dave111223

Price is going crazy today, as Mt. Gox (the largest bitcoin exchange) is having major hardware issue...basically they cannot handle the traffic (like 20,000 new accounts per day).

Whenever their system starts lagging people start panic selling and you get massive price movement. From 250 down to 105, back to 180, now back to 150. There is big money to made (or lost) if you've got the nerve for it.

Personally I'm not much of gambler to haven't gotten into that kind of day trading; but prefer to look at the long term.

Location: Soccer Gear, Ram Intra 1 (next to Krirk University) Bangkok

Looking for 3 Thai employees for shirt screen printing positions.

Age: 20-40

Sex: Male or Female

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Do not need to be able to speak English, but should be able to read English alphabet for printing.

Salary: 12,000THB per month + 1,000THB on-time money

Benefits include:

- Social security

- 15 days paid holiday per year

- Annual bonus + Annual Raise

Working hours Monday-Friday 9:30-18:30

Saturday during busy season 9:30-16:30

Please call Peach at 0846966904

so basically you are a foreigner driving around on someone elses bike (no title), without any paperwork, no insurance, no payment history...

You are in shake down territory now my friend...I wouldn't sit my butt on it or even park it on my property until I had at least a copy of the documents from the bike shop.

No loan agreement.

Didn't you have to sign a loan agreement?

If yes; why do you not have a copy of the loan agreement...

If no; why pay for the bike at all?

Who holds the title to the bike?

A couple of things to point out with regards to mining:

- Miners receive a reward (newly created bitcoins), but also receive transaction fees. When sending bitcoins you choose your own transaction fee, these fees get paid to the miners, so if you want your transaction prioritized you set the fee accordingly. Right now fees are very low because the reward is already enough to get miners working. But once the new bitcoins start to dry up the transaction fees will become the primary incentive for people to continue mining. So transaction fees will also be purely governed by the market (how much you are willing to pay for a transaction, and how much people are willing to accept to process it); this is already built into the system.

- The hardware that is mining (wasting electricity) is making the network secure. Because in order to manipulate the bitcoin network (such as processing bogus transactions) you would need to have more processing power than 51% of the network. If the network is HUGE (which it currently is) then for a single entity (hacker, government, etc..) to obtain that kind of processing power becomes impossible.

would you please give us an honest answer on what capital investment you made the 1000%?

Only as much as I'm willing to lose, but enough that it will significant after considerable gains.

it is quite amusing that people who condemn bankers for creating money out of thin air are applauding the creation of a "substitute" such as Bitcoin.

The trouble with all the news articles they are a day or two behind, and the price changes so fast that they are no longer relevant.

I'd be interested to know when the last time someone on the board posted an investment opportunity and in 4 months it had earned a return of 1000%

Laughing all the way to the....*wait don't need a bank anymore*...

Provided you're in the right country you can use all of those currencies to buy a loaf of bread. Name me one country where you can walk into any shop and buy a loaf of bread with bitcoins.

Finland http://www.vegemesta.fi/

http://www.oanda.com/currency/converter/

Looks like Oanda has added bitcoin conversion rate.

http://bbc.co.uk/news/technology-22026961

More than likely the powers that be trying to bring it down or discredit it as an alternative to the banks. 140 to 90 ouch. See how long that lasts for. Not long maybe. Who knows.

This you need to check your reading glasses dude:

The value of Bitcoins surged to a new high this week with each one worth about $142 (£94). Barely a week ago, each virtual coin was worth only $90.

Is the danger not that the "qualities" of different coins you speak of are not so different Dave? People might jump in to other coins looking for better value. E.g. now bit coin is so high I might think to speculate of lite coin going the same way. People might jump in to new currencies looking for better starting value and so feeding a succession of bubbles and crashes. Eventually they would all vadue out to less as people eventually realise there's unlimited supply.

Sure the alternative virtual currencies will dilute value of overall virtual currencies; provided that they have usefulness and people who would have invested in Bitcoins invest in an alternative instead. But I think competition is good, it will force bitcoin to stay current and useful or be overtaken. However each alternative currency has to offer something different/more useful that the existing currencies.

Bitcoin suffers database attack:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9238114/Bitcoin_storage_service_Instawallet_suffers_database_attack

Check your wallet.

People must be pretty dumb to keep any money in an online wallet and doesn't even have a password. Instawallet was a disaster just waiting to happen. Bitcoins gives you the opportunity to keep/guard your own money yourself, I'm surprised at how quickly some people seem to throw that advantage away and trust their money to a 3rd party website instead.

They way a coin is produced does not change its use/ properties as just another e currency. Like saying silver from an open cast mine has more or less value than silver from a deep bored mine. It's still the same stuff just means of production different.

So in your opinion a mined diamond and a manufactured diamond have the same value (price)? Because after all "It's still the same stuff just means of production different."

Also you conveniently did not mentioned the other differences between virtual currencies, such as the difference in transaction times between the currencies.

Have to say, the more I read, the more it looks like a large virtual pyramid scheme to me. Someone just creating money out of 1's and 0's.

It seems like you have not read much on the topic at all. As we already discussed how "mining" working in order to create bitcoins.

Dave . To use your commodity analogy it's more like an gold mine and then another and another and another until it's hardly worth theeeffort drilling any more coz the cost of the golds less then that to get it out of the ground

Over supply and just the same stuff at the end of the day

ockquote> So if I dig a bunch of silver mines will it affect the price of gold? They are basically just the same thing, shiny metal.

Dave. You seem to be blinded by your love of bit coin. Gold and silver is not the same at all. Industrially they have different uses, aesthetically they are different colours, they are different elements. They are completely different. You might say that as currencies they are just different shiny metals serving the same function byte tithe other uses thier relative scarcity that gives value. So I ask again where is the value determined between e coins? If you have no answer then the scarcity is out of the window.

For example Litecoin differs from Bitcoin because transactions are processed more frequently (every 2.5minutes instead of 10 minutes), it also involves a different mining process, whereby you can only mine on a "computer" (with CPU or GPU) as opposed to Bitcoins which can be mined in a manner where you use a specialized circuit board that can do nothing by mine bitcoins. This means Litecoin will still be mineable by normal people using normal computers.

I'm not saying Gold and Silver are the same; I'm saying the opposite. I know they are different, they are different; I'm using this illustration to show you that the various virtual currencies are different in the same way that gold and silver are different.

They have a few valid points...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/timothylee/2013/04/03/four-reason-you-shouldnt-buy-bitcoins/

Point 1) You can loss your wallet if your harddrive crashes: FALSE

You can use a wallet such as Electrum that allows you to restore a wallet from your "seed phrase", so as long as you write down the phrase (12 words) you can restore your wallet. No need to worry about Harddrive crashes/backups etc...

Point 2) Government could crack down: TRUE...as with anything government can put a hurt on it if they want, but only to a certain degree, they cannot stop it completely.

Point 3) Scaling: FALSE

You can get lightweight clients (such as Bitcoinspinner, Electrum, Multibits) which do not require downloading the entire blockchain (transaction history)

Point 4) Lack of applications: mostly TRUE but that's like saying "the internet sucks, there are no good websites, bin it" in 1990

Can I go down the shop and buy a loaf of bread with bitcoins?

Can I go down the shop and buy a loaf of bread with US dollars? My local 7-11 doesn't seem to think so.

That's because you're not in the US. Try baht. Can you buy a loaf at your local 7-11 with bitcoins?

Nope they don't accept bitcoins here's a list of some other currencies I also cannot use at my local 7-11:

• USD
• AUD
• EUR
• CAD

Conclusion: all these currencies are worthless. Or are you asking "Is there anywhere in the world where you can buy a loaf of bread with bitcoins", then yes I'm sure you can find somewhere: http://bitcoin.travel/

Can I go down the shop and buy a loaf of bread with bitcoins?

Can I go down the shop and buy a loaf of bread with US dollars? My local 7-11 doesn't seem to think so.

It's debatable whether bitcoins will ever be useful for small item purchases (due to the time it takes for confirmations), maybe fiat will always have a place for these kind of transactions, I guess only the future will tell.

Have to say, the more I read, the more it looks like a large virtual pyramid scheme to me. Someone just creating money out of 1's and 0's.

It seems like you have not read much on the topic at all. As we already discussed how "mining" working in order to create bitcoins.

Dave . To use your commodity analogy it's more like an gold mine and then another and another and another until it's hardly worth theeeffort drilling any more coz the cost of the golds less then that to get it out of the ground

Over supply and just the same stuff at the end of the day

So if I dig a bunch of silver mines will it affect the price of gold? They are basically just the same thing, shiny metal.

So how many of these bit coin esque currencies are there? The idea of value based on scarcity that bitcoin sells itself on is kinda blown away if unlimited other such currencies can be created. Gold and silver on the either hand are elements Wichita can not be recreated/ mimicked. Commodities Have uses swell as exchange value while these e currencies only value is thier exchange function, so when taking away the scarcity how can value be safe?

One should consider the different variations of virtual currency as different separate commodities.

For example if a huge oil field was discovered, it might make the price of oil fall, but it would have no direct baring on the price of gold.

In the same way that the price of one of the separate virtual currencies doesn't have a direct price effect on each other, but obviously they have some indirect effect. For example if a flaw in Litecoin brought it's value to zero, this might also bring down the price of a bitcoins some because general confidence in virtual currencies may be knocked, but it would not bring the bitcoin price down in the same amount as the litecoin price.

Nobody seems to wonder who got the first 6 million bitcoins.

They were acquired in a short timeframe for no 'work', just like a banker prints money from thin air, but even better because there is no trace of the person and no initial deposits where needed. With Madoff and Bernanke you at least still knew who did it.

This is false. Bitcoin was publicly announced in 2009, at which point only 50 bitcoins existed (Public Announcement: http://www.metzdowd.com/pipermail/cryptography/2009-January/014994.html ). If you look at the date of the first block in the blockchain you will see they are the same time period.

People who were interested in this software started mining right away, and because there weren't many people interested, then there weren't many people mining and each miner received lots of coins, but at that time the bitcoins were worthless.

It took more than 2 years to create 6million bitcoins, is that what you mean by "short timeframe"...bitcoins were being generated at this same rate (50bitcoins per 10 minutes) right up until the end of 2012. And are now generated at 25BTC per 10 minutes.

Just because you didn't hear about it, because you didn't run in the kind of nerdy circles that it was being mentioned at that point, doesn't mean it was a secret. That's like saying because you didn't hear about the Google IPO until 3 years later, then anyone who bought in at the IPO is a scoundrel.

Another litecoin is already been setup and it shows the same, are they doing it again, or did someone figure it out and copied it and acquired a large amount of them for free. Litecoin is for people who have less money and also want to gamble on it going skyhigh. And yes i have a few hundred of those for very very little bahts.

Again litecoin was not premined, the software was announced publicly, and then "released" several days later allowing people to install the software and start mining right from the start.

There are however some virtual currencies (such as Novacoin and Ripple) that were partially or full premined, where the software authors secretly ran the software by themselves for awhile before releasing it, so that they could keep a bunch of coins for themselves. I'd probably stay away from investing in these kind of coins.

I don't know about that. I grew up near the CIA and went to Langley high school and consider myself a bit of an intelligence buff.

The Japanese didn't think their code was broken either. Study up on when Gen. Yamamoto was shot from the sky and then intelligence agencies sold it as "lucky break".

I have not really studied BC but it's not implausible that it's infiltrated already or even designed from the start. These agencies routinely fake out the KGB and Chinese intelligence and vice versus.

I am definitely going to take an interest in it... The game is much bigger than somebody buying some buds on Silkroad.

On which file/line # has it already been "infiltrated"?

You can view every line of code in the software here: https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/tree/master/src

With regards to Japanese WWII code etc... you are referring to 2-way encryption. Meaning something that is encrypted (such as a message) and given the correct cipher you can decrypt it back into the original message and read it. As such you can "crack it" if you figure out what the cipher is.

However this should not be confused with one-way encryption, this is useful for when you don't need to know what the original message was specifically.

One-way encryption is mathematically impossible to reverse. The only way to beat it would be with brute force and put every possible input into the encryption algorithm until is comes out with the result you want (trial and error).

Most password systems store your password in one-way encryption, so that when you come to a website and enter your password. It puts your entered password through an algorithm and then compares the encrypted result with the encryption result they have on file....meaning they never need to have your original password saved.

Bitcoin uses one-way encryption to verify ownership of coins, thus it's not possible to "crack it". One would only be have to "brute force it". However if the current one-way encryption algorithm became too easy to brute force (computers becoming too powerful and able to computer trillions of calculations per second), then the software would just need to updated to use a newer/stronger encryption method.

Just the intelligence value alone would make it an attractive acquisition

Nobody knows who is behind bitcoin. I don't anyway. Anybody have theories or evidence?

Could this already be owned or operated by NSA or CIA?

The people "behind" it would be the people who wrote the original bitcoin client software: http://bitcoin.org/en/development

However it's open source, so you could write your own version of the client from scratch (provided it still followed the same protocol standards) and then you'd be "behind" bitcoin too.

Anyone who runs a bitcoin client (bitcoin software) is part of "operating" the network. So if you download the software then you would be "operating bitcoin" (or if the CIA had some computers with the software then they'd be operating bitcoin too).

No one "owns" it as a whole, but you can own some bitcoins.

Any changes to the system would require majority rule. For example let say you created your own modified version of the software, but it was a bit different (such as faster transaction rates). Your new software is not compatible with the other versions of bitcoin, because you'd changed the protocol standards; this is considered a "hard fork", and one of the following would occur:

1) No one likes your new version, no one uses and it fades into the history books; normal bitcoin continues running the way it did before.

2) Most people like your new version better, and they upgrade to your version, once your version acquires a majority people quickly jump ship to your new version and now bitcoin has changed a bit to your new version.

3) There is a split decision. Lots of people like your version, but lots want to stick with the old version. There are now 2 difference versions of bitcoin. When accepting a bitcoin payment you'd have to specify "I want Bitcoin 1.0, and don't use Bitcoin Cobrasnake version". However the chances of a long term split with 2 viable verisons seems remote as people want to jump onboard with the popular version.

For this reason no one can just change the code, for example creating more bitcoins, or change the code so that 10% of all transactions get sent to them; as no one would upgrade to this new version.

I've been thinking about putting a bit of money into Litecoin too. Plus it's still mineable by normal people (i'm currently earning about $.50 a day mining yay!)

It's basically a different version of Bitcoin which has some technical differences, such as the ability to process more transactions more quickly.

It's value has been steadily rising also and is now worth almost $2 per Litecoin (as compared to Bitcoins $100 per coin).

If you think Bitcoin is funny money I'd be interested to see what you think of a secondary level of "funny money"

..if these visits have only happened by the OP's admission thrice in two years, I don't see the big fuss...

That was BlackPuddingBertha, not the OP.

For those interested in monitoring the price I find this site very useful: http://bitcoinity.com/markets (live bitcoin trading price charts)

From personal experience Fedex sucks, they never take responsibility for their own f***ups. Lesson learned don't use them again.

Love this one: