Bitcoin Token

[gaffner]

Is it just me, or would this make a cool arcade token?

Does anyone know where I can find these?

[lilshawn]

not the exact one you posted, but...

https://www.casascius.com/

[Slippyblade]

not the exact one you posted, but...

https://www.casascius.com/

Those are linked to actual Bitcoin currency which is running about $122 to 1 bitcoin currently.  So, not feasible as a token.

[WakiMiko]

Those are linked to actual Bitcoin currency which is running about $122 to 1 bitcoin currently.  So, not feasible as a token.

Actually 1 Bitcoin is about $250 right now.

[SavannahLion]

Took me a long time to wrap my head around Bitcoins. By the time I did, I realized I'm poor.

[Slippyblade]

Those are linked to actual Bitcoin currency which is running about $122 to 1 bitcoin currently.  So, not feasible as a token.

Actually 1 Bitcoin is about $250 right now.

Holy crap, it shot up recently.  So much for that Silk Road bust destabilizing Bitcoin, huh? 

[Player 3]

Those are linked to actual Bitcoin currency which is running about $122 to 1 bitcoin currently.  So, not feasible as a token.

Actually 1 Bitcoin is about $250 right now.

Wow. They weren't even worth $5 when I bothered with them.

[SavannahLion]

Might be because the useful miners are dedicated ASIC boards. The ---smurfing--- Jupiter board has an estimated MSRP of nearly $7K!! The cheapest board is around $300 and the performance looks anemic against the monsters.

Back when I last looked at Bitcoins, people were ditching their CPUs and leveraging GPU cards. What was the 5870 going for back then? About $400? Yeah, it's definitely a rich mans sport.

[lilshawn]

considering how flooded the market is now, your chances of mining a bitcoin are pretty low now. 3 groups of --bags of cream-filled twinkies-- are responsible for about 60% of all the coins mined. people are starting to move away from honest mining and into blockchaining. it resulted in a flood of coins and a real skew in profitability because they don't submit the blocks they found, they hold them and try to run the chain. that way they can (try to) submit them all at the same time for huge profit.

basically The ---meecrob--- pool begins working on the first block and it's chain discovering another block, but don't submit it. mining from this "hidden" one they continue to mine the chain. Meanwhile, the rest of the "honest" miners are still wasting resources mining from the original block.

[yotsuya]

I don't know what the ---fudgesicle--- you guys are talking about. 

[lilshawn]

new technological pyramid scam, nothing to see here.

[thehammer12]

I bought a couple of bitcoins when it was $68-69 bucks, I was pissed also because I had the chance to buy it at $35 but I wussied out.

[DarakuTenshi]

Yeah, sounds like a scam to me. I just watched some videos on it and I'd rather stick with the tried and true.

[Slippyblade]

No more a scam than any fiat currency in the history of mankind.  Bitcoin has value because the people who use it mentally assign a value to it.  No different than the dollar.

[opt2not]

In the words of Dave Chappelle, "can't buy weed and ---Bad words, bad words, whatcha gonna do? Whatcha gonna do when saint censors you?--- with Disney dollars".

[lilshawn]

No more a scam than any fiat currency in the history of mankind.  Bitcoin has value because the people who use it mentally assign a value to it.

....And that's the problem, it's only worth something because they say it is. "real" money has stuff to back it up. Gold, Silver, Platinum. Real tangible things.

the problem with something like that, is that inflation drives the value. Remember in Zimbabwe when you had to have 100's of trillions of dollars just to buy a loaf of bread...and a literal wheelbarrow FULL of money to buy things like clothes? People where literally wallpapering the walls in the cities in retaliation.

[DarakuTenshi]

Actually... that's not so much the case anymore. The gold standard has not been used for some time.

[Fursphere]

No more a scam than any fiat currency in the history of mankind.  Bitcoin has value because the people who use it mentally assign a value to it.

....And that's the problem, it's only worth something because they say it is. "real" money has stuff to back it up. Gold, Silver, Platinum. Real tangible things.

the problem with something like that, is that inflation drives the value. Remember in Zimbabwe when you had to have 100's of trillions of dollars just to buy a loaf of bread...and a literal wheelbarrow FULL of money to buy things like clothes? People where literally wallpapering the walls in the cities in retaliation.

Did Zimbabwe ever stabilize their currency?    It seemed to be in a state of free-fall for awhile there.

[lilshawn]

not really... after all this, they just shaved 12 zeros off. their money still had absolutely no value because the government continued to be all like" hey we need more money, let's print up 900 trillion more" and people were starting to get annoyed with having to pay with huge stacks of money.

they removed zeros off their money 3 or 4 times i believe.

they finally legalized paying for items and debts with foreign currency. (mainly US dollars) wile they worked on restoring the bank system and trying to get some value to their money...but a country with nothing, has nothing to build money with.

[Turvey]

I really don't understand the whole 'bitcoin' thing but.......

Ouch!!!

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/nov/27/hard-drive-bitcoin-landfill-site

[lilshawn]

yeah i just read that, it sounds a little too convenient.

anybody who put time and effort into bitcoins, knows damn well where they are.

anybody who didn't care about bitcoins, flipped them for cash the minute the price went up enough.

[hypernova]

I don't see bitcoin becoming commonplace and accepted among governments, nor among the common person.

Simply put, the common person is NOT going to understand anything about it, and quite frankly, you need a pretty decent technical knowledge in both computers and economics to even have a chance at grasping the explanation and principles behind it.  I just spent an hour trying to understand the mining process, and I still don't quite get it fully.  Some of the explanations don't exactly help the cause, because they make it sound like you're being a slot jockey, where the machine literally makes the money as you win.

[lilshawn]

solve the puzzle get a bitcoin (or portion thereof)

it's kind of like SETI@home or folding@home

they send you work, you do the work and send it off. if you process enough work, you create a bitcoin.

once X amount of bitcoins are created (24 million or something like that) they stop "making" them.

[Slippyblade]

Simply put, the common person is NOT going to understand anything about it, and quite frankly, you need a pretty decent technical knowledge in both computers and economics to even have a chance at grasping the explanation and principles behind it.  I just spent an hour trying to understand the mining process, and I still don't quite get it fully.  Some of the explanations don't exactly help the cause, because they make it sound like you're being a slot jockey, where the machine literally makes the money as you win.

The "common person" also has no clue about day to day global economics yet most have no problem buying something through the Internet from Korea.  Most people don't even know what the phrase "fiat currency" means yet they use it on a day to day basis.  Long story short, you don't need to understand the guts of something to make use of its end product.

[danny_galaga]

I don't think many people realise the basic difference between bitcoin and real currency. It's not a satisfactory alternative to 'the mans' money because it's not based on the value of a countries terms of trade. The value is mostly driven by speculation, whereas regular legal tender is mostly driven by the intrinsic value of a countries economy. There is SOME speculation of course, but it doesn't normally make it change by magnitudes.

I certainly wish I had bought some at a dollar or whatever to sell at $950 or whatever the peak was recently (more likely of course most people would sell at say double or maybe triple the value, who can say what the top of a bubble is?). But then I also wish I had picked the winning trifecta at the Melbourne Cup, or picked the right lotto numbers tonight.

If it's legal, it's legal. But I do wish people would stop acting like it's something new. It's just tulips for the 21st century 

[Slippyblade]

I really wish people would stop comparing it to tulips.  There are huge differences.  There is a known finite amount of Bitcoin, granted that amount has not been reached yet, but there is a known threshold.  There is no limit on the number of tulips that can be grown.  Granted, the govt eventually stepped in and started placing arbitrary limits and attempting to enforce them, but prohibition never works.

[danny_galaga]

It's still tulips to anyone whose eyes aren't glazed over by speculative greed 

If the whole idea of bitcoin is to be a useful alternative currency, it has failed. It's main purpose right now is for speculation. If it weren't, there would not be such huge swings in value. You don't need to know any more than that. Same as a cynic would have seen the peril in tulip speculation, even if they didn't know how to grow them. Sir Isaac Newton, by the way, was one of the mug punters who bought in at the top...

[lilshawn]

the problem with a pyramid scheme, you have to be near the top to have it work for you.

---steaming pile of meadow muffin--- rolls down hill.

[BobA]

On the news today there was apparently a bust of a group using malware to take over computers and use them to generate a huge amount of illegal bitcoin.   Not much detail but it should be out soon.

[yotsuya]

Volitility, thy name is bitcoin.

[spoot]

Volitility, thy name is bitcoin.

WOO!  Better bail them out like the other banks.

[yotsuya]

Volitility, thy name is bitcoin.

WOO!  Better bail them out like the other banks.

You can't bro. They're not a "real" "bank". 

[spoot]

Volitility, thy name is bitcoin.

WOO!  Better bail them out like the other banks.

You can't bro. They're not a "real" "bank". 

I've been saying that about Bank of America for years.........damn McDonalds of banks.   

[yotsuya]

I hear old man Potter'll pay 100 Coke Rewards Points on the dollar for every Bitcoin you got.

[Vigo]

So are HaRuBuCkS are officially worth more than a bitcoin now?   

[HaRuMaN]

So are HaRuBuCkS are officially worth more than a bitcoin now?   

you know it!

[hypernova]

Sell sell sell!

[yotsuya]

The Dukes are trying to corner the Bitcoin market!

[Ken Layton]

The L.A. Times is reporting the Bitcoin is on the verge of collapse. Just like any other scam or pyramid scheme.

[yotsuya]

I read Bitcoin wallets are going to be emulated in the next version of MAME.