[BMW..]

Anyone here investing or using crypto-currencies such as Bitcoin or Litecoin?
http://bitcoin.org/en/

[amanda hor$t]

umm, what? lol

[BMW..]

Originally Posted by amanda hor$t

umm, what? lol

Its basically money that doesn't physically exist, the price is determined by the demand and the "difficulty" it is to create a bitcoin. If you invested 100$ worth back in 2009 you would have a little under 4 million from how large it grew

[MediaArtist]

Too much market volatility, and backed by... nothing. I wouldn't touch it with a 100 foot pole.

[Myrder]

I looked at it a few months ago...could have justified risking a couple hundred for some bitcoins, now at the near $600-700 level, its a lot harder to justify buying one bitcoin lol.

With such rapid and unrelenting growth it reminds me of this... but who knows if it will ever stop. Probably be kicking myself when its at $10,000 a coin.

[whats77inaname]

Originally Posted by BMW..

Its basically money that doesn't physically exist, the price is determined by the demand and the "difficulty" it is to create a bitcoin. If you invested 100$ worth back in 2009 you would have a little under 4 million from how large it grew

Or invested $27 and forgot about it for a few years....

http://www.theguardian.com/technolog...rway-oslo-home

[MediaArtist]

Over half the exchanges have shut down (some due to fraud, hacking, etc) taking all the "hard earned" bit coins inside of them. Buyer beware.

[kscarrol]

Originally Posted by Myrder

I looked at it a few months ago...could have justified risking a couple hundred for some bitcoins, now at the near $600-700 level, its a lot harder to justify buying one bitcoin lol.

With such rapid and unrelenting growth it reminds me of this... but who knows if it will ever stop. Probably be kicking myself when its at $10,000 a coin.

Dammit! Beat me to it... Great graph!

[kevinbahnz]

a friend of mine just got into this last week. he bought a machine from someone and is supposed to get paid "mining Bitcoins". I have no idea how it works or if he even got paid yet.

[whats77inaname]

This is a good read, too:

http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise...coin-tops-600/

Originally Posted by kevinbahnz

a friend of mine just got into this last week. he bought a machine from someone and is supposed to get paid "mining Bitcoins". I have no idea how it works or if he even got paid yet.

That's a lot of work....

[BMW..]

Originally Posted by kevinbahnz

a friend of mine just got into this last week. he bought a machine from someone and is supposed to get paid "mining Bitcoins". I have no idea how it works or if he even got paid yet.

Not worth it unless you are paying upwards of 5 grand for one. Its complex at first but after a while it gets good. BTC will hit 1000$ very very VERY soon. China is already there. Its just a matter of time. I invested maybe 200 bucks into litecoins and now it jumped from 4$ to 8$ within 2 hours this morning! Crazy right? I now am sitting on 600 dollar profit with more litecoins on the way! Here's to making some mod money

[Maestro]

Okay at first when I heard of this it was presented as way to replace hard currency and you would be able to buy things with it over times as stores and such get online with it. However, it really being treated as some kind of investment. People are hoarding it and making money off of selling it like some sort of commodity or stock. But you all buying into something which really does not exist its all virtual. it kind of like having virtual sex.

To make matters worse, you have now competing systems, bitcoin and litecoin and anyone can create their own an compete against one another. Originally I was kind of sold on the idea, but now I am little concerned, if you buy in and accumulate more over time you have to hope new people will also wanted in and would be willing to pay more than you paid to get in so you can some how make a profit. It all falls apart when people stop wanting to get in or decide they will move to a competing system which has a lower buy in cost.

The question I have has anyone actually walked into a store and buy something with your bit coins.

The other thing about this, if you go shopping, and the merchant telling you it cost 1 bitcoin and yesterday 1bitcoin was $100 and today it worth $120 you just paid 20% more for the product. the opposite could happen as well. Our current systems of exchanging money does not have this affect, (yeah I know currency value does change over time but not the same way bitcoin is changing).

[BMW..]

Originally Posted by Maestro

Okay at first when I heard of this it was presented as way to replace hard currency and you would be able to buy things with it over times as stores and such get online with it. However, it really being treated as some kind of investment. People are hoarding it and making money off of selling it like some sort of commodity or stock. But you all buying into something which really does not exist its all virtual. it kind of like having virtual sex.

To make matters worse, you have now competing systems, bitcoin and litecoin and anyone can create their own an compete against one another. Originally I was kind of sold on the idea, but now I am little concerned, if you buy in and accumulate more over time you have to hope new people will also wanted in and would be willing to pay more than you paid to get in so you can some how make a profit. It all falls apart when people stop wanting to get in or decide they will move to a competing system which has a lower buy in cost.

The question I have has anyone actually walked into a store and buy something with your bit coins.

The other thing about this, if you go shopping, and the merchant telling you it cost 1 bitcoin and yesterday 1bitcoin was $100 and today it worth $120 you just paid 20% more for the product. the opposite could happen as well. Our current systems of exchanging money does not have this affect, (yeah I know currency value does change over time but not the same way bitcoin is changing).

Right now its more of an investment for me. Personally yes I have purchased things with my bitcoins. And anyone can make any kind of digital coin it all depends on if it has a value or not. Thats what is special about litecoin because its the 2nd most popular coin and not to mention it is extremely stable, 4x more possible coins able to be created than btc, quicker confirmations after transactions etc

[Myrder]

Originally Posted by Maestro

Okay at first when I heard of this it was presented as way to replace hard currency and you would be able to buy things with it over times as stores and such get online with it. However, it really being treated as some kind of investment. People are hoarding it and making money off of selling it like some sort of commodity or stock. But you all buying into something which really does not exist its all virtual. it kind of like having virtual sex.

To make matters worse, you have now competing systems, bitcoin and litecoin and anyone can create their own an compete against one another. Originally I was kind of sold on the idea, but now I am little concerned, if you buy in and accumulate more over time you have to hope new people will also wanted in and would be willing to pay more than you paid to get in so you can some how make a profit. It all falls apart when people stop wanting to get in or decide they will move to a competing system which has a lower buy in cost.

The question I have has anyone actually walked into a store and buy something with your bit coins.

The other thing about this, if you go shopping, and the merchant telling you it cost 1 bitcoin and yesterday 1bitcoin was $100 and today it worth $120 you just paid 20% more for the product. the opposite could happen as well. Our current systems of exchanging money does not have this affect, (yeah I know currency value does change over time but not the same way bitcoin is changing).

Exactly right, until the price of bitcoin stabilizes it will never be a currency.

[Hisam135i]

Originally Posted by Myrder

Exactly right, until the price of bitcoin stabilizes it will never be a currency.

Not exactly. http://www.etftrends.com/2013/11/as-...y-soon-follow/

If you look at the mathematics behind bitcoin, it's quite amazing.

[MediaArtist]

It will be a currency as much as GOLD is a currency, but with much less actual value. It will also have the same limitations as gold, and none of the benefits (i.e - Gold's intrinsic physical value).

Right now CryptoCurrency is flooding the market, last count there are over a dozen now claiming to be "the best" on the market: noncoin, Bitcoin, Digitalcoin, Devcoin, Freicoin, Feathercoin, I0coin, Ixcoin, Litecoin, Namecoin, Novacoin, Peercoin, Terracoin, Worldcoin, Primecoin, etc etc.

The two primary things driving these currency:

1) Speculation. Massive swings in price from quarter to quarter is a huge red sign. Yes, you MIGHT be able to time an exit before the next down turn, but you also have a good chance of losing your hat, and more. But anything that rises in value 50x over 12 months smells like "Tulips". There's a lot of hope, and dreams behind cryptoCurrency, but so far very little use except in...........

2) China, where the biggest volume of transfer now occurs. It makes sense to be popular in China where capital transfer has been highly restricted, and protection of personal assets from the government has been nearly non-existent. BitCoin and its cousins provide an easy alternative to transfer money out. But very few places actually accept it as a medium of exchange for goods and services, even in China.

3) This has already happened before! I know people here are young but back in 2006, China had a wildely popular cryptoCurrency called Q-Coin which at one point had a trading volume of $60,000 a day. There's nothing stopping Chinese gov't officials from shutting down the exchanges, and guess what, your $200, $10,000, $100,000 in BitCoin? Vanishes, just like it did when the gov't in China stomped out Q-Coin.

[Myrder]

Originally Posted by Hisam135i

Not exactly. http://www.etftrends.com/2013/11/as-...y-soon-follow/

If you look at the mathematics behind bitcoin, it's quite amazing.

Its amazing but...as I said, it cannot be a currency with 30% swings in a day. Sorry wont happen.

[BMW..]

Originally Posted by Myrder

Its amazing but...as I said, it cannot be a currency with 30% swings in a day. Sorry wont happen.

It already is a currency. People take it as money and so it is lol. You just don't like it

[johanness]

Originally Posted by BMW..

It already is a currency. People take it as money and so it is lol. You just don't like it

Bullshit. When u can pay at the teller at a national retail chain... Then it's something usable. Until then it's just a hella-volatile investment.

[Myrder]

Originally Posted by BMW..

It already is a currency. People take it as money and so it is lol. You just don't like it

Unless you're using it to buy a machine that prints money, you would be retarded to use it, if you think it's all its cracked up to be.

Its not that I don't like it. Hell Litecoin with 84M units total produced should technically be 1/4 the price of bitcoin(21M units) if it gets any notoriety. It's at what? $9? Why not just buy a bunch of that and wait for that train to take off...Hell I may do that.

It's that there can be an infinite amount of digital currencies if they become accepted by the public.

[MediaArtist]

It's actually got a very good Pyramid model attached to it as well. Early adopters (those who were in heavy in 2008-2009) take the bulk of the share of coins for little effort, and those who get in now get fractionally less and less for much more effort and capital required.

[Maestro]

Yeah it may not be a true pyramid or ponzie scheme, but it smelling more like a Multilevel Marketing scheme. The first people get in before others know about it then the Marketing begins happening driving the demand. Before you know it you own lots of the product and can not find anyone else willing to buy in anymore.

I like the whole idea of virtual money and doing easy transactions with out everyone getting a cut. But not at the cost of not know what your assets are worth at any given time.

I think the con-artists are involved in this you just have no idea who they are unlike Ponzie and bernie madoff which were the front men lying to everyone.