Buying bitcoins

moneymad · 12-04-2013 12:11am

The Winklevoss Twins Say They Own 1% Of All Bitcoins
The Winklevii own about 108 thousand of them.

So the winkles buy bitcoin last summer when they cost only a few dollars, then they pay to have their story appear on yahoo saying, they bought all these bitcoins. Classic pump and dump as far as i can see.

link to yahoo

Lenin Skynard · 12-04-2013 12:28am

moneymad wrote: »

If they go to 20 I'll be buying some.

Just picked a few up at €55. It was the lowest price on my exchange all day and has gone back up to €65 now.

I should really be posting this in the gambling forum.

spix · 12-04-2013 12:34am

Lenin Skynard wrote: »

Just picked a few up at €55. It was the lowest price on my exchange all day and has gone back up to €65 now.

I should really be posting this in the gambling forum.

Well there's a very fine line between investments and gambling. It's all about trying to make money at the end of the day and both are risky

Stingerbar · 12-04-2013 9:22am

pH wrote: »

You can have many combinations of views on the above, imagine someone who got out at the top of our property boom - I'm not sure what that would say about their ideological belief in "houses"?

There isn't a comparison between houses and bitcoins though.

The use of, and value in, bitcoins seems to be founded primarily on an ideological belief about their potential value to society and a distrust (or misunderstanding) of the current system and it's history

The comments in the past 2 days also seem to be entirely about "cashing out", "how much do you lose", "there should be regulations so this kind of thing can't happen again"

I am going to watch the price over the next week and see how it goes and consider "getting in" (in a small amount) to test the water and see if a novelty profit can be turned. I am pretty sure this is what 99% of bitcoin buyers and sellers are thinking, whether they admit it to themselves or not.

I know this is rough, but the bottom line appears to be -

How much real money can I make from this itchy and scratchy money

pH · 12-04-2013 9:47am

Stingerbar wrote: »

There isn't a comparison between houses and bitcoins though.

I'm not saying there is, merely pointing out that you can judge something overpriced/in a bubble but still believe the thing has merit and worth. This applies to houses, tulip bulbs and bitcoins.

The use of, and value in, bitcoins seems to be founded primarily on an ideological belief about their potential value to society and a distrust (or misunderstanding) of the current system and it's history

The comments in the past 2 days also seem to be entirely about "cashing out", "how much do you lose", "there should be regulations so this kind of thing can't happen again"

I think you've made up the regulations thing, but yes in what appears to be a bubble bursting there's lots of human interest in how people have been affected.

I am going to watch the price over the next week and see how it goes and consider "getting in" (in a small amount) to test the water and see if a novelty profit can be turned. I am pretty sure this is what 99% of bitcoin buyers and sellers are thinking, whether they admit it to themselves or not.

I know this is rough, but the bottom line appears to be -

How much real money can I make from this itchy and scratchy money

Bitcoin (except the mining operations) can't make you any money - it's not like a share/bond/deposit that pays interest or a dividend. If you buy some today then you're relying/hoping that in the future a bitcoin will be worth more to someone else than you paid for it.

Bitcoin is a fully digital P2P currency, that computers can interact with directly. I personally believe this is incredibly powerful and a game changer, in many ways bigger than the web was - bitcoin allows all computers on the planet trade with each other in a very open manner.

That said, many on this thread have postulated technical weaknesses, the idea that a large gov (the US) might shut it down and the fact that many other "me too" currencies (litecoin, namecoin etc. etc.) have now sprung up, and if digital currencies go the way of other net phenomena then only one will be truly huge and it's not necessarily the first one.

zonEEE · 12-04-2013 11:24am

Stingerbar wrote: »

I just read through this whole thread to get an idea of bitcoins and how they work. Done a fair bit of research online and so on.

During the reading of this thread, you seem to have a strong belief in bitcoins.. ideologically.. and so on.

I hope this doesn't come across as too blunt, but if that's true, why did you cash out?

I cashed out what money i put into it as to assume no risk. I had a nice bit of profit left. It was going off the walls in the last week or so, something was going to happen. I still do believe in bitcoin but there was no need to get burnt in the process

howamidifferent · 12-04-2013 1:51pm

zonEEE wrote: »

I cashed out what money i put into it as to assume no risk. I had a nice bit of profit left. It was going off the walls in the last week or so, something was going to happen. I still do believe in bitcoin but there was no need to get burnt in the process

How much did you pay on average per bitcoin zonEEE ?

Capt'n Midnight · 12-04-2013 2:03pm

And they're back down to 55 and up to 80 (again) http://bitcoin.clarkmoody.com/

very volatile

as an investment you'd need to figure out their intrinsic worth, and that's their value as a lower commission paypal substitute with no way for a dodgy buyer to clawback the money. unfortunately that value is only realised if they are used rather than hoarded.

That rule about doing the opposite of the market probably applies, sell when everyone's buying and buy when everyone's selling.

The main feature bitcoins have is that it's very hard to print money. And the difficulty is determined by the the producers. On the other hand one key metric to remember is that over half of all the bitcoins that will ever exist have already been mined.

We've already seen one set of miners back off.
Does bitcoins have a mechanism to handle someone like the NSA coming in and mining coins very fast for a short time close to the period when the difficulty is raised so that the bar is raised too high when they drop out ? The object here is shock and awe. And to force the miners to up their game , which would thin the herd and reduce the numbers of people doing.

I'm reminded of the day Microsoft invested in Apple (ie gave them a loan) share price doubled, 30 million shares traded. The amount made on the day was three times the value of the loan. Bitcoins is similar in that a big player can manipulate the market to their advantage.

zpehtsfd · 12-04-2013 2:30pm

[QUOTE=Bitcoins is similar in that a big player can manipulate the market to their advantage.[/QUOTE]

That's what is happening. You don't honestly think joe blow bought in the 200's do you. Just like in the stock market the big owners buy and sell to themselves all the time raising the price. It a way of getting eyes on the stock. Then when it goes down to 50 you will have joe blow buyers because "well it can't go any lower" mentality comes into play. JMHO.

Roonbox · 12-04-2013 4:49pm

zpehtsfd wrote: »

That's what is happening. You don't honestly think joe blow bought in the 200's do you. Just like in the stock market the big owners buy and sell to themselves all the time raising the price. It a way of getting eyes on the stock. Then when it goes down to 50 you will have joe blow buyers because "well it can't go any lower" mentality comes into play. JMHO.

The exact opposite is true, the smart money comes in at the start and paddy bloke comes in when the run is nearly over.

The Dagda · 13-04-2013 12:16am

Roonbox wrote: »

The exact opposite is true, the smart money comes in at the start and paddy bloke comes in when the run is nearly over.

I disagree. I think the smart money comes in now when the herd is big enough to manipulate the market

Pinewoo · 13-04-2013 12:23am

The smart, ballsy guys are investing in bitcoins now

valor · 13-04-2013 2:31am

Are their any easy ways to get money onto exchanges to buy Bitcoins? I cant seem to find anywhere you can use Credit cards at least, the only option seems to be Bank Transfers...EUR Bitcoin seems a little bit overpriced also, MtGox charges 2.5% extra on currency transactions or something

chuky_r_law · 13-04-2013 3:08pm

what would happen to bitcoins if the silk road got shut down? it seems to me that there are 2 types of people out there who buy bitcoins. those who trade and those who speculate. i know more and more people are usiing them to trade but would it be true that most of the trading is done through the silk road? if the fbi shut down the silk road tomorrw would the currency be worthless?

srsly78 · 13-04-2013 5:50pm

Apparently it's used heavily for online gambling as well (because of the legality issues in america). Silk Road is only one of the uses.

omicron · 13-04-2013 5:53pm

srsly78 wrote: »

Apparently it's used heavily for online gambling as well (because of the legality issues in america). Silk Road is only one of the uses.

In more ways than one seeing as buying it is online gambling as well!

kowloon · 13-04-2013 6:04pm

Decided I'd mine a little bit of a bitcoin and follow it seeing as I have a GPU suited to the task and I'm using my computer for basic tasks at the moment, it's on but only using half of a dual gpu card.
Mined a little and sent it to an exchange I was recommended called Bitcoin-24 and Bang! It was gone, the site was shut down with the Euros in the account. I've lost the price of an Indian for the whole family.

The people I saw panic selling a years wages must be gutted, the ones on that particular exchange even more so.

pH · 13-04-2013 7:54pm

kowloon wrote: »

Decided I'd mine a little bit of a bitcoin and follow it seeing as I have a GPU suited to the task and I'm using my computer for basic tasks at the moment, it's on but only using half of a dual gpu card.
Mined a little and sent it to an exchange I was recommended called Bitcoin-24 and Bang! It was gone, the site was shut down with the Euros in the account. I've lost the price of an Indian for the whole family.

The people I saw panic selling a years wages must be gutted, the ones on that particular exchange even more so.

When was this? By "price of an indian" I guess you mean 30-40 euro?

What mHash/sec and what guild?

AFAIK a good modern GPU was getting 100Mhash/sec - this would earn you about 20c a day on slush's pool. Just wondering as gpu mining is not profitable any more, and even the FPGA mining rigs are being replaced with ASICs. Currently it would take someone with a desktop rig single GPU 200+ days to mine 50 euro!

hmmm · 13-04-2013 9:50pm

Silk Road. Officials are "powerless" to shut it down apparently, so drug users and dealers are flocking to the site. LOL - the naivety.

In other news
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-18604492

chuky_r_law · 14-04-2013 1:17pm

srsly78 wrote: »

Apparently it's used heavily for online gambling as well (because of the legality issues in america). Silk Road is only one of the uses.

id imagine it would be one of the bigger uses of bitcoins, besides speculating on them.

so if they were able to regulate them in the states would that have an effect on people wo use them for gambling?

kowloon · 14-04-2013 1:33pm

pH wrote: »

When was this? By "price of an indian" I guess you mean 30-40 euro?

What mHash/sec and what guild?

AFAIK a good modern GPU was getting 100Mhash/sec - this would earn you about 20c a day on slush's pool. Just wondering as gpu mining is not profitable any more, and even the FPGA mining rigs are being replaced with ASICs. Currently it would take someone with a desktop rig single GPU 200+ days to mine 50 euro!

Was joking about the Indian, I think it was more like a starter. Maybe a Peshwari naan after transfer fees

.

I got about 300-320 Mhash/s out of half the card. Even when the reward was 50BTC a block and the difficulty was a lot lower I still can't see how it was worth it to buy a machine and dedicate it to mining. I spotted forum posts with return on investment more than a year away, continuously running.

Either way, it's not nice to hear about people losing the larger chunk of their retirement fund after buying up at the peak and panic selling.

srsly78 · 14-04-2013 3:29pm

chuky_r_law wrote: »

id imagine it would be one of the bigger uses of bitcoins, besides speculating on them.

so if they were able to regulate them in the states would that have an effect on people wo use them for gambling?

Ehh the gambling is illegal there (depends on state etc etc) in the first place - nevermind anything about bitcoins :pac:

Ireland is actually a very "gambling friendly" country, we take it for granted here.

Capt'n Midnight · 14-04-2013 5:18pm

Interesting from 1933 HG Wells - The Shape of Things to Come

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301391h.html

The explicit repudiation of democratic control by the Technologists at that date is very notable. The unit of energy was to be the basis of a new currency. So every power station became a mint and every waterfall a potential "gold-mine", and the money and the energy in human affairs remained practically in step.

Two ways of looking at this

a - simplistically in that bitmining uses energy

b - someone could create a new bitcoin like currency and limit it to something like the GWh produced per year.

As a medium of exchange bitcoins has many advantages.

As an investment opportunity one big risk is that someone launches an alternative currency that won't significantly appreciate in value but has all the other medium of exchange advantages of bitcoins.

pH · 14-04-2013 6:39pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

b - someone could create a new bitcoin like currency and limit it to something like the GWh produced per year.

So consider each SolidCoin to be backed by energy, no one can produce them unless they expend a certain amount of energy and from that comes a stable value.
http://solidcoin.info/faq.html

Capt'n Midnight · 14-04-2013 7:15pm

pH wrote: »

So consider each SolidCoin to be backed by energy, no one can produce them unless they expend a certain amount of energy and from that comes a stable value.
http://solidcoin.info/faq.html

Very different.

Solidcoin is now Microcash :rolleyes:

it's calculations are supposedly hard to do on GPU's and dedicated hardware,
but that just means no one has really tried hard.

pH · 16-04-2013 12:15pm

Now the bubble has burst and things are getting back to normal - if anyone wants to buy a few bitcoins then I could help - PM me if you'd only like a couple of coins and find the hassle of setting up an exchange account and SEPA transfers too much.

Giblet · 16-04-2013 12:25pm

I don't think we've seen the bottom yet. Still rolling down that hill.

xertpo · 16-04-2013 12:58pm

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174918.0

Amberman · 16-04-2013 1:40pm

haha...these idiots give cops a bad name.

Capt'n Midnight · 16-04-2013 4:33pm

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html

Blockchain.info, a site that tracks data on Bitcoin mining, estimates that in just the last 24 hours, miners used about $147,000 of electricity just to run their hardware, assuming an average price of 15 cents per kilowatt hour (a little higher than the U.S. average, lower than some high cost areas like California). That, of course, is in addition to the money devoted to buying and building the mining rigs.

...
One of the strangest aspects of the Bitcoin frenzy is that the Bitcoin economy replicates some of the most archaic features of the gold standard. Real-world mining of precious metals for currency was a resource-hungry and value-destroying process.

Caliden · 16-04-2013 4:38pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-12/virtual-bitcoin-mining-is-a-real-world-environmental-disaster.html

"The site estimates the profits from the day of mining at about $681,000, based on the current value of Bitcoins."

So....profit?

Amberman · 16-04-2013 4:39pm

Ofcourse, thats only true if you assign no value to Bitcoins...which flies in the face of what the free market has decided.

Capt'n Midnight · 16-04-2013 5:02pm

Caliden wrote: »

"The site estimates the profits from the day of mining at about $681,000, based on the current value of Bitcoins."

So....profit?

Article date was 2013-04-12

http://blockchain.info/stats

Electricity Cost $169,582.40
Mining Profits
Operating Profit $362,487.40

Electricity cost is 46% of "profit"

Also price is still yoyo-ing was as low as $55 earlier today

zonEEE · 16-04-2013 5:10pm

Electricity cost is going to drop hugely with the introduction of ASIC's. Butterfly labs 60GHz runs @ 60watts

Roonbox · 16-04-2013 5:20pm

Well for some reason MT.gox denied my membership

so I guess that makes my mind up for me.

Capt'n Midnight · 16-04-2013 5:46pm

zonEEE wrote: »

Electricity cost is going to drop hugely with the introduction of ASIC's. Butterfly labs 60GHz runs @ 60watts

So only those who invest in dedicated hardware will mine in future.

And don't forget the difficulty is adaptive.

zonEEE · 16-04-2013 6:04pm

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

So only those who invest in dedicated hardware will mine in future.

And don't forget the difficulty is adaptive.

yep, there's many that have already 25k+ orders with bufferfly labs. Its to late to make money mining bitcoins unless you already have a pre order in. Difficultly will go insane.

Pre orders can be bought on ebay, they have gone for 10k plus in the past few weeks.

One with three days left.

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/Pre-Order-1-x-60-GH-s-Bitcoin-Miner-BitForce-Single-SC-ASIC-Butterfly-Labs-/271188485081?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3f2417e3d9#ht_1870wt_906

vanbrah · 16-04-2013 6:05pm

hey, does anyone live around galway and own bitcoins? im just looking to buy 2 for an online purchase - have cash

i cant get the online wire transfer bull**** to work. driving me nuts!

srsly78 · 16-04-2013 6:13pm

Are you guys undercover guards?

From the other thread -> https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=174918.0

scamalert · 16-04-2013 7:26pm

There was recently a lot of hype from media as bitcoin value soared over 100$ per coin,what began as 7c-20c value at the beginning.its one of those currencies that can range a lot-but the main idea of creator was to create currency that government wouldn't have any intervention on it and it would be an independent currency.The only flaw with that is that its prone to be more dependent on those who have money,so basically anyone who has access to computer lab or some sort of render farm could make more money then average miner.The process to make coins is called mining and anyone with a pc can do it,but the problem with that is it basically uses up all cpu and graphics card resources to solve hard math equations,which take days to months to make a coin.so dunno if taken all electricity required and basically powerful pc to make best of it at the end,i would see it more like waste of resources then money making.Also its acceptance is very slim,but it has huge potential for black market online,as its non traceable,easy to transfer,and not to hard to cash out.

fergalr · 16-04-2013 7:29pm

scamalert wrote: »

as its non traceable,

Its not as untraceable as many people think.

If you use it without care, you can leave a pretty large amount of information about your activity.
That problem will only increase over time, unless people change how they use it.

scamalert · 16-04-2013 7:46pm

dont see any risk in using it for purchases or leaving a trace its up to people what they buy.But as i mentioned whats the point of currency,if someone with a proper gear can make dozens of it a day,its not a real labor using up your gear and electricity for pc to do f all is it,then put a value on it which in reality doesn't have any,thats why banks dont have fear of it,as its prone to vulnerabilities then a real currency which is controlled by government,imagine someone country wanted to sabotage that,the only thing they would need is one of them super computers,and you'd have market flooded with bitcoins.
Don't have anything against this project,as the guy who created it seems genius enough.But long term i dont see it having much of a future to replace real money.

pH · 16-04-2013 8:24pm

Bloomberg have some sort of irrational hatred for bitcoin.

Seeing as all their financial reporting spectacularly failed to warn anyone about the US subprime meltdown and pretty much everything that happened in Europe, I'd take their dismissal of the future of bitcoin as a huge positive endorsement.

Global energy usage is somewhere around 300,000 gwh per day and bloomberg are calling an energy usage of 1gwh per day an "environmental disaster"?

euroboom13 · 16-04-2013 8:39pm

i only know two things about bitcoins

1)i wish boughts some to sell now
2) I would n`t even consider entering the game now , even if i could double /triple /quad....

RUN....to much hype

Dr Silly Bollox MD · 16-04-2013 9:44pm

Founder Of Drug Site Silk Road Says Bitcoin Booms And Busts Won't Kill His Black Market

Mining bitcoins takes power, but it isn't an 'environmental disaster'

Digital Drills: The Monster Machines that Mine Bitcoin

Capt'n Midnight · 16-04-2013 10:48pm

zonEEE wrote: »

yep, there's many that have already 25k+ orders with bufferfly labs. Its to late to make money mining bitcoins unless you already have a pre order in.

actually you could make more money on the pre orders

http://www.ebay.ie/itm/60-GH-s-Butterfly-Labs-Bitcoin-Miner-BitForce-SC-ASIC-Preorder-/321108528557?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item4ac38f4dad

At the time of this auction all I have is a order number and email from Butterfly labs

zonEEE · 17-04-2013 11:56am

Some good news on the exchange front.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=IbSOHwCOnG0

brendan86 · 17-04-2013 6:05pm

can someone please explain to me how to mine bitcoins.. what software etc would I need? Im google'ing it but cant seem to find much information about the process

Thanks
Brendan

pH · 17-04-2013 7:41pm

brendan86 wrote: »

can someone please explain to me how to mine bitcoins.. what software etc would I need? Im google'ing it but cant seem to find much information about the process

Thanks
Brendan

http://www.newslobster.com/random/how-to-get-started-using-your-gpu-to-mine-for-bitcoins-on-windows

However
A) It's pretty much pointless mining solo - you need to be in a guild.

Even with one of the very latest GPU cards running flat out 24/7 you will only make a few cents per day.
C) FPGAs are much more involved, you might pick them up 2nd hand but ...
D) ASICs are now here and nothing else really matters.

Capt'n Midnight · 17-04-2013 8:23pm

pH wrote: »

D) ASICs are now here and nothing else really matters.

Some hardware to choose from.
http://www.bitcoinx.com/bitcoin-mining-hardware/

Of course the chances of a newcomer having it arrive in time is fairly small as it's an arms race.

Also this knocks out namecoin
http://dot-bit.org/Merged_Mining

its like a lottery where everyone generates tickets until someone finds the winning one. Normally you make tickets and check them against the Bitcoin block chain to see if they are the solution. With merged mining you create a ticket and check it against both the Bitcoin block chain and the Namecoin block chain, Bitcoin and Namecoin know nothing about each other, they are two totally different lotteries with different winning numbers, you just sent a copy of your ticket to both

Exchange rates. ( Facebook likes are at the bottom )
http://liliontransfer.org/?cms_www=cennik

Buying bitcoins

Comments