Bitcoins

[Klewtar]

I'm posting on traderji about bitcoins to get as many viewpoints as possible. Apparently investing in ASICMINER-PT may not be worthwhile unless they continuously pay out the dividends.

I don't think the average person will even know what bitcoins are until bitcoin deposits are available in their bank account. There are many average Indians out there without bank accounts.

Bitcoin just passed the USD 100 mark today.

 

[Klewtar]

Well Litecoins doubled in value today from 1 USD/LTC to 2 USD/LTC.

I tried litecoin mining today on (half) an i3 cpu and made .8 cents an hour or 40 paise but the electricity cost to me was probably 225 paise an hour (150 Watt price in Kerala which is high but acceptable for mining since I use the computer anyway to track the MCX.)

A 300 Watt mining rig with an AMD 7850 video card would use 4.5 rupees of electricity an hour but produce 16 rupees worth of litecoins an hour (at today's prices.)

Crypto currencies (BTC, LTC) are new grounds. For me, it's ok to invest relatively small amounts of disposable income. I like the idea of supporting their eco-systems (by buying or mining) and getting something in return in a few years. While I can buy small amounts of bitcoins, good luck trying to safely buy litecoins in India.

 

[Klewtar]

Bitcoin mining isn't worthwhile anymore because there is now specialised hardware used by companies such as ASIC Miner. Bitcoins were first mined with cpus, then graphic cards, then specialised FPGA cards and now there are ASIC chips to mine bitcoins.

Litecoins can still be mined because the maths behind it doesn't lend well to specialised hardware. In Oct 2011, when litecoins was launched, only CPUs could mine litecoins but someone managed to find a way to make graphic cards work as miners.

In the beginning, mining produces relatively more coins of crypto currencies but as more coins are mined, the difficulty of mining newer coins increases (speed of mining decreases) and the amount of coins that can be mined (in a certain amount of time) decreases.

 

[Klewtar]

To get started with litecoin mining:
http://www.litecoinpool.org/help

I joined the coinotron.com mining pool because that pool updated my earnings frequently (and the litecoin pool does not accept new registrations anymore.)

To start mining, downloaded the CPU miner package for windows (or linux) and then set it to join a mining pool (register with coinotron as your first mining pool, you should see some litecoins earned on the website within 10 minutes of running your miner.) I previously downloaded the litecoin client and updated it which took a few hours but downloading the litecoin client is not necessary until someone wants to withdraw their mined litecoins.

 

[soft_trader]

Gone through the whole thread. But still can't understand the head or tail of bitcoins.

Somebody please explain in simple words. What is bitcoin, what is the purpose of it. How can we get it, what to do with it.

 

[onlinegtrash]

Gone through the whole thread. But still can't understand the head or tail of bitcoins.

Somebody please explain in simple words. What is bitcoin, what is the purpose of it. How can we get it, what to do with it.

youtube.com is your friend... search there... you will get nice documentaries...

 

[aryan.]

IT'S A BUBBLE MY FRIEND! STAY AWAY! Anything without a solid fundamental cannot be sustained!

What exactly do you mean by solid fundamental.


Check this link for more info on bitcoins

http://www.businessinsider.com/presentation-what-is-bitcoin-2013-3?op=1

 

[aryan.]

http://static3.businessinsider.com/...-due-to-its-durability-and-limited-supply.jpg

Where is it? Who decided that this is worth more than 100$? Speculators that's who!

Who decides the value of gold, supply and demand. Its the same thing with bitcoins.

 

[Klewtar]

I put in 1,000 INR in bitcoin over the weekend and I can now sell it for 1,200 INR. The thing is, I can't really buy more than 50,000 INR of bitcoin that easily.

13 Trillion USD was printed lasted year and given away. Only 21 million bitcoins will ever exist and less than 11 million bitcoins have currently been mined. I'd say that bitcoins will one day be worth over 50,000 usd (it's already worth 135 usd) a piece. The only other crypto currency worth trading is litecoins and that's mostly being exchanged for bitcoins.

 

[timepass]

Bitcoin Hacked: Price Stumbles
CNBCBy Matt Clinch | CNBC 2 hours 9 minutes ago


Online currency bitcoin had 20 percent knocked off its price overnight on Thursday as one of its major exchanges became the victim of a hacking attack leading to a sell-off in the virtual currency after reaching an all-time high.

Uncertainty over other currencies, turmoil in Cyprus and media interest are just some of the reasons commentators are citing for the 360 percent rise in bitcoin prices over the last month. The frenzied interest in bitcoins piled over onto the social media site Twitter and led to a spike in Google searches on the topic.

But by Thursday morning bitcoin prices had fallen to $132 from Wednesday's record price of $147.

The most popular bitcoin exchange, Tokyo-based Mt.Gox announced overnight that it had been the victim of a hacking attack after experiencing a severe lag with its systems. The complications meant the price quickly sank to below $115 before regaining ground to $130 by 6.00 a.m. London time on Thursday, according to Bitcoincharts.com.

"There are many who will try to take advantage of the system. The past few days were a reminder of this sad truth," it said in a press release on its Facebook site.

The exchange blamed a type of hacking attack called a distributed denial-of-service attack (DDoS).

More than 80 percent of all bitcoin-USD trades and more than 70 percent of all bitcoin currency trades are done on Mt.Gox's servers, according to the company, making it is a major target for anyone wanting to take down bitcoin trading.

"Attackers wait until the price of bitcoins reaches a certain value, sell, destabilize the exchange, wait for everybody to panic-sell their bitcoins, wait for the price to drop to a certain amount, then stop the attack and start buying as much as they can. Repeat this two or three times like we saw over the past few days and they profit," Mt.Gox said.

"There is pretty much nothing that can be done. Large companies are frequently victims of these kinds of attacks. Even though we are using one of the best companies to help us fight against these DDoS attacks, we are still being affected."

Bitcoin is a virtual currency allowing users to exchange online credits for goods and services. There are currently nearly 11 million bitcoins in circulation but the currency is capped at 21 million coins. While there is no central bank that issues them, new bitcoins can be created online by using a computer to complete difficult tasks, a process known as mining.

The total value of all bitcoins has now surpassed $1.4 billion. But these latest revelations may go some way to reinforce criticisms of its instability and price volatility. Mt. Gox had to temporarily suspend deposits on March 12 as a newly mined block of bitcoin went unrecognized by the system which caused a short sell-off.

Another bitcoin associated company Instawallet - an online storage service - was hacked earlier this week and its service was suspended indefinitely.

"Our database was fraudulently accessed, due to the very nature of Instawallet it is impossible to reopen the service as-is," it said on its website.

-By CNBC.com's Matt Clinch
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-hacked-price-stumbles-buying-103848677.html

BTW, how do you trade bit coins ? Which broker ? Which software ?