.....

well obviously but what i meant was it would only be profitable/ worth it for the top to mine.

Can you also explain to me these other branches? Namecoin, LiquidCoin, LiteCoin,Etc. Are they separate entities or all tied together in some way

vircurex.com shows

GH/sec Blocks Difficulty Network


Bitcoin 207834 3,368,767.1405 25,119.3484
Devcoin 65675 22,408.9625 187.1445
Ixcoin 102203 18,105.0656 194.3882
Liquidcoin 66156 0.0500 0.0013
Litecoin 244701 18.4829 0.6780
Namecoin 83622 1,314,276.5535 10,191.2468
Solidcoin 600576 662.0062 0.0013

If we take Liquidcoin for example. The least difficult(which means easiest to discover blocks i believe*) Trading at 0.00018000 per BTC, which means 1 LQC is worth (10.65*0.00018)= 0.001917 USD BUT it is (3,368,767.1405/.05)=67,375,342.81 times easier to discover new blocks.

And this is where im lost. i am somewhat aware that LQC and i think the others have no cap (unlike BitCoin)

Would it not be more profitable to mine LQC?

Again sorry for the ignorance, i may sound like a complete idiot. I would appreciate the pardon. This really interest me and i want to know how it works.

LOL @ donkeykong2.

Of course, but the idea of this is, it has some specific area where there is a significant advantage which causes there to be widespread use in some niche. As this expands (as it will naturally if there is a significant advantage), then it expands. Interestingly, porn has been a huge driver of this in the past. It helped decide VHS vs. Beta. It helped move DVDs. It helped the internet grow. As it causes that initial growth, it brings along the mainstream. Illicit goods are of course an are where Bitcoin can make this grow, drive demand for them, and then once it becomes more widespread, branch to mainstream.




If they give up on currency, they give up on their stranglehold of power. This is pretty much a last resort. This would absolutely crush the government. I hope you are right, but I have my doubts.
The mining community was full of morons who wanted free money. There are plenty of dreamers who expect it to be the mainstream currency of the future (not just hope, but expect).

This is incorrect. Niches can work very well. The speculation now isn't very high (look at the market cap, it's barely anything). If Bitcoin takes up 1% of blackmarket transactions, it will be a huge success. There's no reason why it couldn't exist just for that. WoW Gold has even more limited uses and retains value.

This isn't true unless the calculator I saw was way off base.

Saw somebody post a infiniti poker thread so I checked their twitter and saw this:


Bitcoins, standard $, and poker is exactly what Ive been wanting to see for years.

Is it open yet?

this is correct, i was assuming a situation where bitcoins were truely a currency in use by all people in the world which was what the discussion had been revolving around.

it might very well be the case that you as a net saver will profit from a switch to the gold standard financially, this is not an objection i make. chances are though, that switching to gold will lead to increases in income taxes because the loss of seignorage and the inflation tax will have to be offset somehow.

That is exactly what I hope. The inflation tax offset. People will be given the choice $2000 a year check or war in Afganistan. The war will end. The republican party has only survived for so long because every election cycle they promise to cut peoples taxes. they don't pay for it. What will happen is you will finally get responsible government. you cut taxes and you cut spending. You increase spending, you increase taxes.

I do not support a gold standard, I support ending banks (lending) and a balanced budget amendment. i support increasing the money supply 1% to pay for the fed, treasury, SEC, and some insurance.

Steel house am I right in reading that you're against lending? Since this is a bitcoin thread, you're aware that there's nothing preventing lending of bitcoins (or gold for that matter?

I have a question for someone who understands legal tender laws. Suppose I lend you bitcoins and sign an agreement that if you don't pay back the bitcoins by a certain date, I get title to your car. At that date, you offer me dollars, but not BTC as agreed. Would the courts uphold the contract, or would they consider the debt extinguished since you offered legal tender?

Not necessarily. Giving up on kings and queens might have seemed like a huge blow, but the types of governments that developed were a much better way to rule the new attitudes (even if it was a step back at first).

Think of a future with a much more advanced economy. The government doesn't need something as overwhelming as issuing the currency to have a lot of EV. Something as mild as running the court system becomes really valuable. (In the same way using a good sneaker is really important on the Olympic level, but pretty insignificant for random schmoes.)

What would really crush them is to insist on jamming it down our throat after we aren't tolerating anymore. So I hope you're right, hehe.

::raises hand:: I don't really have an opinion on whether it will be Bitcoin or something different. But a decentralized, peer-to-peer network that successfully verifies transactions seems better than anything else we know about.

Is there something better?

It retains value as a function of the value of playing WoW (getting advantages or whatever you use the gold for). That's just an example of a game having value, not a unit of trade having value.

If they issued Silk Gold or Seals Gold (or even if every bitcoin vendor got together and issued one Gold) I'm 1000% sure it'd have 0 value. Bitcoins have value in their own right, based on their fundamental properties, not because the services around it create value.

There are always better tools for different applications. It reminds me of programming language religious wars. You have one set of people who believe that Python is the greatest language ever. Others insist Perl is better. Others insist both are crazy and C will never be surpassed. This goes on and on. But the thing is, there are times when each might be better. Except Perl, that is terrible. There are drawbacks to Bitcoin (even assuming current problems go away, such as limited market acceptance) - you need electricity and a network connection. There are drawbacks to gold- it's hard to ship, takes up space, has to be tested to ensure not being fake. There are drawbacks to privately issued gold-backed currencies - it might not be in the vault or the bank could fail or the gold could be seized. There are drawbacks to fiat (obvious enough). There are advantages to each, as well.

What fundamental properties does Bitcoin have that WoW Gold does not have? Scarcity? I see a secondary property- namely that it isn't centrally controlled. Both are inheritly worthless and only have value due to being able to be used to buy things (this is not a problem, and it just makes bootstrapping harder, but Bitcoin already jumped this problem). The fundamental properties I see are each unit being identical, divisible, scarce, easy to store, and fungible. There are lots of things that meet those properties. Bitcoin has other properties, like being decentralized and being easily transportable to anywhere in the world very quickly for very low cost and also has a very low cost to store.

I am against bank lending of peoples bank deposits as the default. I am against FDIC insurance on fractional reserve banks. I am not against lending if the depositors are making an investment (like a pirate passthru bond) hoping to gain interest. Every bank or even wallet in bitcoin is default no lending. If you want to put your money in sites like mybitcoin.com or bitomat go right ahead.

I don't think there is legal tender laws in bitcoin, if they don't pay it is based on reputation. Thus, for large payments you use a 3rd party escrow.

what is keeping more vendors from accepting bitcoins
1- they see it as a sideshow and anyone using bitcoins will use plastic
2- they are afraid its association w sketchy markets
3- its newness and perceived instability
4-all of the above

Dont you think that if a major vendor took the leap and accepted it that it could spark a rush and increase in value?

The volatility in the price of bitcoin is a hindrance for widespread acceptance right now. If the bitcoins had a more stable value, it would be much easier for vendors to use, since presumably a lot of their expenses are still in USD.

Mainly #2. So many hackers and scammers involved with it too. It could still fail tomorrow. If I woke up tomorrow and the whole bitcoin network was down I would be about 1/10th as surprised when FTP and PS were down.

sometimes it feels like bitcoin isnt growing fast enuf if price doesnt go up 25% in a month, but keep things in perspective. bitcoin is still growing very fast. i think once it hits like.. 1 or 2 billion market cap some much bigger players will take more serious notice.

http://blockchain.info/charts/market...ale=0&address=

Right.... so both of these concerns could be taken care of if there was an instant (or very quick) process for vendors to exchange BTC back to USD. It would also have to be cheaper than fees for traditional credit cards. I assume this does not exist. Is it plausible?
What is the current fastest way to convert BTC back to USD? Is it going to a an open marketplace like Mt.Gox

Ran some calculations again and I'm not sure what part of the math has changed, but it looks like it it profitable to mine if you already have equipment. I have four 5970 video cards laying around back in the US which could currently mine $240/month. My electricity cost to run them was around $120/month at .12c/kwh. But please don't think you can go around making a free $120/month.

Those graphics cards cost $300-$400 each, and you need two separate computers to run them. So you need two motherboards and two solid power supplies, unless you know how to use linux and configure a setup with four on the same board. It took me weeks of fiddling to get the rigs to mine properly and they took up a lot of time maintaining them. You won't be able to run them at optimal settings and also use the computer. Also keep in mind when running the calculators that if you overclock at all, the wattage usage goes WAY up disproportionately.

With the new generation of miners coming online shortly, it seems very unlikely that mining with graphics cards will be profitable much longer. If you already have a high end ATI card in your machine, if you are a gamer who wants a better card anyway, if you have really cheap or free electricity, or if you want a heater for your feet/house, this is a great way to subsidize your purchase. But you are not going to pay off new hardware unless the price goes way up. And if you think the price will go way up, you will be much better off just buying bitcoin with your money than you will be by buying hardware to mine with. I believe Tom Collins did some math earlier in this thread on that subject.

I have a feeling a lot of miners are running their machines at work/school/parent's basements and getting "free" electricity. It's tough to compete with that.

I was really thinking about buying (notice how I didn't say "invest" lol) in one of the new ones from butterfly labs. 60 GH/s for 1.3k! I mean, pretty insane if you ask me. I'll get the "free" electricity somehow just because I'll be a nit for profit.

Here's the one I'm checking out - http://www.butterflylabs.com/order-f...rce-sc-single/

---

Also started pricing out local apartments with that have electricity included. lol. I figure if I can build like 50 machines and setup a nice little network in this place I'm bound to make some sort of profit! Once again this will probably never happen, but it's kinda fun to think about.

Something like this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLt8Se3vVNg

^^ lol at that guy get 48 GH/s off a 24 machine setup when you can purchase the same thing in one machine. ^^

The point of currency is to eliminate the double coincidence of wants. If it's good sometimes and not other times, that means it's bad.

So I guess you don't have a firm opinion on what works best or what will win out in the future.

You don't need electricity or internet for Bitcoin. (Well, the internet needs to exist, but you don't need to be connected to it.) Bitcoin debit card, for example.

But even pretending that disadvantage existed, it's pretty inconsequential compared to passing rocks back and forth. Gold is a great store of value but totally dysfunctional as a currency. (Obvious except to the Dreamers.)

Not being in the vault is more of an inevitability than a 'might'. Remember that you can't, like, trust people on a small scale (millions of different gold backed notes defeats the point).

So to be clear, when I say:
you disagree with me?

Wordpress is now accepting bitcoin. This is the 20th most popular site in the world. Huge news.

http://en.blog.wordpress.com/2012/11...r-way-bitcoin/

Note that they don't care about the volatility because bit-pay does their payment processing and instantly converts to USD for them.

Also some activists got four shops within a block of each other to start accepting bitcoin in Berlin, and there is talk that several more will be joining in the area.
Berlin Becomes Latest ‘Bitcoin Hotspot'

The map of Real World Shops the accept bitcoin is starting to fill in nicely in the US and Europe, although the strengths of bitcoin are oriented more heavily towards distance payments, so real world shops are outnumberd by internet shops by at least a factor of 30.

But nothing is going to be universally superior in all aspects (at least the odds of that are very hard to find).

If I had to bet, I would bet with something that has historically done well rather than something that is untested and unproven.

So, how do you make a transaction without electricity or verify that a key has any balance to it? Or even that the private key you get for it is even legit? You gonna do a hash in your head? You going to memorize the blockchain or print it out?


Totally disfunctional? Strange, the last 5000 years begs to differ.

But the trust might be worth the benefit of having it stored. Sure, it's a risk. So you are saying the Bitcoin ewallets that store the coins for you are inevitably going to not have them? So you must always secure everything yourself. And I would trust being able to secure gold myself over Bitcoins.

I'm not entirely clear what you are proposing. If they created a currency and let people buy stuff for it, it would obviously have value. Maybe I am missing what you are talking about.

What are the rates in Bitcoin comparative to paying on PayPal? Would it only make sense to pay on Bitcoin if you cannot pay on PayPal?

Places where there are a lot of tourists might make a lot of senses for accepting Bitcoins. Currency exchange for travel can be expensive and accepting a single "foreign" currency for travellers might work otu well.

I wouldn't call it 'totally disfunctional' but it's pretty much been the best of a bunch of ****ty choices. Sure it has divisibility (if you have precise scales, a forge etc) sure it is portable (if you are actually going to travel with it across the world). Gold just happens to be in the ground on our planet and is better than other stuff that's just lying around or could be simple made, it pretty much got it's ass handed to it (as currency in use) by special paper recently.

Bitcoin is tailor made to be money on the internet, something like bitcoin is going to be money in most places soon (and it's actually going to be bitcoin).