Can someone explain to me Bitcoins? [2013]

yikes! my dad suddenly says lets buy bitcoins because its been raising a ton!

i said: uh, its already rising high, doesn't that means we already way too late to ride the spike?

and dad still adamant to buying....

 

Buy and wait some years.

 

Don't know where to let this but this is very funny.

 

I assume you've read more about bitcoin than me (and Ive read a lot and do understand it)
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56215787

Milk like I said I assume you're read a lot about bitcoin, how can you not understand the calculations are worthless, they are BS. If bitcoin dropped to $1 tomorrow then the calculations would also get much much easier cause most ppl would not bother mining. how much easier? 10x, a hundred times, a thousand times? a million times

 

The article is over-simplifying. The processing is part of its security mechanisms. It relies on many different nodes doing redundant work, but its not arbitrarely so, its how they designed it to be to keep it safe.
I never said its an efficient solution, but the stickler in me has to point out the picture of mining as some random do-nothing operation as incorrect when I see it.

 

I haz an idea. I have a few Q6600's with the following cards amd6870, amd6950, nvidia670gtx and a i5-2400 with a 970gtx. Now i live near a lot of student accommodation and the way its set up is the rent is "X" and that includes all utilities (Gas, Electricity, Broadband)
so I'm thinking maybe I should get in touch with a student get all 4 P.C's mining 24/7 since the electricity cost would be zero and split the profits would it be worth doing ???

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-56169917

like the current 'Crowd1' craze in africa or any of the 100s of pyramid schemes in the past its basically the transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich

 

Here's another Buffet quote, just replace gold with bitcoin.

He's pragmatic, so I'm sure he will occasionally invest in something which produces nothing until you flog it to the greater fool ... but generally he likes investing in something which produces.

 

Bitcoin is like paintings. The value is only as high as someone is willing to pay for it. It could go infinitely high or crash to 0 if something else comes along. I like to invest into things that are physical and produce value. This limits profits but also downside is less.

 

didnt know producing paintings consumed so much electricity!

 

It's all those paint fumes being consumed. But in all seriousness I only talked about the value of bitcoin versus art.

 

yeah and in all seriousness i mocked your comparison

 

I fart in your general direction. Your mother was a hamster, and your father smelt of elderberries.
ps:
No one have an answer to my question?

 

So you think bitcoin has some value outside what someone else is willing to pay for it? Its value is complete illusion with nothing physical to back it up.

 

no i actually think the opposite which is why i didnt like the comparison to art

for me, bitcoin is wasting electricity (polluting) so people can speculate with it. of course if you see art as nothing more than a commodity with which one should sell/trade/speculate then fine (not really) but i will be very sad

 

well the cost for you would be zero but that doesnt make it free also there are probably stipulations and if you use excessive electricity they may cut you off

i suspect students have tried growing marijuana (etc) based on the same general idea

 

I guess I should have given the more traditional dutch tulips example and avoid trying to explain this in my own terms. I wasn't making any claims about electricity or cost of running bitcoin networks or mining or anything like that. Just replace tulip in the wikipedia page with bitcoin and you end up hopefully getting what I was trying to claim. It's just a bit more sad for bitcoin as it's imaginary. Tulips were a real thing that turned out to be worth almost nothing in the end.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/dutch_tulip_bulb_market_bubble.asp

 

Except that would stink the whole block out.
I would assume the building as a whole is metered but individual apartments are not as there would be no point

 

There is value of blockhain behind it, watch the video I linked earlier.

 

sure but thats like saying tulips have the value of fertilizer behind it