Gave it a go back when namecheap added bitcoin payment just to try it out. I have 2 BTC left in a wallet backup, but I don't have the client installed anymore since I'm not keen on devoting 10 GB disk space to a copy of the blockchain.
Back then they were super easy to get (at least in Japan - feed some cash into an ATM, enter mt gox's account #, enter your username as your depositor name)
I don't currently own any. However I did pick up a Raspberry Pi recently, which made me a little interesting in the bit coin thing. I'm curious if a RPi cluster could (slowly) but efficiently (from a power consumption standpoint) mine.
Not really, there is no way you could buy mining equipment right now and make net profits. There are several calculators online that take difficulty increase into account.
I don't think the RPi could be much more than a status monitor for connected ASICs.
The Pi's CPU is capable of around 0.2MHashes/sec at 3.75W[0] whereas even a weedy USB ASIC such as the BitForce SC 5Gh/s is capable of 5,000MHashes/sec at 30W[1]
The last time my interest was piqued I found it so difficult to buy them in the UK (looked like the best way was to wire some money so someone in France…) that I gave up.
I've been trying to set up an exchange here in the UK, but am facing a lot of what I consider anti competitive behaviour from UK banking. I met Vince Cable to talk about it and hopefully the situation will change in the future:
Thanks! Loved that documentary on Channel 4. Have dropped them an email asking if they can help. I'm not clear if they provide online banking or instant transfer notifications (SMS for example) which would be a core requirement for running a Bitcoin exchange. But I've asked, and hopefully something could come of it!
Would love to know if they can help you take up the banner for btc. It may be too 'new fangled' for Dave to get involved in, but the democritazation(?) aspect may be something he'd be willing to help out with.
In any event, let us know if something comes of it! Go Dave!
Yep, same here. Recently used https://bitbargain.co.uk (no affiliation at all) to get myself a couple though, and was surprised just how simple it was.
bitbargain certainly seems to be a step in the right direction. I guess being an escrow service allows them to skip a lot of the legal work involved in setting up an exchange.
Are their prices set very much higher than the 'going rate' for bitcoins?
I found the practice of getting money to a place where you can buy bitcoin was an excellent lesson in the utility of bitcoin.
I'm a New Zealander who earns predominantly US dollars, I was an early adopter of bitcoin not as a way to get rich, but because I have been stung for fees so many times.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that I have been prepared to accept bitcoin for two or three years. I have yet to be actually be paid in bitcoin. I request payment in bitcoin, They ask what bitcoin is, I explain, They scream in terror because it's an imaginary drug money ponzi scheme and pay me in something else that stings me with fees (and now, due to new anti-money laundering rules requires more forms of ID than I actually possess)
Shouldn’t option 2 be ‘0.00000001-10’ instead of ‘0-10’? As it is stated now, someone with no BTC should vote for option 1 as well as option 2.
Actually, the other options overlap too. I suggest using ‘11-20’, ‘21-50’, ‘51-200’, ‘201-1,000’, and ‘1,001-10,000’.
EDIT: I adjusted option 2 to start with less than 1 but more than zero. Thanks for the correction. I also agree with other commenters that the ‘1-10’ range is too large.
Then what do people with .001 do? I like it how it is but to be correct it would be .00000001 - 10 (I think that's the right number of decimal places.)
I think 0-10 is a too large a range. There's a big difference between having $10 worth (~0.07 BTC) and $1500 worth (~10 BTC). The first is what I have, which is basically play money. The latter is a more significant investment.
Exactly this. I have some nonzero amount when I mined for 1 afternoon. Technically I don't have zero but I shouldnt be in the same category as people with a thousand dollars worth.
With that said.... I said I have zero in the poll.
I think I have .0005 left over in a wallet somewhere. I also said zero. Seeing all this loose change and no easy way to get it out of there I'm wondering if someone can suggest a charity who would accept the measly amounts but use the aggregate for good.
Ha. I wonder. If there are only a couple nerds like us we might only get 5 dollars or something.
A charity proxy would be cool though, that way people like us have the ability to only donate .0005 and the people with 10,000+ can donate too. Then the proxy converts it to real money and donates it to a particular charity.
This is a good idea for a charity. Wonder how tough it would be to set up? Anyone with interest in looking into it, email me, might be a fun side project to play with some BTC tools.
Agreed, I bought the minimum amount from Coinbase out of interest (and giving myself a financial stake in something I am interested in and support). But that's ~.200001 BTC for a value of ~25
A very good point; thank you for making it. For people like me who don't keep track of the exchange rates for BTC at all, it fundamentally changes the way the poll looks.
At first glance it seemed to me this poll said pretty clearly that HN doesn't trust BTC (and to an extent, it still does, it just softly suggests it rather than shouting it with irate certainty). Having this context makes the result less interesting but at least frames it appropriately.
Sorta. If I were to hold 10 it would still be a small percent of my total assets .. mostly comprising various stocks (I don't currently own real estate so I do indeed have some assets rather than debts, lol).
I'm in a position where I can wait for the next massive crash and buy up maybe 10 or 15 as essentially a form of gambling. Because why the fuck not.
Yep. I looked into Bitcoin when it first came out and I predicted that it would fail. Satoshi's paper never mentioned the emergent pyramid-scheme social dynamics...
At time of writing 2/7ths of respondents own > 0 bitcoin. Are there many other new technologies you'd expect 2/7ths of all respondents to use/own? Especially one that doesn't really have a direct use to most consumers yet and high risk for people investing.
I mined about 50BTC years ago (when it took around 1 day CPU time), but a constantly deflating currency seemed like a dumb idea so I deleted it. It still seems like a dumb idea, but now I wish I hadn't.
Actually, he hasn’t deleted the 50 BC. They are still there but they are trapped. He only deleted the only copy of the key to transfer them, so those BC will be trapped there “forever”.
Actually it’s possible to brute-force search for the key and make the BC free, and transfer them. But with the same method it’s possible to steal BC. The brute-force method is just too slow, and would require a few thousands or perhaps millions of years. (I don’t remember the exact estimation.)
With the help of the Moor’s law and some advance breaking the cryptographic security measures, this can happen sooner, but this would be a problem for every BC user.
I think it's this facet of Bitcoin that's going to end up causing problems in the not too distant future. There will be an ever increasing number of "trapped" coins, BTC that belongs to someone who has abandoned it leaving it unused and thereby lowering the liquidity of the currency.
A potential solution would be to incorporate demurrage, which gradually reduces the value of currency the longer it's held, into the BTC algorithms. Essentially by encouraging the holders of a currency to use that currency you'd a) create a more fluid market and b) remove trapped value in some fixed amount of time. If you wanted to maintain a pool of BTC for a long time you'd simply cycle it between two addresses faster than the decay rate so that it's value wouldn't decay.
There are trillions of satoshis total, so even if most of them are lost there should still be billions left for people to use. By analogy, a certain amount of the world's gold has been lost but people still use it as a store of value.
Very possible. I was in the same boat as parent - I set up my all of my school's lab computers to mine. Ended up with quite a lot of BTC, which I didn't bother backing up since they weren't worth anything at the time. Needless to say when BTC bubbled I was kicking myself.
Somewhere around 2, I'm not sure. I don't have any use for it at all, but my electricity bill is included in my accomodation, so mining = free money for me. At some point I'll just sell it, a kind of emergency fund.
At that point the microBTC will become the de facto denomination. It's already fairly close to that, IMO. When 1 unit of something is worth 100x the most widely available currency, it's no longer useful to list prices in that denomination.
0 representation here - I do not own any, though that is reflective to my fiscal status currently though have not owned any previously either.
Why I own 0 bitcoins (currently):
One aspect I find facinating about bitcoins over normal money is how they can be tracked and every coin can be audited openly down to its creation. Whilst with notes this is possible, tills and other transactions do not note down those serial numbers used and coins have no way at all of being tracked. Both due to the analogue forms of transactions mean that no exact coin or note is tracked and at most the amount is tracked albeit in a form not tied down to the history of said coin or note. Bitcoins are completely different.
Reason that is important is whilst the media etc seem to portray the criminal usage of bitcoins, the whole system is more secure and auditable than any paper notes or metal coins and with that any bad press about criminal usage of bitcoins are more equaly so with other forms of currency due to the very nature of usage.
So one day I may very well get some bitcoins, but finances aside I do see them as dynamic as shares and in many weays less spendable than shares, due to lack of mainstream recognition and acceptance. When you can go into a major bank and get an exchange rate is when some stability gets introduced and the whole dynamic price akin to shares is removed. That is when I will personaly utilise them as a currency of transaction and fiscal storage.
I was not aware of that; But in many ways it is still more auditable than alternative currencies. In some respect this tumbler sounds like money laudering albiet more detectable than alternative currencies. I would also imagine that such brokering/proxy services would still be reliant in that they kept records in a non-public form that would still be open to legal recorse via law authorities.
I heard speculation that some ATMs were technically capable of recording the serial numbers of bills that they dispense to a particular customer (via OCR) and that some bill accepters used by banks or currency exchangers were capable of doing the same. Since modern ATMs already have quite sophisticated OTR on the input side -- I've found them very accurate lately at recognizing even sloppy handwriting on checks -- this is quite plausible technologically. It's not clear to me whether governments would ask cash-handling businesses to do this kind of bill-tracking today, and whether they'd expect to learn interesting things from it. (I'd imagine most bills participate in several cash transactions in between bank deposits.)
Those polls are rarely accurate especially at the edges (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5536734). I added a "5,000,001+" option just to see how many people will click it.
Yea I was thinking about that... an option that is so plainly impossible that it doesn't need to be considered (over 1/3 of all BTC does it). I imagine $1.5 million is just on the edge of plausibility for some adventurous, wealthy founders here.
Even if they are untruthful, there are surely multiple bitcoin millionaires from Hacker News. Bitcoin was announced here multiple times in the very early days.
I have just over 2 BTC, but now that Silk Road is closed down, I don't really have any use for them - my only purchases were pharmaceutical drugs that I can't get without prescription in my country.
So I'll probably just hang on to them in case Bitcoin shoots up in value some day, and I can sell them for real money.
I have 1 BTC I really love the idea of using it and if a had a easy and consistent way of getting it i would use it for most of my online transactions.
As it stands now it's incredibly hard to find someone selling BTC unless you're willing to mail a copy of your ID over the internet something i would never do.
127 comments
[ 6.7 ms ] story [ 306 ms ] threadBack then they were super easy to get (at least in Japan - feed some cash into an ATM, enter mt gox's account #, enter your username as your depositor name)
MultiBit or Electrum let you use the network securely without it, and have a minimal disk and memory footprint (megabytes, if that).
The Pi's CPU is capable of around 0.2MHashes/sec at 3.75W[0] whereas even a weedy USB ASIC such as the BitForce SC 5Gh/s is capable of 5,000MHashes/sec at 30W[1]
[0]https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#ARM [1]https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Mining_hardware_comparison#ASIC
http://www.reddit.com/r/BitcoinUK/comments/1n99os/met_with_v...
Although it's a big mountain to climb so perhaps it's wishful thinking at this stage!
http://www.burnleysavingsandloans.co.uk/about-us/
See if Dave can help.
In any event, let us know if something comes of it! Go Dave!
Are their prices set very much higher than the 'going rate' for bitcoins?
I believe most sellers set their asking price according to the MtGox latest, or just under that figure.
I'm a New Zealander who earns predominantly US dollars, I was an early adopter of bitcoin not as a way to get rich, but because I have been stung for fees so many times.
Nevertheless, despite the fact that I have been prepared to accept bitcoin for two or three years. I have yet to be actually be paid in bitcoin. I request payment in bitcoin, They ask what bitcoin is, I explain, They scream in terror because it's an imaginary drug money ponzi scheme and pay me in something else that stings me with fees (and now, due to new anti-money laundering rules requires more forms of ID than I actually possess)
Actually, the other options overlap too. I suggest using ‘11-20’, ‘21-50’, ‘51-200’, ‘201-1,000’, and ‘1,001-10,000’.
EDIT: I adjusted option 2 to start with less than 1 but more than zero. Thanks for the correction. I also agree with other commenters that the ‘1-10’ range is too large.
Ranges should be taken to mean A < x <= Y it seems.
Currency Exchange, Selling Goods, Selling Services, Mining, etc
With that said.... I said I have zero in the poll.
A charity proxy would be cool though, that way people like us have the ability to only donate .0005 and the people with 10,000+ can donate too. Then the proxy converts it to real money and donates it to a particular charity.
At first glance it seemed to me this poll said pretty clearly that HN doesn't trust BTC (and to an extent, it still does, it just softly suggests it rather than shouting it with irate certainty). Having this context makes the result less interesting but at least frames it appropriately.
I'm in a position where I can wait for the next massive crash and buy up maybe 10 or 15 as essentially a form of gambling. Because why the fuck not.
2/7th's is huge.
Actually it’s possible to brute-force search for the key and make the BC free, and transfer them. But with the same method it’s possible to steal BC. The brute-force method is just too slow, and would require a few thousands or perhaps millions of years. (I don’t remember the exact estimation.)
With the help of the Moor’s law and some advance breaking the cryptographic security measures, this can happen sooner, but this would be a problem for every BC user.
A potential solution would be to incorporate demurrage, which gradually reduces the value of currency the longer it's held, into the BTC algorithms. Essentially by encouraging the holders of a currency to use that currency you'd a) create a more fluid market and b) remove trapped value in some fixed amount of time. If you wanted to maintain a pool of BTC for a long time you'd simply cycle it between two addresses faster than the decay rate so that it's value wouldn't decay.
Satoshis aplenty but bitcoins, fugget about it.
Why I own 0 bitcoins (currently): One aspect I find facinating about bitcoins over normal money is how they can be tracked and every coin can be audited openly down to its creation. Whilst with notes this is possible, tills and other transactions do not note down those serial numbers used and coins have no way at all of being tracked. Both due to the analogue forms of transactions mean that no exact coin or note is tracked and at most the amount is tracked albeit in a form not tied down to the history of said coin or note. Bitcoins are completely different.
Reason that is important is whilst the media etc seem to portray the criminal usage of bitcoins, the whole system is more secure and auditable than any paper notes or metal coins and with that any bad press about criminal usage of bitcoins are more equaly so with other forms of currency due to the very nature of usage.
So one day I may very well get some bitcoins, but finances aside I do see them as dynamic as shares and in many weays less spendable than shares, due to lack of mainstream recognition and acceptance. When you can go into a major bank and get an exchange rate is when some stability gets introduced and the whole dynamic price akin to shares is removed. That is when I will personaly utilise them as a currency of transaction and fiscal storage.
So I'll probably just hang on to them in case Bitcoin shoots up in value some day, and I can sell them for real money.
As it stands now it's incredibly hard to find someone selling BTC unless you're willing to mail a copy of your ID over the internet something i would never do.