Bitcoin mining

Jono8 · 11 Apr 2013 at 18:15

Far to dodgy to play around with big sums of cash with these.

Kudos to those that bought loads when they were worth penny's/mined them very early on when they were easy to mine and sold them (hopefully!) a few days ago.

Speculating on them now with a lot of money could be financial suicide

qqg3 · 11 Apr 2013 at 19:02

I was reading today about a guy who bought a $20 pizza with 10,000 bitcoins in 2010. At the peak prices the other day that would've been worth a couple of million dollars! Apparently, back then you could buy hundreds or thousands of coins for a few bucks.

Haircut · 11 Apr 2013 at 19:48

Jono8 said:
Far to dodgy to play around with big sums of cash with these.

Kudos to those that bought loads when they were worth penny's/mined them very early on when they were easy to mine and sold them (hopefully!) a few days ago.

Speculating on them now with a lot of money could be financial suicide

Having a look at the orders on one of the exchanges earlier today I don't think you would be able to play with big sums of cash.
The market is so thin that a large buy or sell could significantly change the spot rate.The rates that are quoted would generally only be valid for very small orders. Far too easy for one participant to alter the market at the moment.

scrlk · 11 Apr 2013 at 20:33

qqg3 said:
I was reading today about a guy who bought a $20 pizza with 10,000 bitcoins in 2010. At the peak prices the other day that would've been worth a couple of million dollars! Apparently, back then you could buy hundreds or thousands of coins for a few bucks.

I heard about that too. Would be kicking myself for not keeping them though, imagine selling them at the $150-$250 mark.

Housey · 11 Apr 2013 at 20:35

I see it as dead in its current form. The next form could be more interesting if they correct the flaws.

Haircut · 11 Apr 2013 at 20:47

scrlk said:
I heard about that too. Would be kicking myself for not keeping them though, imagine selling them at the $150-$250 mark.

That was my point above, you couldn't do that.
The act of attempting to sell that many would crash the market.

You can only sell if someone is willing to buy.
Looking at the orders here: https://btc-e.com/ selling a 100 bitcoins would take the spot from 64, to somewhere in the mid 50s so there's no way anyone would be able to do large transactions with the market at present.

Dj_Jestar · 11 Apr 2013 at 23:47

Wow. So many so ill informed. Mtgox is not the only exchange.

Bitcoins are still worth 20USD more than they were a month ago, and people think they are dead?!

SlyReaper · 12 Apr 2013 at 07:01

Dj_Jestar said:
Wow. So many so ill informed. Mtgox is not the only exchange.

Bitcoins are still worth 20USD more than they were a month ago, and people think they are dead?!

It's still on the way down.

Russinating · 12 Apr 2013 at 09:16

I don't think it will die. Like most markets, especially early ones, things are volatile and fluctuate massively. I imagine they'll drop a lot (if what's happened already isn't considered 'the drop') and then settle.

jakehall109 · 12 Apr 2013 at 09:28

Haircut said:
That was my point above, you couldn't do that.
The act of attempting to sell that many would crash the market.

You can only sell if someone is willing to buy.
Looking at the orders here: https://btc-e.com/ selling a 100 bitcoins would take the spot from 64, to somewhere in the mid 50s so there's no way anyone would be able to do large transactions with the market at present.

BTC-E accounts for a small portion of the BTC trade, for larger trades use MTGOX, you could sell 100 here without there being any major fluctuations in price. If you did this a couple times a day no problem. There is also places you can buy electronics/pc gear for coins so you could buy a lot of actual goods for some money and either sell that or put it back into mining

Raymond Lin · 12 Apr 2013 at 09:29

It will die when it drops to equal to the cost of electricity or close to it, when it is pointless to mine it.

Or it will die when it hits that 21million bitcoin mark, since it is finite. I guess the closer you get to that number, the harder it is to mine and the longer it takes which means the above point will become closer.

When people realises the only value in it is people's perception of it, that isn't a bad thing, such as a piece of art except that there is nothing tangible about it. But as long as there are some people think it has value and continue to trade, it will live. But like a pyramid scheme, the early adoptors are the ones who will make money, people starting now will make peanuts and personally I wouldn't bother.

Dj_Jestar · 12 Apr 2013 at 09:58

SlyReaper said:
It's still on the way down.

Up. $80-$90 depending on exchange.

Dj_Jestar · 12 Apr 2013 at 09:59

Raymond Lin said:
It will die when it drops to equal to the cost of electricity or close to it, when it is pointless to mine it.

Or it will die when it hits that 21million bitcoin mark, since it is finite. I guess the closer you get to that number, the harder it is to mine and the longer it takes which means the above point will become closer.

When people realises the only value in it is people's perception of it, that isn't a bad thing, such as a piece of art except that there is nothing tangible about it. But as long as there are some people think it has value and continue to trade, it will live. But like a pyramid scheme, the early adoptors are the ones who will make money, people starting now will make peanuts and personally I wouldn't bother.

Not quite true. There are some people using Bitcoin because they don't trust the other options. This includes black market traders, but also people in countries like Greece, Cyprus, Zimbabwe and so on where they literally cannot trust the "real" currency or their governments. This adds a bit more value to it.

RichIbizaSport · 12 Apr 2013 at 10:21

Dj_Jestar said:
Talking out of your backend? BTC is at $116 right now, which is the lowest it has been since early March.

No, I was taking live prices from https://btc-e.com/ as mtgox had stopped trading. It went down to as low as $50. It's now at $85.

Thank you please.

Dj_Jestar · 12 Apr 2013 at 10:22

RichIbizaSport said:
No, I was taking live prices from https://btc-e.com/ as mtgox had stopped trading. It went down to as low as $50. It's now at $85.

Thank you please.

It was $116 at the time you posted

It's still double that what it was a month ago, and is on the up.

Dead? Positively alive and kicking.

RichIbizaSport · 12 Apr 2013 at 10:25

Dj_Jestar said:
It was $116 at the time you posted

It's still double that what it was a month ago.

Dead? Positively alive and kicking.

I assure you on https://btc-e.com/ it was trading at $60 when I posted that. Why the heck would I make that up?

I'm going to take a wild guess and say you own quite a few bitcoins.

Raymond Lin · 12 Apr 2013 at 10:27

Dj_Jestar said:
Not quite true. There are some people using Bitcoin because they don't trust the other options. This includes black market traders, but also people in countries like Greece, Cyprus, Zimbabwe and so on where they literally cannot trust the "real" currency or their governments. This adds a bit more value to it.

Trusting Bitcoin over Greece's own currency? You mean the Euro? Lol, The euro has the backing of the EU. Bitcoin has the backing of a bunch of ..... geeks and people who would rather do business under the radar.

And as for other places like Zimbabwe and black markets, that's why people use the dollar. It is almost a univesial currency. Look what you are valuing bitcoin against, the dollar.

Jono8 · 12 Apr 2013 at 10:27

RichIbizaSport said:
I assure you on https://btc-e.com/ it was trading at $60 when I posted that. Why the heck would I make that up?

I'm going to take a wild guess and say you own quite a few bitcoins.

I dont know why he is arguing with you. You can even see on that chart that it went down to 60 dollars yesterday :confused:

Dj_Jestar · 12 Apr 2013 at 10:28

Raymond Lin said:
Trusting Bitcoin over Greece's own currency? You mean the Euro?

No, I mean their government.. hence the "or" in that sentence

edit: Also there is a lot of BTC traffic from Spain, who seemingly don't trust their own economy at the moment either.

Dj_Jestar · 12 Apr 2013 at 10:29

Jono8 said:
I dont know why he is arguing with you. You can even see on that chart that it went down to 60 dollars yesterday

Yet at the time he posted, it was $116 :confused:

How can you not see that? EDIT: At 16:30 on the 11th of April, BTC-e's own graph shows the price at $140-$153...

Better info: http://bitcoinity.org/markets

All markets are up, except for MtGox which has a small downturn just before they went offline.. which isn't surprising because they were going offline...