Bitcoin sellers remorse.... how many people are kicking themselves for cashing out>?

[Ns1]

The government owes you nothing if tommorow your dollars are worth nothing so I'm not sure what your point is that the "government backs it" ...there is literally nothing of substance backing the money.

My point was the government will not allow dollars to be worth nothing. The same cannot be said for bitcoin.

 

[WelshBloke]

Who actually makes the decisions about bitcoins anyway?

Who decided how many and when to make generating them harder? Who will decide to make more available to combat the amount that are lost?

 

[darkewaffle]

Who actually makes the decisions about bitcoins anyway?

Who decided how many and when to make generating them harder? Who will decide to make more available to combat the amount that are lost?

It was determined arbitrarily by the 'creator' who is thought to be some anonymous Japanese guy last I heard.

And no 'more' will ever be available, the idea is that (supposedly) as fewer are created and more are 'lost' over time, everything will just "evolve" to use fractions of coins.

 

[Train]

Who actually makes the decisions about bitcoins anyway?

no one, and that was kind of the main design goal. There IS no single authoritarian entity.

Who decided how many and when to make generating them harder?

The original designer, IIRC an anonymous Japanese mathematician/cryptographer.

Who will decide to make more available to combat the amount that are lost?

I don't think bitcoins are really "lost". They can be stolen in a way similar that cash can be stolen from your wallet, but rarely will it be lost for good. Most uncirculated coins are just being hoarded by miners.

Supply will never be an issues because coins can be split down to 8 decimal places. That means there is a hard limit of 2,100,000,000,000,000 individual pieces of currency.

 

[WelshBloke]

How come no one knows who designed them in the first place?

 

[lxskllr]

How come no one knows who designed them in the first place?

That person chose to be anonymous.

 

[Imp]

My juice is relatively cheap and time of day based topping out around $0.10/kWh at peak. My craptastic computer would probably burn 400W at max load on CPU and GPU. So, 0.4 kW * 24 hour/day * 365 day/year = 3504 kWh/year = $350.40 / year.

If I run it off-peak at $0.07-ish from 7pm to 7am, that's 1752 kWh / year * $0.07 / kWh = $122.64.

Costs do not include additional fees or tax.

How long does it take to make 1 bit-coin again?...

 

[WelshBloke]

That person chose to be anonymous.

How did he get it started then, and how do we know that he didn't give himself a butt ton of bitcoins before starting this?

 

[lxskllr]

How did he get it started then, and how do we know that he didn't give himself a butt ton of bitcoins before starting this?

Coins can be traced through the block chain. The history starts through forum posts, and takes off from there. Everyone that got in early got lots of bitcoins. That's the nature of the design. I'd expect the developer to have gotten more than others since he was ground zero of the start, but the system can't really be gamed.

 

[airdata]

Except the US dollar is backed by the US government, not by nobody.

You mean it's backed by the federal reserve who gives banks around the worlds trillions of dollars off the books to keep people from panicking? The same federal reserve that has given itself power to print as much US currency as need be to pay off debts and such?

Yeah.... in god we trust I suppose.

 

[AstroManLuca]

Backed? How so?

The government agrees to make good on its debt.

No, they don't physically back all the money. But I'd still trust the US government over an anonymous Japanese guy or maybe the Russian mafia or whoever else is "in charge" of Bitcoins. The fact is that NOBODY backs Bitcoins at all, they have no intrinsic monetary value like precious metals, and they have no utilitarian value like natural resources.

You mean it's backed by the federal reserve who gives banks around the worlds trillions of dollars off the books to keep people from panicking? The same federal reserve that has given itself power to print as much US currency as need be to pay off debts and such?

Yeah.... in god we trust I suppose.

Like I said, at least there's somebody who has a vested interest in money maintaining its value. There's no way of knowing if and when the people who own the majority of Bitcoins will cash them all in, walking away fat and rich while causing their value to crash for everyone else. Buying Bitcoins is like buying stock in a company you know will fail but you don't know exactly when. It's a game of chicken.

 

[WelshBloke]

Coins can be traced through the block chain. The history starts through forum posts, and takes off from there. Everyone that got in early got lots of bitcoins. That's the nature of the design. I'd expect the developer to have gotten more than others since he was ground zero of the start, but the system can't really be gamed.

What do you mean by "traced through the block chain"? How much info is stored there?

Is there a decent history of the start up with links to forum posts? That would be quite an interesting read.

 

[Train]

The government agrees to make good on its debt.

So did every person who signed a mortgage or a car loan, but then didn't pay.

Govt's can "make good on debt" just by printing more.

Germany did it. At one point you had to take one of these to the grocery store to buy bread:

 

[lxskllr]

The government agrees to make good on its debt.

There's no hope of the government making good on anything. People are pretending it's all cool, but only a fool would think they'd gt their money(what is that anyway?) if they wanted to cash out. The equivalent would be me charging up Bill Gates' value on a credit card. You really think Visa will get that money from me? :^D

The fact is that NOBODY backs Bitcoins at all

That's a feature. That means no one manipulates bitcoin. It's at the mercy of the market.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

My point was the government will not allow dollars to be worth nothing. The same cannot be said for bitcoin.

I'm lol-ing over here. What magical power does the government have to "not allow" it to happen. Are they deliberately "ALLOWING" all the free market influences now?

 

[IceBergSLiM]

What do you mean by "traced through the block chain"? How much info is stored there?

Is there a decent history of the start up with links to forum posts? That would be quite an interesting read.

why don't you dissect the open source code and answer all your curiousities yourself?

 

[Ns1]

I'm lol-ing over here. What magical power does the government have to "not allow" it to happen. Are they deliberately "ALLOWING" all the free market influences now?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy_of_the_United_States

yes, I have more faith in the US government than I do in bitcoin.

You mean it's backed by the federal reserve who gives banks around the worlds trillions of dollars off the books to keep people from panicking? The same federal reserve that has given itself power to print as much US currency as need be to pay off debts and such?

yep, that's the one! Let me know when Bitcoin can do the same thing.

 

[WelshBloke]

...
That's a feature. That means no one manipulates bitcoin. It's at the mercy of the market.

That's partly what was worrying me. If a few players have huge stocks of bitcoins they can manipulate the market as they want. It makes for a very unstable currency and a very risky investment.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

The government agrees to make good on its debt.

No, they don't physically back all the money. But I'd still trust the US government over an anonymous Japanese guy or maybe the Russian mafia or whoever else is "in charge" of Bitcoins. The fact is that NOBODY backs Bitcoins at all, they have no intrinsic monetary value like precious metals, and they have no utilitarian value like natural resources.

yeah so what? neither do colorful monopoly-like paper bills with dead presidents on them. The government stopped issuing bills that could be redeemed for silver decades ago. I suppose the papers bills do have a leg up on digital curency in that they can be burned for warmth in the winter time.

 

[lxskllr]

What do you mean by "traced through the block chain"? How much info is stored there?

Is there a decent history of the start up with links to forum posts? That would be quite an interesting read.

All transactions are stored in the block chain. It's currently ~5GB at the moment.

I haven't read this stuff in awhile, so I can't remember, but bits and pieces can be searched on the net. It's sort of like the Linux kernel. Someone came up with a cool idea, and it was hacked on by early adopters through distributed communications. IOW, it isn't like a commercial product where a website was started, with development traced from a central location. It was decentralized, and "unofficial" from the start.

 

[IceBergSLiM]

That's partly what was worrying me. If a few players have huge stocks of bitcoins they can manipulate the market as they want. It makes for a very unstable currency and a very risky investment.

Isn't this the risk of any market? Isn't this the exact power we give central banks?

 

[IceBergSLiM]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monetary_policy_of_the_United_States

yes, I have more faith in the US government than I do in bitcoin.



yep, that's the one! Let me know when Bitcoin can do the same thing.

so the dollar is backed by a central bank holding more dollars? Am i getting this right?

 

[lxskllr]

That's partly what was worrying me. If a few players have huge stocks of bitcoins they can manipulate the market as they want. It makes for a very unstable currency and a very risky investment.

Investment is the wrong way to think of it. If you're "investing", you're gambling. Nothing wrong with that, but the rules of gambling apply, and people should never forget that.

Bitcoin is double edged sword. It gives control to the user, and has little oversight. That's a strength, but it can bite you in the ass. You're on your own, so you have to conduct everything with care, and due diligence.

 

[Train]

That's partly what was worrying me. If a few players have huge stocks of bitcoins they can manipulate the market as they want. It makes for a very unstable currency and a very risky investment.

A few huge players is worse than one?

It's not supposed to be an investment. If you don't want to use it as one, then don't.

 

[WelshBloke]

Isn't this the risk of any market?

The bigger and more diverse the market the harder to manipulate.