Apparently a grumpy Australian gentleman invented the thing.
And I still don't understand it. Does anyone really "get" Bitcoin? Can you explain it to a technological luddite? Do I need to buy some computers and set them up to mine for digital gold?
Apparently a grumpy Australian gentleman invented the thing.
And I still don't understand it. Does anyone really "get" Bitcoin? Can you explain it to a technological luddite? Do I need to buy some computers and set them up to mine for digital gold?
I don't understand why he was "hiding"
Just invented an untraceable mechanism for hackers to extort money from, well, everyone. I'd want to be in hiding too, since every law enforcement agency would be looking for access or a piece of him.
I know a few kids in Seattle who made some silly cash mining those things during the big run up. Then I remember a million graphics cards for sale as the price dropped and it became not profitable to mine even at seattles low electricity rates.
KyAllroad wrote: Can you explain it to a technological luddite? Do I need to buy some computers and set them up to mine for digital gold?
That ship sailed some time ago, though I hear it's still the cheapest way to heat your house in the winter. Bitcoin is pretty much an intermediary currency for doing various anonymous transactions of various legality, the bulk of it is probably darknet drug sales though. You don't want to hold onto any on account of the volatility.
I'd like to punch that guy in the dick. Accidentally. 29 times.
Why? He wasn't the first with the idea, just the first to establish a viable version of it. The technology that underpins bitcoin is likely to become an integral piece of all sorts of legitimate payments systems in the near future.
Dude controls 1,000,000 bitcoins, at a value of $444 each.
If you were holding 450 million dollars of assets that came from illegal activity, you might be hiding too.
SVreX wrote: Dude controls 1,000,000 bitcoins, at a value of $444 each. If you were holding 450 million dollars of assets that came from illegal activity, you might be hiding too.
Bitcoin dosen't have to come from illegal activitiy.. You can "Mine" them and then voila you made money instantly worth $444. What you do with it after adds the legality bit.
In reply to Fueled by Caffeine:
Yup, quite a few people got rich by buying in or mining early for novelty factor, then forgot about it until the price shot up a while ago. I remember reading about it back then, about once a month I regret that I didn't participate.
In reply to BrokenYugo:
me as well
Fueled by Caffeine wrote:SVreX wrote: Dude controls 1,000,000 bitcoins, at a value of $444 each. If you were holding 450 million dollars of assets that came from illegal activity, you might be hiding too.Bitcoin dosen't have to come from illegal activitiy.. You can "Mine" them and then voila you made money instantly worth $444. What you do with it after adds the legality bit.
I paid for my order from a food truck in bitcoin a while ago. I don't think it is possible to construct a sentence more west coast than that last one.
In reply to Jay:
$444 will buy a heck of a lot of food truck burritos. 
In reply to KyAllroad:
Money only has value because we decide it does. Really... what is a dollar worth? Why is a $20 bill worth more than a $10 bill? If someone forges a $20 bill, why is that not worth anything? Because we socially agree to the system.
We trust most forms of currency because there is a government backed by an economy to state how much of that currency there is. They control how many units of currency enter and leave circulation. That controlled scarcity makes it easier for us to agree on the value of a unit.
Bitcoin is a cyber currency with no printed or stamped units. This guy developed a system for tracking and trading units people have electronically. The system is effective that people can not hack their own accounts and effectively print their own money.
So, it is effective as a form of currency if people want to use it as such. It has the added "benefit" of not being tied to any government or legal body, and being relatively difficult to track the people it is transfered between, of what it is used for. So it is relatively popular among people who want to do illegal things. Think all the traceability of a stack of $100 bills, but that can be exchanged over the interwebz instead of handed over in a briefcase across the trunk of an old Lincoln Towncar.
The basic block chain technology of bitcoin is actually being adapted to a new way to use the internet, by the fattest celebrity I've ever seen, mr kim dotcom.
For currency I'm still kicking myself for stopping mining when they were going for 100-200 dollars, then forgetting about them and losing the hard drive when they hit 1500. , that's the only real downside is they are tied to a digital wallet, of sorts. If you lose the wallet or key to the wallet, they're gone.
What kim dotcom is working on with meganet, uses the same block chain technology, but will utilize it in a way that the more users are online, the better the whole system will run. Anonymous, secure, high speed low cost internet. I'm surprised no one has killed him yet actually, but he is doing a great job keeping his court battles in the public eye.
Jay wrote:Fueled by Caffeine wrote:I paid for my order from a food truck in bitcoin a while ago. I don't think it is possible to construct a sentence more west coast than that last one.SVreX wrote: Dude controls 1,000,000 bitcoins, at a value of $444 each. If you were holding 450 million dollars of assets that came from illegal activity, you might be hiding too.Bitcoin dosen't have to come from illegal activitiy.. You can "Mine" them and then voila you made money instantly worth $444. What you do with it after adds the legality bit.
you forgot the words artisinal, vintage, and bro...
Jay wrote: What is bitcoin?
Thank you, that was 10 min of funny. Well, 5 videos that had to be watched.
Fueled by Caffeine wrote:Jay wrote:you forgot the words artisinal, vintage, and bro...Fueled by Caffeine wrote:I paid for my order from a food truck in bitcoin a while ago. I don't think it is possible to construct a sentence more west coast than that last one.SVreX wrote: Dude controls 1,000,000 bitcoins, at a value of $444 each. If you were holding 450 million dollars of assets that came from illegal activity, you might be hiding too.Bitcoin dosen't have to come from illegal activitiy.. You can "Mine" them and then voila you made money instantly worth $444. What you do with it after adds the legality bit.
Hella? Or is that too old now?
Based on information available right now, I do not believe this person is Satoshi. His "proof" is not proof at all. He needs to sign a message that could not have existed before today using a private key affiliated with Satoshi, or perform a transaction that spends some coin that is recorded in the block chain as being affiliated with Satoshi.
The real Satoshi would be a cryptography expert. Amateur hour games of reusing old signatures wouldn't fly. He'd know better.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Jay wrote: What is bitcoin?
Was this supposed to take me to "If Google Was a Guy"?
That was hillarious
How do you mine for bitcoin?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-02/claims-dont-add-unmasking-bitcoins-satoshi-nakamoto-just-publicity-stunt
Boost, basically you throw computer hardware at a difficult math problem. Eventually, it will find a solution. That's a bitcoin. Some graphics processors are better able to do teh maths needed.
DrBoost wrote: How do you mine for bitcoin?
There is good info at your favorite search engine, but anything you read about mining is very time dependent. Check the date of anything you read.
Bitcoin is designed so that the amount of computing power required to find a single coin doubles on a regular basis.
The technically correct answer is that you just need mining software.
The real answer is that you need highly specialized equipment developed just for mining. You need cheap electricity. You need cheap cooling. You need to be able to get the latest stuff fast, and to turn it over quickly when it's no longer cost effective.
I'd suggest reading before spending money. I'd also suggest looking into mining contracts and mining pools.
Mike wrote:DrBoost wrote: How do you mine for bitcoin?There is good info at your favorite search engine, but anything you read about mining is very time dependent. Check the date of anything you read. Bitcoin is designed so that the amount of computing power required to find a single coin doubles on a regular basis. The technically correct answer is that you just need mining software. The real answer is that you need highly specialized equipment developed just for mining. You need cheap electricity. You need cheap cooling. You need to be able to get the latest stuff fast, and to turn it over quickly when it's no longer cost effective. I'd suggest reading before spending money. I'd also suggest looking into mining contracts and mining pools.
When the original bitcoin streams were going on, a pc running Linux could do pretty well. After a while, the streams (i.e. the size of the block to process) were bigger and people realized that graphics cards (math intensive) could be used. Plus, you could have multiple cards in a system.
Now days, the blocks are huge and the power a graphics card requires doesn't come close to the value. As a result, there's a whole cottage industry of bitcoin (or things like it) hardware stripped down to just do the processing. From little USB units to huge data arrays. There are even companies selling bitcoin processing in chunks like a server farm. But, as more is processed, it'll take even longer to "mine" a bitcoin.
All of the above is the simplified version of what i was able to discover/understand when I fell into the bitcoin rabbit hole about a year ago.
-Rob
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