Can someone explain to me Bitcoins? [2013]

[orangpelupa]

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....

 

[pascal]

Buy and wait some years.

 

[chris1515]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1360288214930493443

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

 

[zed]

You seem still under the common misconseption dispelled in this very thread that the computations done during mining serve no purpose whatsoever. .

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

All the millions of trillions of calculations it takes to keep the system running aren't really doing any useful work."They're computations that serve no other purpose," says de Vries, "they're just immediately discarded again.
"If Bitcoin were to be adopted as a global reserve currency," he speculates, "the Bitcoin price will probably be in the millions, and those miners will have more money than the entire [US] Federal budget to spend on electricity."
"We'd have to double our global energy production," he says with a laugh. "For Bitcoin."
He says it also limits the number of transactions the system can process to about five per second.

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

 

[milk]

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.

 

[Davros]

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 ???

 

[zed]

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

 

[MfA]

Buy and wait some years.

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

If they closed the stock market for 10 years and we owned Coca-Cola and Wells Fargo and some other businesses, it wouldn’t bother me because I’m looking at what the business produces. If I buy a McDonald’s stand, I don’t get a quote on it every day. I look at how my business is every day. So those are the kind of assets I like to own, something that actually is going to deliver, and hopefully deliver to meet my expectations over time. A piece of art, you know, may go from $1,000 to $50 million, but it’s dependent on what the next guy wants to pay me. The art itself— the painting itself is not going to dispense cash. So I have to find somebody that’s going to like it more. And with most— with an asset like gold, for example, you know, basically gold is a way of going along on fear, and it’s been a pretty good way of going along on fear from time to time. But you really have to hope people become more afraid in the year or two years than they are now. And if they become more afraid you make money, if they become less afraid you lose money. But the gold itself doesn’t produce anything.

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.

 

[manux]

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.

 

[Bludd]

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!

 

[manux]

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.

 

[Bludd]

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

 

[Davros]

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?

 

[manux]

yeah and in all seriousness i mocked your comparison

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.

 

[Bludd]

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

 

[Bludd]

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 ???

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

 

[manux]

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.

The Dutch tulip bulb market bubble, also known as 'tulipmania' was one of the most famous market bubbles and crashes of all time. It occurred in Holland during the early to mid 1600s when speculation drove the value of tulip bulbs to extremes. At the height of the market, the rarest tulip bulbs traded for as much as six times the average person's annual salary.

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

 

[Davros]

I suspect students have tried growing marijuana (etc)

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

 

[green.pixel]

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.

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

 

[Bludd]

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