Dan
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Registered: 22nd Apr 02
Location: Gorleston on Sea, Norfolk
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Ha, just fucked about for half hour.
Managed to get it mining. I got a hash accepted (yay!!) fuck knows what it meant but can say ive mined now lol
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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Too late...
I read about in 2010 - bitcoins were fractions of pence back then... a guy exchanged 10000 bit coins for a $15 pizza through a forum at the time.
Everyone labelled them as worthless.
In 2011 they hit $1 per bitcoin, piqued my interest, I started looking into getting some, throwing £100 at it and forgetting about it - but it was hard to get any, you needed a US bank account, a verified US address amongst other things.
Later in 2011 it hit $15 per BTC and I sent a frustrated email to my friends about how hard it was to get any.
Shortly after this I gave up - mining was already too difficult without some serious hardware.
- In 2012 it hit $150 ...  ... thankfully crashed shortly after down to $30.
In 2013 I was chatting to someone about his house extension which he paid for by selling when they were $150!
Later in 2013 prices rise, breaks through the original $150, silk road increases popularity with a real use outside of normal currency, many news articles circulate about stories of early adopters making fortunes, China gains interest and invests heavily as it moves them away from the dollar and recently due to the surge in price (just before the crash, although probably not a particularly big one due to the demand right now) it's been all over the mainstream media.
If you got in at 2010 or 2011 you could be rich right now, however most people who have BTC are actually 'holding it' expecting the price to rise... this in turn (lack of supply compared to current demand) is one of the reasons for continued price rises.
If everyone who had BTC from the early days started to cash out the price would crash immediately.
Instead, the few wanting to get out now (I read about a guy who cashed out $12 million recently from 21000 he had from the early days) are basically cashing out by using the money flooding in from either China or 'Average joe' speculators that are turning up too late to the bubble (just read about it in the media).
I'm not sure about the long term use case - this could be debated / speculated on for a long time.
What I do know, is trying to get in now from a get rich point of view it's too late. All you are doing is fueling the pyramid and letting early adopters cash out at a decent price.
However, that said - have 'some BTC' and just holding onto them for 'interests sake' is no bad idea, infact that's my position - I've got them just to see what happens.
I spoke to a whole load of people about this at a tech event in London on Friday when the prices was still rising. At the time I said I expected it to eventually level off at a price when the buy side weakens compared to the sell side ... once people who are speculating see it has stopped rising, they'll potentially feel they're at the top of the bubble and cash out... this will cause a flood to the market and a drop in price, this fear about the drop in price will cause recent investors to potentially panic sell and the price to crash further...
... However, since this happened in 2012 and it went from $150->$30 and we now have seen it go back up to $1200 - people who were waiting for a crash, will jump in once the price starts dropping hoping for a cheap entry in the ever increasing train of price rises... this again - will stabilise / raise the price.
If the prices is struggling (resistance in trading terms) due to a lack of buyers at that price / compared to sellers - then at some point people may feel the fun times are over (for example if it slowly and steadily starts to decline over weeks) and cash out on mass ... when that occurs the prices drops faster and will crash to something quite low again as everyone tries to liquidate before hitting the bottom... alternatively, more media jumps on board and we go through one final cycle before the true 'average joes' who rarely even check the internet / tech try to jump on board.
...
Bottom line.
Sure, buy 1 or some... but don't invest your life savings in, you're basically funding someone elses new porsche / house purchase who just got in early.
[Edited on 01-12-2013 by Paul_J]
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Paul_J
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Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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Note the people who you read about making millions are the exception not the rule too...
I know a lot of people who say bought / mined thousands when they were worthless and when they hit what seemed like silly money for something so pointless (at the time) - they sold up...
Like a guy who sold 2406 when they were $2.50 each. Netting him a cool $6000... when if he'd sold them now they'd be worth nearly $3 million.
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Ian
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Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
User status: Online
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I'm still surprised there's enough real money to make something like that worth millions.
You need the millions there in dollars, which means you need lots of people each paying a thousand dollars.
What's your position on all the other upstart ones Paul? Worth a look? I would think they have to be - bitcoin proved its possible for them to appreciate, will the others not just replicate that?
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AlunJ
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Registered: 3rd Apr 07
Location: Newport
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I start mining a few months back through slush's pool, bought an ASIC miner, but the power and data use was ridiculous for minimal return. Not worth it now.
[Edited on 02-12-2013 by AlunJ]
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Ben G
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Registered: 12th Jan 07
Location: Essex
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Wow. Reading this thread has been a proper mind fuck  I honestly have no clue what you guys are going on about.
Mining? Fake money being real? Wtf?
Are people playing games and mining some things that seem to be worth money in the real world?
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Dan
Premium Member
Registered: 22nd Apr 02
Location: Gorleston on Sea, Norfolk
User status: Offline
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left the minerd running for a few hours while on the laptop and stuff.
I was successful in grabbing 17 final parts of the blocks I think. Which now means I have 17 shares in the pool?
Either way its works out about 0.0003 of a coin lol
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John
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Registered: 30th Jun 03
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quote:
Originally posted by Paul_J
Something massive happened on the internet, I knew all about it and that would have taken off and made me a millionaire but something else happened that wasn't my fault that stopped me doing it.
I know Paul, you've had hard luck with almost every single internet fad that's happened for the past 30 years.
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Brett
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Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
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Dan
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Registered: 22nd Apr 02
Location: Gorleston on Sea, Norfolk
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quote:
Originally posted by John
quote:
Originally posted by Paul_J
Something massive happened on the internet, I knew all about it and that would have taken off and made me a millionaire but my dad stopped me doing it.
I know Paul, you've had hard luck with almost every single internet fad that's happened for the past 30 years.
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Gary
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Registered: 22nd Nov 06
Location: West Yorkshire
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quote:
Originally posted by Ben G
Wow. Reading this thread has been a proper mind fuck I honestly have no clue what you guys are going on about.
Mining? Fake money being real? Wtf?
Are people playing games and mining some things that seem to be worth money in the real world?
This.
Techy folk use normal words (mining) for somthing that'll have no resemblance to what we think of when someone says 'mining'
I also am confused by the whole thing tbh.
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Paul_J
Member
Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
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quote:
Originally posted by Ian
I'm still surprised there's enough real money to make something like that worth millions.
You need the millions there in dollars, which means you need lots of people each paying a thousand dollars.
What's your position on all the other upstart ones Paul? Worth a look? I would think they have to be - bitcoin proved its possible for them to appreciate, will the others not just replicate that?
Ian, so was I... I believed the buy side would not support the sell side for the recent prices, but the money came from China - due to the fact you can observe the buy / sell orders, you can actually see chinese people buying lots of $1,000,000 -> $5,000,000 at a time! The guy who cashed out $12 mil sold them to chinese investors... if it was to end tomorrow it would lose a lot of money in China - but I'm fearful that instead people will keep jumping on the bandwagon and buy out the Chinese investors.
http://www.chrisnorstrom.com/2013/12/confession-i-could-have-made-128-grand-in-bitcoin-but-lost-1500/
Quite an amusing read... this is the thing, even if you did get in early - a lot now feel gutted they sold too early. The ironic thing with this guy who says 'I could've had $100,000 now' ... well if he still had them he'd have probably sold them before they hit $100,000 and still be kicking himself... and even if he did sell for 100k, say it kept going up - he'd make a post in a years time about 'I could've had a million'.
So Ian I was at a tech event (techstars HQ party) in London on Friday and a lot of nerds were running around talking about the other currencies, litecoin / feather coin ... now in my opinion these currencies are more worthless than bitcoin as no one is using them for purchases, China is not investing in these only BTC etc... however, as they noted - there is a F.O.M.O (Fear of missing out) effect caused by the rise in BTC. Which in turn makes people move towards the smaller currencies and thus raises their price.
The guys I were talking to said they were mining feathercoin and making about $70 a day from it at current price, with the belief that it'll track the rise / fall of price of BTC (so if BTC keeps going up, then so will feathercoin).
I'm going to just buy £100 of both litecoin and feather coin and just forget about them.
If BTC crashes hard any time soon (doubtful as too many speculators will prop the price back up), I'll get in a bit bigger - as I believe there's one more big cycle left before either the price reaches a stabilisation point or it dies forever. One key element is that many of the holders of BTC who still have a lot are not cashing out - they believe that BTC is the future currency and USD is dead, so why change BTC into a worthless currency (USD lol).
I keep meaning to dig out one of my old laptops and desktops too - this work machine has a wallet.dat on it from back when I originally looked at it, but I was more likely to have mined using my home machines and may even find some on there
Regarding mining, you have to be careful - as a lot of people got burnt by that with BTC. They would mine with some hardware, make some BTC, then the difficulty would rise, so they would sell their BTC to pay for expensive mining gear... which would then make some BTC, then the difficulty would rise again... sell the BTC to pay for more mining gear... etc... one guy spent $150k's worth on mining gear, which now is worthless due to rise of difficulty (and why you're unlikely to make a dent on a standard pc any more) - but if he'd have just held on to his BTC and stopped mining completely he'd have cashed out big.
At least with litecoin / feather coin - they use a different algo which avoids 'ASIC' miners becoming the standard and instead focueses on GPU mining - but at the end of the day, people will find a way to game it.
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Paul_J
Member
Registered: 6th Jun 02
Location: London
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by John
quote:
Originally posted by Paul_J
Something massive happened on the internet, I knew all about it and that would have taken off and made me a millionaire but something else happened that wasn't my fault that stopped me doing it.
I know Paul, you've had hard luck with almost every single internet fad that's happened for the past 30 years.
I'm doing ok though.
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willay
Moderator
Organiser: South East, National Events
Premium Member
Registered: 10th Nov 02
Location: Roydon, Essex
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http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-x-KNCMiner-KNC-bitcoin-miner-IN-HAND-total-1-7-TH-s-2-JUPITER-2-SATURN-/200996410959?pt=UK_Computing_Other_Computing_Networking&hash=item2ecc51d64f
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Balling
Premium Member
Registered: 7th Apr 04
Location: Denmark
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Gary
quote:
Originally posted by Ben G
Wow. Reading this thread has been a proper mind fuck I honestly have no clue what you guys are going on about.
Mining? Fake money being real? Wtf?
Are people playing games and mining some things that seem to be worth money in the real world?
This.
Techy folk use normal words (mining) for somthing that'll have no resemblance to what we think of when someone says 'mining'
I also am confused by the whole thing tbh.
Think of it as mining gold. It's a metal that has a certain value because it has a certain demand.
You can get gold by digging for it or by purchasing it.
This is mostly the same, except it's not a metal but a certain type of data.
Instead of digging a hole in the ground you are (well, your computer is) calculating a path through a bunch of other data.
Do a google for "ELI5 bitcoin" if you want some easy to grasp info on the subject.
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Dan
Premium Member
Registered: 22nd Apr 02
Location: Gorleston on Sea, Norfolk
User status: Offline
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Tempted by that willay. Can we get 1000 members in here to buy it :/
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Dom
Member
Registered: 13th Sep 03
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by willay
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/4-x-KNCMiner-KNC-bitcoin-miner-IN-HAND-total-1-7-TH-s-2-JUPITER-2-SATURN-/200996410959?pt=UK_Computing_Other_Computing_Networking&hash=item2ecc51d64f
If only that could do Litecoin 
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Ben G
Member
Registered: 12th Jan 07
Location: Essex
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Balling
quote:
Originally posted by Gary
quote:
Originally posted by Ben G
Wow. Reading this thread has been a proper mind fuck I honestly have no clue what you guys are going on about.
Mining? Fake money being real? Wtf?
Are people playing games and mining some things that seem to be worth money in the real world?
This.
Techy folk use normal words (mining) for somthing that'll have no resemblance to what we think of when someone says 'mining'
I also am confused by the whole thing tbh.
Think of it as mining gold. It's a metal that has a certain value because it has a certain demand.
You can get gold by digging for it or by purchasing it.
This is mostly the same, except it's not a metal but a certain type of data.
Instead of digging a hole in the ground you are (well, your computer is) calculating a path through a bunch of other data.
Do a google for "ELI5 bitcoin" if you want some easy to grasp info on the subject.
Even your ''simple'' is a mind fuck to me
Is it a game?
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Balling
Premium Member
Registered: 7th Apr 04
Location: Denmark
User status: Offline
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quote:
Originally posted by Ben G
Is it a game?
Nope, it's a currency in the same way as GBP, USD or gold, except it's virtual instead of physical. You mine it by extracting data in stead of digging in the dirt.
It IS a bit arbitrary and not something that can be fully explained in a few paragraphs. Everything I've said is oversimplifications to a large degree.
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Tiger
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Registered: 12th Jun 01
Location: Leicestershire Drives:Astra VXR
User status: Offline
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When bitcoin mining takes over your life (and house)!
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Ian
Site Administrator
Registered: 28th Aug 99
Location: Liverpool
User status: Online
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Jesus Christ.
Guess they're fairly energy efficient per cycle.
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DannyB
Premium Member
Registered: 6th Feb 08
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dat cable management
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Brett
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Registered: 16th Dec 02
Location: Manchester
User status: Offline
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http://sudogift.com/ 
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Aidan-Fleming
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Registered: 17th May 08
Location: Westhill, Aberdeenshire
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What the fck are you's on about haha
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Aidan-Fleming
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Registered: 17th May 08
Location: Westhill, Aberdeenshire
User status: Offline
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Two weeks ago there was somthing in the paper about a guy dealing a drug enterprise worth millions and millions. Somthing to do with bit coins you paid in. So the police couldn't catch him as it took them years and years to have evidence.
I then posted on Facebook. And about an hour later I got sent a website address that's only accessed by getting sent the address. You can't search for it etc and no one can see you on it.
You can buy anything illegal and I mean anything!! All with bit coins. From fake Credit cards, to cash machine hackers, devices to put into cash machines, guns, ammo, any type of drug.
and the funny bit is, it's all sent via courier lol
"The courier is brilliant, he's a drug dealer and dosent even know it" Lol
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