It comes down to risk. There's more risk in accepting dollars than Bitcoins. So of course they want a markup, if they didn't, they get screwed in the long run.

BTC-e routinely trades for less than mtgox and has 0.2% fees.
https://btc-e.com/

Here's a list of a bunch of exchanges:
http://www.bitcoincharts.com/markets/

Everyone you know wants a markup because they sit around and wait for "customers." To avoid the markup, you could sit around and wait for someone like yourself to drop by and ask for the convenience of buying BTC over IRC. Then you can ask for the markup.

This is the way cash works. You have to pay for convenience. The reason it seems odd to you is because credit cards are so convenient for their customers and don't charge anything for the service. But they do charge the merchants 3%, you just don't see it.

Very informational thread. Hopefully in the next week I'll get into "the game". Seems almost like a hobby if nothing more.

They have a couple of light clients where you don't have to download entire chain. There is a thing call glbse where you can buy stock in mining rigs and get a bond dividend every week. Got 60 shares of cognitive. I sold a video card in btc in the forums and it was as easy as ebay.

Transactions per day.

http://blockchain.info/charts/n-tran...luding-popular

-- amateur post---

whats bitcoin "mining"?

never heard of this, reading a lot of stuff at work and would be easy if somebody explained this.

thanks

Think of mining as solving a problem before anyone else. If you do, you get 50 bitcoins. Everyone is competing to solve a problem.

By solving these problems, it records transactions in the network and makes it hard for people to fake what transactions happened.

to explain it in a bit more detail, you are devoting processing power to maintain the bitcoin network. the network rewards you for this. typically miners nowadays mine in a 'pool' where a large group of miners are working together to solve the problem and get 50 bitcoins, which are then distributed to the pool based on processing power contribution.

CPU mining was replaced by GPU mining which is slowly being replaced by FPGA/ASIC mining.

really? there's bitcoin ASICs? is the bitcoin economy big enough to make that financially feasible?

http://www.butterflylabs.com/products/

If my understanding is correct these are ASICs, not FPGA. They are custom designed chips specifically for bitcoin hashing.

Hi, I'm looking to buy 5 bitcoins- for $30 ($6 per bitcoin) player 2 player transfer on pokerstars
Can also do moneybookers (or paypal but I understand why nobody wants to do that)
- but I don't see why a stars transfer would be a problem.


Such a pain trying to buy it since nobody accepts credit card anywhere due to chargebacks. Even when it's such a small amount.

Anyone?

hey Bugz, I think this is probably your best bet: https://www.bitinstant.com/

I don't know about Sundays, but I think typically you get your bitcoins in a few hours.

You should probably browse the forum and post enough to get PM access. A mod might take issue with your post until then (since it might require PM to be useful). Send me a PM if you want when you get access and I might be able to trade you if bitinstant doesn't work for you.

I thought the consensus was that these are older generation beefier FPGA's that they've gotten a deal on for some reason.

That linked site says it is powered by BitInstant. I don't know what that means, but just go to BitInstant.com they have good support and excellent rep.

So bitcoints went from 0.70$ to like 6$ in a little bit more than a year ?

Yes and they were 3 cents two years ago. Also there was a spike to $30 last summer.

Is is smart to invest in them or is it not that easy?
I assume a lot of people have become millionaires because of them?
If you would have invested a ton in the 0.03 fase right?

You have to sell them to become millionaires. Selling that many of them would drive the price down.

It's pretty easy.

You aren't "investing", you are speculating. People like you are the reason it spiked at $30 for no reason other than "look, it's gone up a lot, must keep goin up!!"

So go for it, find a bunch of your friends, but let me know first so I can ride the wave up again and dump and leave you guys holding the bags.

I sold most of mine before it crashed but keeping 50btc or so just in case it soars. Assume anything you drop into btc will never come back to you

You can sell a half million dollars worth on Gox right now at the price would drop from 5.20 to 4.60. Selling all in 1 second probably isn't the smartest way.

I don't know if there is an actual difference between investing and speculating besides a negative connotation. A higher bitcoin price is a signal that capital thinks bitcoin will be part of the future.

Tom, my friends and I are going to buy a ton soon, just want to let you know so you can get back in real quick.

That first statement isn't true. As soon as the selling began, all of the computer orders on Gox would disappear or move lower and lower.

Investing and speculating are two entirely different things. Investing where you use money to buy one thing, and turn it into something more valuable. Speculating is buying something that you think is underpriced with the hopes to sell it later. Speculation has usefulness. A lot of the value of Bitcoin is speculation that it will be useful in the future. That's not a bad thing. That's what gets things moving. Where it gets to be an issue is when people blindly buy things just because they think they will go up without having any idea why that might be. Bitcoin's rise to $30 last year is a great example of it. It had no business being that high. $5 is still too high in my opinion, but it's at least a little more grounded in reality and the mania bubble buying certainly has stopped as the price has been pretty stable for a long time. That's a good thing. But people wanting to blindly speculate happens all the time. Look at all the ******s who wanted in on the Facebook IPO because they were certain it would go up, because other IPOs did. It doesn't mean Facebook is a bad idea or anything, it just means that moron speculators gonna speculate and get left holding bags.

I've been out of the loop for a while, but I have a hard time seeing a value above $3 right now, but there might be more useful uses for it now than I last checked in. There's rinky-dink gambling sites, drugs by mail sites, and speculation holding it up.

.. Break it down boys.

Maybe you mean my "Selling in 1 second isn't smartest" isn't true. But the first part is, if you put in your order for the full half mil it is the next thing that gets executed. No one is sniffing your traffic and sending a message to remove their bids faster than your order can arrive. Maybe you are accusing Gox of showing fake bids or bids they can take down themselves, I doubt it, but I dunno.

So if what you buy ends up less valuable later it turns out you weren't actually investing?

I really don't understand the definition. If you buy a share of stock and later it is still a share of stock up or down was that investing? Maybe dividends make the deference?

So Tom and I both think buying bitcoin is speculation by these definitions. But I also think it is investing by that definition. These definitions seems good as any to me and they definitely overlap.

Such a large order would totally shock the system. But you are right, your order, if you put a low enough price in, would be cleared as soon as it goes in, and you cash out.

Although as crappy as Gox has been, it wouldn't surprise me if there was some shadiness in removing bids or having fake bids up.

Investing doesn't require it to be more valuable, but represents intent in actually creating value.

I'm not a huge fan of dictionary definitions for things that are technical, and I use the distinction to describe a clear difference in how things work. Anyone who buys bitcoins does not add any value. Bitcoins by themselves don't produce any actual value. Businesses that use Bitcoins certainly have that possibility. If you purchased shares in a Bitcoin poker site, you would be creating value (or at least attempting to). Creating Bitcoin itself would be considered investing.

By those definitions, buying bitcoins could be considered investing, although I don't like such a broad definition that the distinction becomes meaningless. I think you can invest in Bitcoin technology (which you are doing), you can use Bitcoin as a store of value.

People buying bitcoins can be a signal for the market to pay more attention to Bitcoins and develop businesses that take advantage of it, but that's another issue. A market that is built hugely on speculation is one that is not going to be healthy long term. I agree with you that there can be some benefits in using Bitcoins, although there are a lot of challenges in the way of getting there. I don't want to get into a speculators game without the fundamentals being there. I was a bull at $2, but what we saw last year was complete mania (and it rightfully went down). The only stories I still see is amateurs getting completely pwned and until the fundamental issues I saw last year go away, which might not even be possible, I'm a bear. But with this low of a market cap, big swings are still really possible.