dave111223

We've certainly found it easy and worth it.

You mentioned getting stuff from overseas - if you haven't yet discovered, Bambiweb has a lot of good second hand stuff, so does Craigslist - if your here long term, both good resources for finding hard to get stuff. If your are going overseas, try and get a good baby carrier - best thing ever!

People seriously use second hand reusable diapers that they bought online?...wow

How long does a disposable nappy stay in the environment?

Anyone know?

It stays in my environment until it's pooped, then it's gone from my environment...which works out great for me.

When we bought our house we where looking in different moo bans in

70 sqw land 200sqm house 3.0 million baht

1 ngan land 200sqm house 4.1 million baht

Moo baans can charge some eye wateringly overpriced amounts for extra lot size.

We bought land for 15K per wah, about 5 minutes up the street there is a moo baan selling their extra land for something like 75K per wah...

Note that if they tell you the size in square Wah they are probably referring to the lot size (size of the land) as opposed to the living area within the house which would generally be in square meters.

I find it odd here that people often list the size of their land when advertising the size of the house..."How big is your house?...3 acres..." type of mentality.

And that is the rub isn't it? I'm guessing half the attraction of Bitcoin (apart from its current speculative potential and coolness factor) is that it is attractive to the anti government libertarian types who have a years supply of tin food stored in remote hut in Idaho. But if they are aiming for currency status, then what happens when things start to go pear shaped and bit coin starts to devalue? Who steps in?

One one hand it is being advertised as a currency, but in actual fact for the moment at least, it is more or less a transmission mechanism of value between real currencies which is also being used as a speculative tool/invstment option - albeit a volatile one.

Note that if you are in a remote hut (dooms day prepper type) then it wouldn't make much sense to support bitcoin, as bitcoin requires power/internet/infrastructure in order to work. If civilization collapses then bitcoins will be worth nothing. I think dooms day preppers would be more into precious metals or bullets as their currency.

You are correct that many of bitcoin's current advocates are for an extremely minimal government; personally I am for total market freedom....let the market decide all. Bitcoin goes hand in hand with this philosophy as it is purely market controlled in every aspect. No one "steps in" with bitcoins, the market decides their value, period, I'm fine with that.

One could make the argument that without government controls we would be over exposed to human nature; panic in the markets, volatility etc...well maybe humans are capable of becoming more enlighten if given the chance. Or maybe you are right and humans are just dumb and need the smartest of us to control the rest with financial controls; I guess we'll never know unless we give it a try.

I would think being in Thailand a higher percent of other foreigners would feel similarly...I mean, you didn't move to Thailand because you prefer a nanny state?

So then, if there is any benefit in using bitcoin to cheaply transfer money, basic economics will tell you that benefit will be arbitraged away quite quickly. Then all bitcoin becomes is an extra step that happens when you transfer currencies - and why would you want that extra step of risk when you are doing a transfer?

This is a short term benefit in the here and now. If bitcoins were widely adopted in the future then there would be no need to exchange them at all.

My point being that they are already marginally useful right now, today. In the future they could be extremely useful.

However this is all trivial as imagine a future when you get paid 1 bitcoin in the US, you send 1 bitcoin to your friend in Thailand, and they buy stuff in Thailand for that 1 bitcoin. How much time/money would that cost you? (almost none)

And a we a seeing quite clearly in Europe, a single currency with no common fiscal policy is working oh so well....

With Bitcoin there is no "fiscal policy" at all (in the traditional sense), as there is no centralized authority with control over the money supply.

No i mean 18 baht total. See my calculations in the original post.

In your post you said:

"Then you'd need to buy some bitcoins in your home country, let's say you are in the USA you could use:

http://bitinstant.com or https://localbitcoins.com/ to buy $10 worth (as per your example). Let's say you use bitinstant which charges you 3.99% fee."

Hence my comment about the percentage fee. Presumably there is another such fee at the other end.

PayPal and Moneybookers are both more or less instant, and you should be able to avoid at least one of the exchange fees with them.

When it looks like you are getting something for nothing it is probably because you aren't.

The 3.99% fee at bitinstant it subtracted from the mt. gox market rate. Having calculate all exchange costs and fees etc... it costs 18THB via Bitcoin, cost 20THB Paypal, when comparing sending $10 from US to Thailand to handing someone at $10 in Thailand.

I have listed out all the calculations in my previous posts but you seem to just ignore all this and "No it must cost more" without giving any of your own calculations.

Let me list the calculations again as simply as possible:

Bitcoin

Pay $10 to Bitinstant = 0.079 received from Bitinstant

Sell 0.079 bitcoins to website in Thailand = receive 260THB

Paypal

Send $10 via Paypal = Friend receives $9.30 USD

Withdraw $9.30 to Thai Bank = receive 258THB

Cash

Give $10 bill to friend

Bring $10 bill to Bangkok Bank exchange booth = receive 278THB

However this is all trivial as imagine a future when you get paid 1 bitcoin in the US, you send 1 bitcoin to your friend in Thailand, and they buy stuff in Thailand for that 1 bitcoin. How much time/money would that cost you? (almost none)

I have returned computer parts to Banana IT at Pantip after several years (under 3 year warranty) and had them replace the parts, such as a video card.

As previously mentioned: Can anyone offer a way that is cheaper than 18baht and faster than 1 day to send $10 from USA to Thailand (i think not)

I suppose you mean 18 Baht plus two lots of 3.99% exchange weighting/commission. And I think the answer to that would probably be PayPal, or Moneybookers.

No i mean 18 baht total. See my calculations in the original post.

Send someone $10 using bitcoin, they receive 260THB

Hand someone a $10 bill in person, they receive 278THB

Let compare the process to sending with Paypal

You send $10 to your friend in Thailand via Paypal, they receive $9.30 (3.9% + $0.30 fee) they withdraw the money via Paypal and receive 258THB (Paypal offering 27.84 exchange rate)

And the process takes about 5-7 business days!

So with Paypal it cost 20THB and took 5-7 business days, with Bitcoin it cost 18THB and took 1 day.

Note that with bitcoin you could have shopped around for a better price than bitinstant (such as via local people) then it would been cheaper.

Of course Paypal may decide that it was "odd" that you decided to deposit $10 and then transfer it directly to Thailand, they freeze your account, you then have to spend the next 2 months doing a phone dance and sending in documents in order to figure out where your $10 went.

So let me get this bitcoin thing straight. A bit coin is:

- a medium of payment which requires a computer to buy and sell

- it takes 10 minutes to facilitate a trade

- to 'earn' a bit coin (other than having to buy one) rather than getting one of a product of our own labours (ie something we are good at, whether you are a butcher, baker or offshore driller) you have to again log on and compete against some algorithm which some MIT PhD has scammed anyway.

- you have no broader reference point as to the value of the bit coin, whether it is the underlying functioning of the economy of the government - or in this case - the non government.

Yep, a speculation tool for nerds, the stupid, or the easily led.

When you want to send some money from the other side of the world to your Tirak, 10 minutes and little or no fee sounds pretty good to me. She can convert it with her smartphone app whilst skyping with her other sponsors.

If there's any work I can do for you, I'll be happy to accept bitcoin, litecoin, baht, or dollars, gold, silver or whatever, makes little difference to me as they're interchangeable,

If I wanted to send you $10 wired through a bank, from USA to here, what would it cost me?

Can you explain that to me with a little more detail please?

Taking the above example, lets say I want to send $10 to someone in Thailand.

First I need to get a Bitcoin. How do I do this? Presumably I have to buy one.

The Bitcoin is worth $160 but I only want to send $10 so I'm assuming that I can buy a fraction of a Bitcoin, in this particular case I would purchase 0.0625 of a Bitcoin.

To do this I would have to transfer $10 from my bank account to Bitcoin and get confirmation that I now own 0.0625 in Bitcoin.

I then transfer the 0.0625 Bitcoin to the person in Thailand.

The person in Thailand having received notification of the transfer now wants to spend their baht on a few beers so they need to get their 0.0625 Bitcoin withdrawn from their Bangkok Bank at the ATM.

How does Bitcoin get the baht into the receivers Bangkok Bank account?

And this is done in 10 mins for little or no charge?

Does the Bangkok bank have an agreement with Bitcoin?

First you'd need to setup a Bitcoin wallet on your computer, and the person you intended sending the money to would also need a Bitcoin wallet on their computer.

Then you'd need to buy some bitcoins in your home country, let's say you are in the USA you could use:

http://bitinstant.com or https://localbitcoins.com/ to buy $10 worth (as per your example). Let's say you use bitinstant which charges you 3.99% fee. So you could get about 0.079 bitcoins (at current market price).

With bitinstant you pay cash via a local store cashpoint, such as Walmart or CSV. So you go down to walmart with your $10 and when you get back home you see that you have .079 bitcoins in your computer wallet.

You then send this .079 bitcoins to your friend in Thailand (this is the part that is instant). And your friends sells the bitcoins on a website such as the ones mentioned by Buckaroo. At the current rate they would be able to sell the .079 bitcoins for 260 THB, which would be transferred to their Thai bank account.

So based on this example with these exchanges it cost you a total of 18THB to transfer the $10, when compared to the Bangkok bank $10 bill exchange rate of 27.81 (if you had handed them a $10 bill in Thailand)...and took total of probably about 1 day to complete these exchanges.

As previously mentioned: Can anyone offer a way that is cheaper than 18baht and faster than 1 day to send $10 from USA to Thailand (i think not)

Why would "Pantip Plaza" have a customer service desk to handle returning products? All the shops in there are independent traders, all they do it rent shop space from Pantip Plaza.

I can't imagine that in your home country if you bought products at a shop in a mall, you'd expect the mall itself to handle your returns? You deal with the shop where you bought the stuff, not the mall itself.

Buying from the Street= Buying from Pantip

It's just pretty silly that you got ripped of by a shop inside a mall which contains 100s of shops. Therefore you think every single shop inside the mall, plus the mall itself ripped you off? It doesn't even sense.

You still refer to it as "Buying from Pantip"..."Pantip" doesn't actually sell anything, so i'm not sure how you bought stuff from them? You bought from a shop (ie Banana IT, Data IT, Computers XYZ etc..)

Surely they have to do something soon.

It is not just the expats, just about all nationalities, which are being hit hard but the businesses that trade with overseas companies could find it getting rough with their customers seeking cheaper suppliers.

Inevitably it will hit the tourist areas with people who come here for a holiday and the ex-pat living off his pensions, finding their currency is no longer enough due to a 10 -25% loss in value in the last 6 months. Yes most expatswill stay and touristswill still come to Thailand but less Baht means less goods being bought.

This is made worse by inflation here which has been quite noticeable over the past year.

Will not hold my breath though, the powers that be in the Thai government will continue to do the same as always, talk but no action.

What would you suggest they do? Get out the printing press and try and keep up with Japan and US in devaluing the currency? This would send inflation even higher as the Chinese will not be waiting to eatup all the newly printed bahts as they are with the newly minted debased dollars.

Thai government is really damned if they do, damned if they don't...they are basically just a long for the ride

Keep in mind that many IT people here are working under the radar and don't like to be questioned by random people about "What are you doing in Thailand" and take some warming up.

Within the first 5 minutes I might decide to tell you I sit in an armchair starring at the wall all day, and maybe mumble something about internet...stuff...

There is really nothing to be gained by extolling your own endeavors to strangers, other than to massage your own ego.

I may have to get into the bitcoin manufacturing business. Looks like good money in it!

In most cases you will not be able to make a profit mining bitcoins, especially in Thailand.

In order to be profitable with mining you need to:

- Have access to low cost electricity

- Cool environment (so that you don't have to spend electricity on cooling your equipment)...Thailand is hot obviously.

- Have access to low cost computer hardware....computer hardware is not very cheap in Thailand

- Have the ability to tweak your hardware to get the highly possible output at the lowest cost

If you are planning on investing in mining I'd suggest at least waiting for the new ASIC mining units to become readily available, as they will render any other hardward, that you may have invested in, as obsolete.

However you could get into it not for the "profit" but more of a means to converting your fiat into bitcoins via your hardware/electricity bills.

So let me get this bitcoin thing straight. A bit coin is:

- a medium of payment which requires a computer to buy and sell

- it takes 10 minutes to facilitate a trade

- to 'earn' a bit coin (other than having to buy one) rather than getting one of a product of our own labours (ie something we are good at, whether you are a butcher, baker or offshore driller) you have to again log on and compete against some algorithm which some MIT PhD has scammed anyway.

- you have no broader reference point as to the value of the bit coin, whether it is the underlying functioning of the economy of the government - or in this case - the non government.

Yep, a speculation tool for nerds, the stupid, or the easily led.

Bitcoin transactions are instant, the 10 minutes you are referring to the time it takes to "confirm" transactions. Meaning that in day-to-day transactions with trusted parties you can consider your payment received right away. If you don't know the other party or the transaction is large then you would want to wait for several layers of confirmation (1 confirmation layer per 10 minutes).

To "earn" a bitcoin you do some work and get paid a bitcoin. To "earn" a dollar do you go to the mill create some rag-pulp, form it into paper, then go to the printing press and "earn" it? No.

What you are referring to is "mining", which is the process whereby new bitcoins are created are a fixed rate and distributed randomly to people running the software. Seeing as there is no centralized authority to print/distributor the money in the same way that fiat is distributed.

You are correct that there is no broader reference point to the value of bitcoins. Bitcoins are only worth whatever someone is willing to pay for bitcoin right this instant, however over time these spot values become a reference point themselves.

Can someone explain this part of Bitcoin to me please?

Lets suppose I got in early, when the Bitcoin was worth $10. I bought ten of them so it cost me $100.

The Bitcoin is now worth $160 and I decide to sell my 10 Bitcoins, so I get $1600.

Now I gave only gave them $100 so where do they get the other $1,500 from ($1,600 - $100) to pay me my money?

Your question doesn't really make sense as your not buying/selling them to some mysterious "they" who just holds your cash while you hold their bitcoins.

You bought bitcoins from a real person, who took your real $100 and gave you 10 Bitcoins.

You later sold bitcoins to different real person, who gave you real $1600 for your 10 Bitcoins.

These 2 transactions are unrelated.

So my question is - what determines the "value" of a bitcoin?

In Real Estate the definition is: Market value - the estimated amount for which an asset or liability should exchange on the valuation date between a willing buyer and a willing seller in an arm's length transaction, after proper marketing and where the parties had each acted knowledgeably, prudently and without compulsion.^[2].

A post above also used the example of a stock. In either case there is an underlying asset: the physical property or the company. Same for any other investment. Even currencies, the USD for instance backed by "the full faith and credit of" the US government, are backed by something. The strength of each government determines value compared to the others.

So what is the "asset" behind the "value" of a bit coin? If nothing it sounds more like a ponzi scheme.

And they'll be "printing more"?

Sounds like a coin without a country..

It is not backed by any physical asset. The value in bitcoins are determined purely as to what someone is willing to pay for a bitcoin. A "bitcoin" being a value written into a digital ledger distributed to everyone; in essence a digital and indisputable representation of the value that each person possesses.

Basically how much are you willing to pay to have a portion of the fixed value within that ledger allocated to you.

Not everything that has value is a physical asset or representation of a physical asset; for example ideas, concepts etc.. can have "value" but they have no asset associated with them.

At to their value: if i started selling bits of half chewed gum, and all of sudden people decide they were worth $100 each, then $1000. Then at that time the gum would be "worth" whatever those people are willing to pay.

So the more poignant question would be "Why do people think bitcoins are worth something; but my half chewed gum is worth nothing?"

For a number of reasons:

- I can keep chewing more gum in unlimited qualities forever; bitcoins have a fixed limit and cannot be created at will.

- My gum cannot be easily divided and it's debatable whether two halves of my gum will have the same value as one full piece of gum; two halves of a bitcoin will always be exactly equal to 1 bitcoin.

- My gum may deteriorate over time but bitcoins can never be destroyed

- Bitcoins can used to transfer value over any distance instant; my gum cannot do this.

On the plus side my chewed gum can be used to fill cracks in walls; bitcoins cannot be used for this, however people do not seem to value this attribute very highly.

If you are not able to understand this; it's tempting to simple label it as "scam"; when I think a more appreciate response would be "I don't understand it; so it's not for me"

Bitcoins are a new concept which could not have been possible before the existence of distributed computer networks (fairly recent human history). It may turn out that the concept contains some fundamental fatal flaw which has not been seen yet and may die and be limited to the history books. However that will not mean it was a "scam".

It certainly is a "coin without a country..", this is why people value it.

Can someone explain this part of Bitcoin to me please?

Lets suppose I got in early, when the Bitcoin was worth $10. I bought ten of them so it cost me $100.

The Bitcoin is now worth $160 and I decide to sell my 10 Bitcoins, so I get $1600.

Now I gave only gave them $100 so where do they get the other $1,500 from ($1,600 - $100) to pay me my money?

Your question doesn't really make sense as your not buying/selling them to some mysterious "they" who just holds your cash while you hold their bitcoins.

You bought bitcoins from a real person, who took your real $100 and gave you 10 Bitcoins.

You later sold bitcoins to different real person, who gave you real $1600 for your 10 Bitcoins.

These 2 transactions are unrelated.

The point is that you don't have to do stuff like that with other sensitive systems like e.g. bank's internet banking. Relying exclusively on private keys makes a system inherently more vulnerable. Like it's said in the quoted article even if you put the keys on an encrypted drive the malware can lie dormant and wait for when you choose to access your wallet, which will require you to decrypt the keys.

If you are confident you can keep your computer safe and are willing to take the risk of using what is basically a not very secure system to protect your money, then good for you. But if the use of Bitcoins were to become more commonplace, malware will be written to exploit the vulnaribility of the system, and there will be people who lose their money (unless the security solution is changed).

Luckily, I don't have to worry about that, as I will not be buying any Bitcoins.

Edit: You are of course right that no system is 100% secure, but some come pretty close and others are very far from that goal.

Sophon

In the future 2 factor authentication could be developed for bitcoins. For example let say you split your private key into two halves. You keep one half and a 3rd party keeps the second half and you can only access the second half of the key using a OTP (such as a SMS or Yubikey) with the 3rd party. And the 3rd party never has access to the first half of your key, so they can't rip you off.

These are arbitrary issues that could be developed and improved as needed.

I would like to have a bitcoin. I will trade anyone one Dutch tulip bulb, or one French assignat for one.

The point is that they aren't at all limited. Others will create other rivals, and then there could be a flood. Bitcoin isn't limited as many think because it can be rivaled.

Unlike some commodities where the supply truly is finite, virtual currencies are unlimited. I see them as another fiat currency. What are they backed by? They are nothing but ones and zeros in computers. You don't even get paper and ink with them.

Have fun y'all. I bought US$9,500 worth of junk silver dollars this morning for $27 each. ($10,000 triggers some paperwork to the government I don't like. Less than that, pay cash and walk out anonymously.) If it all goes to h3ll, I can at least drill holes in them and use them for fishing weights.

I'd rather have 4 Morgan silver dollars in my hand than a bitcoin in cyberspace, but that's just me.

I hope y'all get rich.

It really is dreary to hear the "Tulip" example trotted out again and again; like you are so smart for having knowledge of this little historical tidbit. When it is clearly, at this point, not comparible if you have any knowledge of bitcoin.

Firstly the Tulip bubble hyped to crazy prices then crashed...end of story. Bitcoin has crashed and rebounded over and over again, which already nulifies the comparison from a trading point of view (were people hyping Tulips again 2 years after the original price crash?). Also on a technical level there is no comparison at all.

Can you please try and at least get some variation to your ignorant comparisons (maybe call them beanie babies next time might make you look smart). Neither Tulips or Beanie babies have any utility they provide only emotional gratification, whereas bitcoins have numerous utility functions.

Bitcoins would be more compariable to the .COM bubble; but we are still using the internet aren't we?

As for the limited supply one cannot consider creating rival virtual currencies as "increasing the supply of bitcoins".

If I start calling copper or aluminium a precious metal, will it effect the demand for gold? I have increased the supply of "precious metals" but I have not increased the supply of Gold. In the same way that creating additional currencies would be increasing the supply of virtal currencies, but not increasing the supply of bitcoins.

Nobody has answered my question yet. The way I understand it is that the original creator has in exchange for some software created xxxx amount of Bitcoins and sold them to the first buyers for x amount of Dollars.So hed must have earned some nice dosh.

Who says he doesn't keep creating Bitcoins or any other Monopoly money?

The original programmer create a program/protocol called "Bitcoin" where bitcoins were to be generated by the code every 10 minutes. Anyone could mine them from the start, by running a program on their computer, and getting a chance to get bitcoins every 10 minutes.

The original programmer mined the first block (50 bitcoins), at which point other people who were interested in it started mining and gained bitcoins also.

I'm not sure where you are getting all this "created bitcoins in exchange for software and then sold them to the first buyer"; this does not make any sense (logically how would you create bitcoins without any software, in exchange for software which in turn is required to create the bitcoins??) and is totally false. When bitcoins were first introduced they were worth nothing (no one was willing to pay anything for them)...so the original programmer was not able to sell his bitcoins for anything. After a few months/a year then people started offering a few cents to buy bitcoins from others and so on.

The origional programmer does not create bitcoins. Bitcoins are created by the code (for example if i write some code that types on the screen "Hello World" every 10 minutes would I be saying "Hello World" or would the code be saying "Hello World"? The code would be saying it. Since the programmer does not have the ability to change the code that is already installed on peoples computers, then he does not have the ability change the total number of bitcoins generated, or change their frequence etc...

Bitcoin is an opensource project, meaning that there are now many programmers. You can be a programmer if you want. You just go here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin

Edit the code, and then submit pull request asking the team leaders to include your code into the next bitcoin version.

The current head of the oopensource code project is Gavin Anderson, so he would have the final say as to whether your new code is included or not.

If your code is included in the next version of Bitcoin then the general public may download this new version and start using it and you have now contributed to the bitcoin code. Or the general public may decide that your new version is crap and they are sticking with the old version, in which case your code has been "rejected" by the public and the team leaders would probably remove your code from the next bitcoin version in order to get that version accepted by the public.

If you use a company liket btcrow.com then in the case of a dispute they hear both sides and decide who gets the payment

Looks like we made it through the night... I have to say it was worried when the price was nose driving. But it appears to have bottomed at above $70.

Mt Gox is still offline, but other exchange seem to be holding at $70. (Looks like the recovery is beginning as it's back up to $85).

They'll never be a cheaper time to buy in than now.

If you believe that the fundamental concept and technology is sound, then the wild price swings are not so worrying. We are in price discovery mode for at least the next few years.

dave111223,

Any reason for the change in avatar?

Fletch

Ask Phil Conners

There is always going to be issues with hacking as long as mt. gox controls 80% of the trading market.

Hopefully all the issues they (mt gox) are having will help to drive some of their market share over to some of the other international exchanges like btc-e, bitstamp and bitfloor etc...once the exchange base is a lot more spread around hackers will not be able to manipulate the price by attaching a single weak point.