by a volunteer economy built on bitcoin software.

Anyway, I just think that as we follow this extremely interesting experiment that we should not ignore other uses that the software may enable.
 
farrar said:
Yes, i was a bit disappointed too. I was going to sell my bitcoins, since I believe they are overvalued right now. When I found out coinpal was down, i had to do it via mtgox. Made a 350% return on my initial investment about 2 months ago. back then 1BTC:0.85USD. BTC economy is expanding faster than Bitcoin preduction, and the currency is deflating rapidly. Once this recent media hype dies down, I will buy back in and continue riding the bitcoin train.
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......... #$%^$ 3$% $#%$# %$#% %$%$ @#$#@$ ^$#^%^ 8 78^%&^%&^%&%^&%^&^%&^% ......

$26.70 who would have guessed in such a short time.... my god I am so blowed. to think i alomst droped 200 dollars in these things when they were 89 cents a piece.... son of a gun!
 
Does anyone have a rough exchange rate or about how many bitcoins can be mined based on your processor power?
 
Fox McCloud said:
Does anyone have a rough exchange rate or about how many bitcoins can be mined based on your processor power?
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It varies wildly. ATI cards can be dramatically more cost efficient depending on the model you purchase. Nvidia cards produce ~75-80% less hash/s than similarly-priced (and similarly-clocked) ATI cards. On top of that, overclocking with just a stock air cooler can increase hash rate by up to 40%. On top of that, difficulty is constantly fluctuating in huge #s, and how aggressive you let the miners run at has a big impact, as well -- trying out different flags for miners, and different kernals can lead to 15-20% increase in hash rate.

There is a really nice spreadsheet which takes into account a great number of variables @ http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=7531.0 but it won't provide what you asked for, and I don't think anyone's done the time to average processors' BTC production per clock speeds since clock speed is a poor indicator of BTC production and mining difficulty is constantly changing.

Or if you were talking about CPUs exclusively -- if your electricity costs over $.15/KWh, you'll probably see a loss. 4 Phenom IIs @ 3.4 GHz produce 12.2 MH/s fwiw. 14.4 MH/s when bumped up to 4 GHz. 14.4MH/s (using 140w CPU, excluding power draw of other components) translates to ~.7 BTC/month excluding pool operator fees (and transaction fees) at the current difficulty. That comes to about $20/month in revenue -- @ $.15 KW/h electricity, you'll be well into the red ($15/mo just to operate the CPU).

(12.2/4)/4= .7625 MH/s per GHz per core on Phenom II @ stock speed.
(14.4/4)/4= .9 MH/s per GHz per core on Phenom II w/modest OC.

Or, roughly .04865 BTC/month per GHz per CPU Core on Phenom II w/modest OC. Or, $1.26/mo in revenue per GHz per core (@ $25.9USD/1BTC).
 
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Thanks for the information--my electricity costs are listed at 9 cents per Kw/H...but if you include all the fees and other charges, it's actually 13 cents per Kw/H, so it doesn't sound as though it would be that economical to engage in, especially considering my primary computer is really the only one that could generate any decent amount, each month.
 
my laptop stays on 24/7 my GPU used to run Folding@home. it now runs GUIminer. 145 Mhash/s.. It is a ATI mobility radeon 5870.

though I still run F@H on the CPU. for whatever reason my GpU mhash/s drops to like 40 when the cpu starts mining. and the CPU only does 2 Mhash/s anyway.
 
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so why don't we discuss how it actually works, here and not just links

your computer solves problems, how are the problems generated? how do they get harder to solve? what if someone figures out a fourmula to solve the "problems" faster that normal mining?
 
steve005 said:
your computer solves problems, how are the problems generated? how do they get harder to solve? what if someone figures out a fourmula to solve the "problems" faster that normal mining?
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then you'll solve a problem that hundreds if not thousands of researchers have been unsuccessfully trying to solve for many years. it's not impossible, but not expected.
 
You can't buy anything with bitcoin. It seems the only reason people are buying is because the price is going up. Of course people have to value it and buy it before the price could get bid up, but I think this valuation is only rooted in future expectations. Future expections that seem, what is the word I am looking for, baseless. Reading the bitcoin forums, the users are like "true believers", its like a political cause for them to promote bitcoin, it just seems like a weird way for a currency to start. There isn't anything to buy, yet it seems a lot of the people on the bitcoin forum are wary of "hoarding". I mean if no one ever uses bitcoins to buy things, what happens? So I keep seeing people buy things like alpaca socks and things they ordinarily would never buy, to do "their part" for bitcoin.

I'm only interested in buying, in order to hoard and (hopefully) watch the value of my bitcoins sky rocket. But I get the feeling there is something missing for bitcoin to become a viable currency, and thus I'm wary that if I buy and hoard it will just bite me in the ass one day. Maybe I'm just not used to doing something so very speculative? Thoughts?
 
Andrew-Austin said:
You can't buy anything with bitcoin. It seems the only reason people are buying is because the price is going up. Of course people have to value it and buy it before the price could get bid up, but I think this valuation is only rooted in future expectations. Future expections that seem, what is the word I am looking for, baseless. Reading the bitcoin forums, the users are like "true believers", its like a political cause for them to promote bitcoin, it just seems like a weird way for a currency to start. There isn't anything to buy, yet it seems a lot of the people on the bitcoin forum are wary of "hoarding". I mean if no one ever uses bitcoins to buy things, what happens? So I keep seeing people buy things like alpaca socks and things they ordinarily would never buy, to do "their part" for bitcoin.

I'm only interested in buying, in order to hoard and (hopefully) watch the value of my bitcoins sky rocket. But I get the feeling there is something missing for bitcoin to become a viable currency, and thus I'm wary that if I buy and hoard it will just bite me in the ass one day. Maybe I'm just not used to doing something so very speculative? Thoughts?
Click to expand...

it makes sense to buy drugs online only with bitcoins. there are many transactions one wants to do anonymously. bitcoins are the best for that.

so those merchants will accept bitcoins. that will give bitcoins some value. then others will want to take advantage of the low transaction cost. since bitcoins have some value, they can do it. so you have now more uses for bitcoins... and so on.

i'm not absolutely sure they will work. but it's worth trying.
 
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steve005 said:
so why don't we discuss how it actually works, here and not just links

your computer solves problems, how are the problems generated? how do they get harder to solve? what if someone figures out a fourmula to solve the "problems" faster that normal mining?
Click to expand...

The difficulty adjusts to the network hashing speed to keep the generation ratio stable. If someone discovers a software that produces more with the same hardawre the difficulty will go up to keep production rate stable.

Andrew-Austin said:
You can't buy anything with bitcoin. It seems the only reason people are buying is because the price is going up. Of course people have to value it and buy it before the price could get bid up, but I think this valuation is only rooted in future expectations. Future expections that seem, what is the word I am looking for, baseless. Reading the bitcoin forums, the users are like "true believers", its like a political cause for them to promote bitcoin, it just seems like a weird way for a currency to start. There isn't anything to buy, yet it seems a lot of the people on the bitcoin forum are wary of "hoarding". I mean if no one ever uses bitcoins to buy things, what happens? So I keep seeing people buy things like alpaca socks and things they ordinarily would never buy, to do "their part" for bitcoin.

I'm only interested in buying, in order to hoard and (hopefully) watch the value of my bitcoins sky rocket. But I get the feeling there is something missing for bitcoin to become a viable currency, and thus I'm wary that if I buy and hoard it will just bite me in the ass one day. Maybe I'm just not used to doing something so very speculative? Thoughts?
Click to expand...

I just bought some computer cables yesterday with bitcoins.

The quick rise is a bit scary but you have to think that its a new currency and the publicity has given it a incredible demand. Non conventional behaviour is expected at the beginning.
 
So these bitcoins sound cool and all, but what can you actually buy with them?
 
iGGz said:
So these bitcoins sound cool and all, but what can you actually buy with them?
Click to expand...
Silver rounds @ spot, Anything from Amazon with no fee using non-Amazon-affiliated service, anything from Newegg (believe that service has a fee), excellent roasted coffee beans @ bitbrew.net, all sorts of foodstuff @ bitmunchies.com, drugs off Silk Road ofc, other sites exist - and ofc there's the large # of listings of stuff for sale using BTC @ https://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?board=26.0 - PDAs, Wiis, gfx cards, games, webhosting, etc.
 
Andrew-Austin said:
Too bad people don't buy porn.
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lol!

there is a lot of free porn but you're very misinformed if you believe people don't buy it online.

Heh, maybe bitcoiners should promote the currency to the owners of porn cites though.
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your snarky posts usually come off well, but now you're just making yourself look like a fool. bitcoin was not designed to be used in a city. it's purpose is not to be used in every possible transaction. when it comes to transactions, bitcoins:

1. allow people to transact anonymously
2. allow transactions across great distances at a cost of zero
 
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