Bitcoin Surpasses 20 National Currencies

[migles]

Can't wait for the inevitable confusion of people mixing up bitcoins and bytecoins.

and windows miners will show you kibibytecoins and tell you they are kilobytecoins...

 

[FAST6191]

Still a bubble?

http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg1460ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv
Right now it seems to be trading at a little over half what it was back in November/December. For my money that is not quite a burst bubble but it is not exactly confidence inspiring.

it happened later than i expected but it happened nonetheless :>

i'm just sad that i never got into the community (tbh, i have no idea how mining works)

You downloading a mining client suitable for the hardware you have which tries all the suitable numbers* to solve the current problem round of bitcoin is based on, run it and if you win the round by finding the appropriate number for said round then you get a bitcoin reward. As the amount of people mining and/or their hardware capabilities have gone up to the point where individuals will not do well* you can instead put your resources into a mining pool (there are many) to get a better chance of winning the round, depending upon how the mining pool works then you may get rewards per win (usually in line with how much work you have done) or just for helping out. For most the cost of the hardware and the cost of the electricity to do it (assuming you want to cash out right away) mean you are going to struggle to profit.

*said suitable number is actually a random number generated at the start of that round and based on what came before. Trying lots of random numbers takes a lot of computing power, hence people making dedicated hardware, finding parts of the world with cheap electricity and other such things. Theoretically your simple CPU could find the number, in practice the range and resources of everybody else means that is not likely to happen at all. It is the same thing with chemistry/atomic physics -- all those electrons and atoms are distributed randomly, however the net effect is still that it is highly predictable at larger levels.

 

[Psycho]

You downloading a mining client suitable for the hardware you have which tries all the suitable numbers* to solve the current problem round of bitcoin is based on, run it and if you win the round by finding the appropriate number for said round then you get a bitcoin reward. As the amount of people mining and/or their hardware capabilities have gone up to the point where individuals will not do well* you can instead put your resources into a mining pool (there are many) to get a better chance of winning the round, depending upon how the mining pool works then you may get rewards per win (usually in line with how much work you have done) or just for helping out. For most the cost of the hardware and the cost of the electricity to do it (assuming you want to cash out right away) mean you are going to struggle to profit.

*said suitable number is actually a random number generated at the start of that round and based on what came before. Trying lots of random numbers takes a lot of computing power, hence people making dedicated hardware, finding parts of the world with cheap electricity and other such things. Theoretically your simple CPU could find the number, in practice the range and resources of everybody else means that is not likely to happen at all. It is the same thing with chemistry/atomic physics -- all those electrons and atoms are distributed randomly, however the net effect is still that it is highly predictable at larger levels.

oh, so it's a lottery of sorts? a lottery that people can team up on, is what it sounds like. that's kinda cool

from what i understand, does that mean that i could theoretically let my computer mine for a few years, and come back to find some bitcoin reward(s)?

even if i don't have dedicated hardware, what would be the odds of getting rewards for doing something like that on a "decent" computer?

 

[FAST6191]

Yeah it is a lottery of sorts.

Any rewards you get would be likely only be from contributions to a pool and likely outweighed by the cost of electricity. I doubt you would win a round, it is theoretically possible to do so but the odds are very very very low.

Your "decent" computer would likely either have a CPU (basically pointless) or a GPU (better but still nothing special, especially given how power hungry they are).

 

[jonthedit]

Do share, how does one mine bitcoin/bytecoin/dogecoin?

 

[weatMod]

Nowadays the electricity bill is more than you get from mining. So it's actually a loss.

what are you babbling about, there are lots of people doing this, people with huge mining rigs, and even warehouses full on Rpi's mining 24/7

"Beyond that, many claim that the anonymity it provides users facilitates black markets."
yeah fucking duh this is the only reason it is so popular, most of it is being transacted on the SR ,
if it was not untraceable and untaxable it would be fucking useless , that is the whole point of it

 

[FAST6191]

Download a mining program for the currency you want to mine that is suitable for the hardware you have, if you are especially bored or code inclined you can make your own/alter an open source one. Run said program and then you will be mining coins for that program, whether you ultimately make any is a different matter but that is the "risk" you take. If you want to join a pool then they will tend to have their own programs or at least some additions you need to make so you can demonstrate proof of work done.

The mathematics, economics and engineering underpinning it all is quite complex but mining really is not.

 

[frogboy]

I used to mine this stuff back in the day with my regular old PC, got about $30 worth every month. Now, I probably wouldn't even make a dollar in that period of time.

 

[WiiCube_2013]

it happened later than i expected but it happened nonetheless :>

i'm just sad that i never got into the community (tbh, i have no idea how mining works)

I think u goes to a cave and dig then find some gold and be rich forever evur.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

Ooh, another buttcoin thread.

Yes, you should all invest. It's totally stable. It's not like it's a currency that has and can be cracked incredibly easily.

Seriously, it was cracked once and the market got flooded so it was worth less than dirt. Then they put a code in place to redo it all again at a later date. And then the code went off and it did it again.

The Bitcoin is a joke of a currency. If you want to make a couple extra bucks a month just do mechanical turks or something.

 

[Deleted-236924]

Not sure if we could really call it "another" buttcoin thread, given that this is a 1-year old one that got necro'd