What the fug are bitcoins?

evo2000

And how does one go about mining these said coins? ive got my shovel and pick axe ready to go!! :P lol

bitemeluis

whats a "fug"?

PizzamanIRL

They're little bits of coins. Sometimes you only get the head and no tails on the coin. It caused an uproar in Switzerland in 2010 because people couldn't settle things using the traditional heads or tails.

Tazio

Wow...a blast from the past....

I bailed last October....

Got to go..my driver said I need to switch off my phone before take off...later.....

For Forks Sake

bitemeluis wrote: »

whats a "fug"?

It's like a pog I believe.

thelad95

Pyramid Scheme.

diomed

Monopoly money.

Karl Stein

Probably the future of currency.

Capt'n Midnight

evo2000 wrote: »

And how does one go about mining these said coins? ive got my shovel and pick axe ready to go!! :P lol

the thing about pump and dump is that you are supposed to get in while they are still pumping and get out before the dumping starts


http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/bitstampUSD#rg360zczsg2013-11-29zeg2014-09-21ztgSzm1g10zm2g25zv

evo2000

Id love to know what was said too sell the first bitcoin, "Here buy this imaginary money off me for real money" lol

Notorious97

Its all about the mining

policarp

evo2000 wrote: »

And how does one go about mining these said coins? ive got my shovel and pick axe ready to go!! :P lol

They're part of bigcoms.
Only smaller. . .

thunderdog

Made a decent amount of money in bitcoins a while ago. Bought in when they were 27 dollars. Unfortunately I bailed a bit early. Would have made 60 grand selling near peak

kingtiger

have a read

http://www.thecoinsman.com/2014/08/bitcoin/inside-chinese-bitcoin-mine/

compete with that

Bongalongherb

Is this 'Stellar' going to take off sometime do you think ?.

Source: https://www.stellar.org/blog/introducing-stellar/

alb

evo2000 wrote: »

And how does one go about mining these said coins? ive got my shovel and pick axe ready to go!! :P lol

Don't bother looking into mining unless you want to do it for the hobby aspect. As the earlier link in this thread shows, it's moved to industrial mining farms by now, you wouldn't make a profit.

Regarding what is Bitcoin, to quote the creator himself:

Sorry to be a wet blanket. Writing a description for (bitcoin) for general audiences is bloody hard. There’s nothing to relate it to. - Satoshi Nakamoto July 5, 2010

It's a fascinating invention on many levels and I believe we've only begun to see how cryptocurrencies will impact the world. This video gives a good introduction to beginnings of it:

caolfx

They're the coins Mario collects. The 'bit' is a reference to 8-bit.

_Kaiser_

They're this decade's tracker mortgages - and I don't know what either of them are!

Tail Docker

They're Satoshis career. It's doing good.

Agricola

The main thing is you should have been asking this question 5 years ago. You might as well forget it now!

Birneybau

What the fug is Google?

Fallschirmjager

They were a way of getting drugs and hit men without anyone knowing, until my gox debacle that is....

Er, so I'm told.....from a friend...

Karl Stein

evo2000 wrote: »

Id love to know what was said too sell the first bitcoin, "Here buy this imaginary money off me for real money" lol

What makes you think the paper notes in your pocket are worth more than the paper they're printed on?

biko

They are coins someone has bit into.

Capt'n Midnight

Karl Stein wrote: »

What makes you think the paper notes in your pocket are worth more than the paper they're printed on?

the gubberment accepts them as payment for the taxes they impose

I'd much rather pay my taxes in magic jelly beans but I don't paid in them and we've already sold the cow

starlit

Electronic money?

Karl Stein

Capt'n Midnight wrote: »

the gubberment accepts them as payment for the taxes they impose

Government colours a bit of paper in, issues it as currency, and then accepts it back as a levy on the work you do.

Bizarre.

alb

Karl Stein wrote: »

Government colours a bit of paper in, issues it as currency, and then accepts it back as a levy on the work you do.

Bizarre.

Do the government even accept coins or notes as payment for taxes? I doubt it. whether you're talking about Euros, Dollars or Bitcoin most money these days is just entries in a digital ledger.

Lmao_Man

It's a currency, just like the euro.

Decentralised so the people have power rather than governments.

Karl Stein

alb wrote: »

whether you're talking about Euros, Dollars or Bitcoin most money these days is just entries in a digital ledger.

Lmao_Man wrote: »

It's a currency, just like the euro.

Unlike Dollars, Euros, and Pounds, the number of Bitcoins that can be mined is finite (~21 million I think). In that sense they cannot be devalued by quantitative easing.

Bitcoin has a gold-like potential as a store of wealth.

alb

Karl Stein wrote: »

Unlike Dollars, Euros, and Pounds, the number of Bitcoins that can be mined is finite (~21 million I think). In that sense they cannot be devalued by quantitative easing.

Bitcoin has a gold-like potential as a store of wealth.

Yup, Wences Casares speaks well about this aspect:

KomradeBishop

As interesting as Bitcoin is technically, it has pretty much zero potential to ever challenge government fiat currencies, since the currency that people are forced to pay taxes in, will become dominant due to the demand that places on it.

Even if it were possible, Bitcoin becoming dominant would not be a good thing either: The entity or people that control a currency and its creation, get to decide a large part of what kind of economic production happens in the economies controlled by that currency - and Bitcoin is largely coming under control, of the ASIC farms that are gaining disproportionate mining power.

This is why the creation of money has to be either democratically controlled, or heavily regulated if allowed to be done privately (as is done now) - it grants huge influence over economies.

So ya, money is a pretty complex thing How it is administered, has huge effects on the politics of a country, and on how democratic a country really is - it's a lot more than just a store of value (and Bitcoin isn't very good at that - its value fluctuates all over the place).

evo2000

So your telling me, i could make a random thing up like, ****coins and people would buy em? because from what i can see thats what bit coins are i know money is the same, but since people know that you d think they wudnt bother with bitcoins, i did try google it and couldnt really understand it to be honest so i said id make a topic on here about it too see what others make of em, no harm ment ! lol

alb

evo2000 wrote: »

So your telling me, i could make a random thing up like, ****coins and people would buy em?

Not any random thing. If you can make something useful and scarce it will have value, whatever it is. Additionally If you can make or find something that exhibits these properties it will be useful as money: scarce, portable, fungible (any one unit has same value as another unit), hard to counterfeit, easy to verify, divisible.

evo2000 wrote: »

because from what i can see thats what bit coins are i know money is the same, but since people know that you d think they wudnt bother with bitcoins

We know Bitcoin is scarce (there will only be 21 million), so that leaves 'usefulness'. Well it has a built in payment system that lets it be transacted anywhere over the internet almost instantly with very low fees and without requiring permission from anyone (same freedom as cash for in-person transactions). It has other more advanced uses also.

evo2000

alb wrote: »

Not any random thing. If you can make something useful and scarce it will have value, whatever it is. Additionally If you can make or find something scarce that exhibits these properties it will be useful as money: scarce, portable, fungible (any one unit has same value as another unit), hard to counterfeit, easy to verify, divisible.



We know Bitcoin is scarce (there will only be 21 million), so that leaves 'usefulness'. Well it has a built in payment system that lets it be transacted anywhere over the internet almost instantly with very low fees and without requiring permission from anyone (same freedom as cash for in-person transactions). It has other more advacned uses also.

What use are bitcoins tho? didnt some lad just make them up? or am i wrong?

Lenin Skynard

I had some, sold them. Made a profit of around 150%. If I had have kept them six months or so longer, I'd have made a profit of around 1000%

bnt

In theory, it's an alternative currency, based on the Internet, free from legal, political or geographic constraints.

In practice, it's been a "pump and dump" scheme, in which some people made a lot of money off of other people, because they "got in" first when Bitcoins were cheap to "mine". The speculation vastly outweighed any legitimate uses.

Swan Curry

Quick,the time to buy is now!Alternatively,build a mining rig and try not to burn your house down.

With bitcoins,the only way to win is not to play.

evo2000

Swan Curry wrote: »

Quick,the time to buy is now!Alternatively,build a mining rig and try not to burn your house down.

With bitcoins,the only way to win is not to play.

Yeah ive seen some of the rigs alright, crazy..

alb

evo2000 wrote: »

What use are bitcoins tho? didnt some lad just make them up? or am i wrong?

Some lad invented the protocol, it's an open public protocol like http (for websites) or SMTP (for email) he does not control Bitcoin or distribute the supply. It's an open network of people running software. Anyone is free to run the software either as a user or as a miner. The miners verify transactions and are rewarded for this work with the new Bitcoins that come into supply. There are no accounts, no central servers, no company. This is important as it can't be shutdown and you don't need to worry about being denied an account or censorship. As I said, freedom.

How useful Bitcoin is to you right now depends on your situation and what you use money for. For most Irish people I doubt they have much use for it (yet at least).

• Credit card companies charge merchants typically 2-4%. This is priced into everything you buy. Merchants can accept Bitcoin without any fees, and therefore can pass some savings on to you via lower prices - everyone can benefit from this.
• Most people in the world do not have a bank account or access to many financial services you take for granted. Many of the unbanked do have phones which they can use to transact Bitcoin.
• If you ever had to send money abroad via Western Union you'll know they take a big cut, many foreign nationals in the world send money home frequently, Bitcoin can reduce the fees they pay for this.
• If you ever tried to save money over a long period of time, you'll notice its value gets destroyed by inflation. The total gold in the world is worth about $7 trillion, that's a lot of money for something that's almost never used as an everyday currency. Gold holds value better than regular money because it has a limited supply. Bitcoin has a similarly limited supply and potentially the practicality to be used as everyday money also.
• Imagine email didn't work on weekends or bank holidays? it's 2014 and bank transfers can still take days.
• When you buy things with credit cards you have to give the merchant your private sensitive card information to prove your identity, which can be skimmed or stolen, or kept by the merchant and hacked later. Bitcoin transactions require no details of any kind to be given to the merchant to complete the transaction.
• Imagine your government arbitrarily thinks you shouldn't be allowed spend your money as you choose, even in ways that don't harm anyone else, whether that's playing some poker online or buying an electronic cigarette or donating to wikileaks.

That's just the start.