Buying bitcoins

zonEEE

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

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

Does that transfer work?

Some money to be made arbing between mtgox and btc-e sometimes there can be a big price difference. Only problem is getting money to a from each exchange quickly.

grotmaster

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. 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

This fellow has been following Butterfly Labs, the makers of the above non-existent product, for some time. There is an abundance of these machines on Ebay right now, with many of the original purchasers clamouring to secure only partial refunds from Butterfly labs. A large thread, but very informative for anyone with a few €k to spare.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=136392.0

Capt'n Midnight

zonEEE wrote: »

Only problem is getting money to a from each exchange quickly.

That is a huge understatement.

It's the BIG problem. Look at how much the value fell while people were in the queue to sell them. Also look at how often exchanges were hacked. So to be safe you'd have to keep them offline. Which would put you even further back in the queue.

montreal2011

I'm not looking to troll and I don't want to annoy anyone, but isn't it essentially a ponzi scheme?

srsly78

montreal2011 wrote: »

I'm not looking to troll and I don't want to annoy anyone, but isn't it essentially a ponzi scheme?

No it does not meet the definition. Similarly you cannot call the gold bubble a ponzi scheme either.

scamalert

montreal2011 wrote: »

I'm not looking to troll and I don't want to annoy anyone, but isn't it essentially a ponzi scheme?

No its not.Read whole idea on wikipedia.
the only drawback is that as said previously it doesnt solve anything,and taken into account resources needed to make flippin coin,is easier to go looking for real coins on the street,if person who posted correctly you make around 50-1$ a day running full power i7,anyway there is million better ways to make dollar a day.

montreal2011

srsly78 wrote: »

No it does not meet the definition. Similarly you cannot call the gold bubble a ponzi scheme either.

It's an interesting idea,but I would not go near it. I think it, just like gold certs, allows ample room for scamming, such as dubious gold cert issuers who issue certs without the physical gold to back it up.

pH

montreal2011 wrote: »

It's an interesting idea,but I would not go near it. I think it, just like gold certs, allows ample room for scamming, such as dubious gold cert issuers who issue certs without the physical gold to back it up.

The bitcoin network as it stands has no room for scamming - the ownership and transfer of coins is solid.

With botcoins money/value can be moved around the internet very securely and very quickly.

Ironically, many things that people are complaining about (being able to move your money around the world quickly and safely) are the things that bitcoin solves perfectly.

At them moment we have basically visa/mastercard for purchases and various money moves like Western Union and interbank schemes like SEPA, and horrible half-assed things like PayPal - none of them provide a decent service to either sellers or buyers.

Call me a bitcoin believer if you must, but I genuinely believe that bitcoin (or something very similar) will become the basis for a significant percentage of money moving around in the near future.

There is another question about whether they're worth buying and hoarding as an investment vehicle - I'm not necessarily saying that, just that I think that bitcoins themselves have a bright future.

scamalert

bright future ?
visa,mastercard is accepted 99% of the world,rest can accept wu on any corner ? Its only good moving money for criminals more like,on silk road or other dodgy sites.
and saying good investment is like playing poker,as bitcoin started as 7-20cents and in two years time soared over 100$ and then plumeted,its sorta like forex you can put a gamble on it hoping it will eventually rise in price,until someone decides to cash out and plumeting market to the bottom.also its high value is hard to cash out or buy something with it,altough there are retailers and what not who accept it to some extent.

srsly78

The point is visa and western union etc take a big cut for themselves. Maybe you think it's free to use your credit card but the retailer often has to pay 2.5% or more. You can send bitcoins to someone almost instantly for free.

pH

scamalert wrote: »

bright future ?
visa,mastercard is accepted 99% of the world,rest can accept wu on any corner ? Its only good moving money for criminals more like,on silk road or other dodgy sites.

Which is fine if you don't mind paying up to 2% of the transaction value. However you can't send me (or a relative in Poland) money easily using visa. With bitcoin it's a click of a mouse, literally.

and saying good investment is like playing poker,as bitcoin started as 7-20cents and in two years time soared over 100$ and then plumeted,its sorta like forex you can put a gamble on it hoping it will eventually rise in price,until someone decides to cash out and plumeting market to the bottom.also its high value is hard to cash out or buy something with it,altough there are retailers and what not who accept it to some extent.

As I said, the question of whether bitcoins themselves are worth investing in is a totally different question - I never said they were.

Capt'n Midnight

srsly78 wrote: »

No it does not meet the definition.

can't resist

"our model is trapezoid " :pac:

pH wrote: »

The bitcoin network as it stands has no room for scamming - the ownership and transfer of coins is solid

At present there is quite a large risk of either you or the exchange getting attacked and the bitcoins stolen.

bitcoins can be lost forever if people forget passwords

There is another question about whether they're worth buying and hoarding as an investment vehicle - I'm not necessarily saying that, just that I think that bitcoins themselves have a bright future.

Unfortunately with bitcoins the more people who hoard them the less useful they are as a medium of exchange and that's where their real value lies.

There are two questions

what is their intrinsic value ? for those who want to use them

what is their likely peak value ? for those who want to invest in them


Don't forget that other bitcoin like networks are already setup so people won't have to rely on bitcoins. IMHO This means there is a limit to the premium they can command.

Capt'n Midnight

pH wrote: »

Which is fine if you don't mind paying up to 2% of the transaction value. However you can't send me (or a relative in Poland) money easily using visa. With bitcoin it's a click of a mouse, literally.

Don't forget that phone companies are also doing transfers
http://www.safaricom.co.ke/personal/m-pesa/m-pesa-services-tariffs/tariffs
( Divide by 110 to get Euros )
Transfer to / from mobile phone accounts
49c transfer for 3c fee
eg: €700 transfer for €1 fee

I'm not saying it's ideal , but I am saying there are other ways of transfering money point to point where the sender can't clawback. Fees could come down if phone companies competed with each other.

scamalert

srsly78 wrote: »

The point is visa and western union etc take a big cut for themselves. Maybe you think it's free to use your credit card but the retailer often has to pay 2.5% or more. You can send bitcoins to someone almost instantly for free.

I use WU often and yeah depending on the country they charge 10-30e per transaction,but its money in minutes and cash in hands.But i see it as a charge for service.
But im more interested how much your electricity bill would be for running top end pc with 600-800watt psu for a month in return for bitcoin ?

dcreavy

Hi guys , a friend of my just told me these existed yesterday and I'd love to take a small gamble (€20-€30) :cool: investing in them. Is there anyone who is experienced in buying and selling them that could help me out and possible give me a few tips or a guide on the best ways to do it? Would really appreciate the help

Thanks, David

pH

scamalert wrote: »

But im more interested how much your electricity bill would be for running top end pc with 600-800watt psu for a month in return for bitcoin ?

But that's just a silly question - a top end PC just isn't an efficient tool for mining bitcoins.

For those with efficient hardware (later FPGAs and new ASICS) the daily figures are here:
http://blockchain.info/stats

Don't forget that phone companies are also doing transfers

Another half baked system that doesn't have a fraction of 1% of the possibilities of an open net based transfer system like bitcoin.

And on the "ponzi" thing - A ponzi scheme is an investment scheme where investors are promised a return by the scheme, and the scheme keeps pretending to make money and add it to all the accounts, nominally increasing each accounts value but there's never any (or enough) real gains in the scheme to match - instead the scheme pays these gains (when requested) out of the capital being invested by new people joining the scheme (attracted by the outrageous returns current investors are getting).

This has nothing to do with bitcoin, there is no central scheme claiming that investments are making huge returns and falsely adding these returns to accounts.

ANYONE WITH A BITCOIN SUCCESS STORY

3 days ago they were worth 49 eur - today 75

Giblet

pH wrote: »

But that's just a silly question - a top end PC just isn't an efficient tool for mining bitcoins.

For those with efficient hardware (later FPGAs and new ASICS) the daily figures are here:
http://blockchain.info/stats



Another half baked system that doesn't have a fraction of 1% of the possibilities of an open net based transfer system like bitcoin.

And on the "ponzi" thing - A ponzi scheme is an investment scheme where investors are promised a return by the scheme, and the scheme keeps pretending to make money and add it to all the accounts, nominally increasing each accounts value but there's never any (or enough) real gains in the scheme to match - instead the scheme pays these gains (when requested) out of the capital being invested by new people joining the scheme (attracted by the outrageous returns current investors are getting).

This has nothing to do with bitcoin, there is no central scheme claiming that investments are making huge returns and falsely adding these returns to accounts.



3 days ago they were worth 49 eur - today 75

Asics haven't shipped in any large quantity, and when they do, the difficulty will bump up, negating the benefit.

Bitcoin transfers rely on verifications, and miners will be biased towards transactions with transactions costs, in order to verify a transaction within a few hours, otherwise you might be waiting a few days. There is nothing speedy about it, and transferring an amount to an address is worthless if you can't cash out.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transaction_fees

Getting actual money out might take a while as well. Most exchanges require a minimum amount to withdraw money, euro is particularly painful to deal with. Hell, check any bitcoin forum, all of them are feverous about the dollar value of bitcoins, because they want to cash out, there doesn't seem to be intrinsic value in keeping coins. So no, it's not fast, because you need to cash out to make it worthwhile, because you can't buy goods or services of any notability.

And my last point. The so called "genius" of "Satoshi", the so called complexity of the algorithms and how people who don't use bitcoin don't understand it, and how it's so secure. It's already been abused with the .7->.8 blockchain fix. (yes, technically a 51% attack was performed then, just it was by consensus of a few pools). It's not a difficult concept to understand for any decent developer. Non-developers seem to grasp that it has some complexity and then use that to justify that it is really secure.

Also, 8 Days ago, it was worth 260 dollars, then it dropped to 50.

The real winners? Early adopters, SatoshiDice.

pH

Giblet wrote: »

Getting actual money out might take a while as well. Most exchanges require a minimum amount to withdraw money, euro is particularly painful to deal with. Hell, check any bitcoin forum, all of them are feverous about the dollar value of bitcoins, because they want to cash out, there doesn't seem to be intrinsic value in keeping coins. So no, it's not fast, because you need to cash out to make it worthwhile, because you can't buy goods or services of any notability.

I think people have a blind spot here, they're so used to how banking and other systems work they can't see the wood for the trees. Anyone with a computer can "cash out" their bitcoins by sending them to someone else's wallet with a mouse in one hand whilst accepting cash/goods/services with the other hand.

The exchanges provide valuable service to be sure, but bitcoins can be sent to anyone instantly - all you need is someone willing to pay you what you think they're worth.

At the moment they're probably easier to cash out than any investment vehicle - in that shares/commodities also need to be traded on an exchange and then a transfer to a bank account. This is the same for bitcoins, except that in addition to this there are cash now options like localbitcoins.

If you are making lots of bitcoins as a business it's fairly easy to almost instantly move them to a cash value with a trade (remove btc currency risk) and then move them to a bank account.

Edit:
Oh, and 100 euro as of this morning.

And I'm amazed at some of the scepticism, one of the things that bitcoins will revolutionise is "Investments & Markets" because it makes it trivial to get money to/from accounts that allow you purchase other commodities.
https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Trade

scamalert

PH
you say its good currency ?
260 dollars, then it dropped to 50.
at firs it was only 0.20c$ then climbed to 20$ then hiked over 260 back down and so on.
If it was real world currency whole global world would collapse with such fluctuations.
This reminds me of gold farming in games,doing same thing over and over again until you get desired item or amount=in return you might get some cash or item,but it only lasts while there are others willing to pay for it,and collapse happens when majority collects the said item or amount,then its up to them people to make game over.And its the majority of bitcoin users who can easily manipulate this without any intervention.
So one day its worth 50e next day its 100e and one morning its 1e worth nothing.
So what started as great idea is basically controlled by those who have render farms and huge servers to make coins for those who dont have required resources.Sorta like real world currency except with 0 regulations and plenty of space for manipulations.

pH

scamalert wrote: »

PH
you say its good currency ?
260 dollars, then it dropped to 50.
at firs it was only 0.20c$ then climbed to 20$ then hiked over 260 back down and so on.
If it was real world currency whole global world would collapse with such fluctuations.
This reminds me of gold farming in games,doing same thing over and over again until you get desired item or amount=in return you might get some cash or item,but it only lasts while there are others willing to pay for it,and collapse happens when majority collects the said item or amount,then its up to them people to make game over.And its the majority of bitcoin users who can easily manipulate this without any intervention.
So one day its worth 50e next day its 100e and one morning its 1e worth nothing.
So what started as great idea is basically controlled by those who have render farms and huge servers to make coins for those who dont have required resources.Sorta like real world currency except with 0 regulations and plenty of space for manipulations.

Well if anyone is the blame it's "investors", people following the Greater fool theory, what someone is willing to pay for a bitcoin one day as opposed to the next.

As for the servers and miners, they're mining about 3,000 bitcoins per day - in no way does who gets this relatively small amount of newly minted coins affect or control the 11 million+ coins already out there, nor does the control of these servers allow them manipulate the market in any way. Claims like you are making are pure nonsense.

scamalert

So yeah people complain paying here 10-30e per wu transaction but they are ok to lose 50e on a single coin in days time :pac:
There are plenty options invest in commodities,stocks,indexes with minimal cost and risk,and they are backed up by countries and goverments,central banks,where bitcoins have no restrictions and controls,so you say theres 11mil of coins already made,definately there are people who own close to 1 mill between all of them,so it would only take one person to bring the whole price to plummet down,where in forex which have 3billion daily turnaround wouldn't make couple points impact if there was someone throwing in orders of 20-30mill,i had my share of trading stock indexes,commodities in nearly three years time,and can say ita not more different to trading forex only there isnt real economical factors that influence Such ranges like bitcoin has to make it worth investing in.I heard the recent price influx was due to US continuing printing $$$ but that reflected in prices hiking across the oil/silver and gold,where bitcoins are backed only by people who are willing to give them value day to day basis.

moneymad

brendan86 wrote: »

Heh guys,

I've been doing a bit of research the last week into buying bitcoins.. I want to buy 1k worth, I know it's risky but I have it to spare and might just see how it goes for a year or so..

I have currently registered on mtgox.com and am awaiting approval on my Id verification.. Has anyone dealt with this site have any info for me?

If I put my money on mtgox that means I have to trust them with my bitcoins is this correct? I won't have to have a wallet on my computer?

I'm just basically asking for advice, it's what I want to do but if someone can explain the best way about it that knows more than me I would appreciate it

Thanks

Brendan

did you buy the bitcoins yet?

Capt'n Midnight

http://bitcoingem.com/

Dr Silly Bollox MD

Here we go again: Top Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox taken down for hours by ‘another strong DDoS attack’ (Updated)

pH

Dr Silly Bollox MD wrote: »

Here we go again: Top Bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox taken down for hours by ‘another strong DDoS attack’ (Updated)

There was another maybe 24 hours ago, both made very little difference to the price people have copped on not to panic sell just because the exchange is down for a couple of hours.

And on the bitcoingem thing, personally I have no interest in it, but it's a tiny tiny example of what anyone can do with bitcoins on the net - who knows what incredible creative uses pioneers will provide in the coming months.

milltown

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://bitcoingem.com/

Brilliant!

Just in case Bitcoin alone wasn't volatile enough lately.
"However, the gem may reset randomly after a purchase. The odds of a random reset are 1.5625%, meaning your winning odds are 98.4375%. Should your purchase trigger a reset, you will lose your stake and the gem's price will go back to 0.1 bitcoins. "

christeb

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

http://bitcoingem.com/

now THERE'S a Ponzi scheme!

pH

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/apr/26/bitcoin-currency-moves-offline-berlin-video

How's this for look at the future in the present. Hopefully it might shut up the "it's only for drugs" brigade.

srsly78

pH wrote: »

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/video/2013/apr/26/bitcoin-currency-moves-offline-berlin-video

How's this for look at the future in the present. Hopefully it might shut up the "it's only for drugs" brigade.

It's only for drugs :rolleyes:

Jonny7

Apart from the drugs and few token online sellers, what non profit-making benefits are there to a pseudo-currency that can lose (or gain) 30% in a day?

Ironically, without the regulation and mechanisms, it remains highly unstable and thus attracts all the greed and pure capitalists looking to make a quick buck