Poll of the Day > I still don't really understand what bitcoin is

(+) Yeah! (+)

Like how does some digital concept magically have a real-world monetary valuation? Not knowing much about it in depth, it sounds like they just pulled money out of thin air

Does anybody else not really understand it? I feel like it's in the news so much now that I probably should learn

BTW I'm not really asking anybody here to explain it, just wondering if they were also confused. I skimmed over a high-level description of it just now and it sort of makes sense. It just wasn't really something I ever bothered to look into before. The big obstacle to me seems like it's getting people to buy into it in the first place, but I guess black market transactions helped that

It's basically just like our current real world money system, but it can't be inflated.

Money is already pulled out of thin air. Theres really nothing backing it other than the belief that it has value. So Id say that you have failed to grasp money, not just bitcoin.

True, but with a traditional currency that's issued and regulated by the government, there's always going to be an immediate expectation that it has value. I don't think people really took bitcoin seriously in the beginning and there was no guarantee it was going to succeed. I couldn't just make something like that now and have it take off. There are a lot of imitators, but it looks like they are a small fraction of the value of bitcoin.

It's digital money that is limited and anonymous: these two qualities are why it has high demand and thus high value.

Plus. anyone with thousands of dollars worth of equipment (and the know how) can make a living mining for them as well.
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Rockies posted...

I don't think people really took bitcoin seriously

If they didn't then coins wouldn't get mined and there wouldn't be enough to make meaningful trade. It's a safe, stable currency, it's great for anybody with significant savings.
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ThatHappySack posted...

Plus. anyone with thousands of dollars worth of equipment (and the know how) can make a living mining for them as well.

Thats where I get confused

SpeeDLeemon posted...

ThatHappySack posted...

Plus. anyone with thousands of dollars worth of equipment (and the know how) can make a living mining for them as well.

Thats where I get confused

Yea, I don't get the whole mining part.

SpeeDLeemon posted...

ThatHappySack posted...

Plus. anyone with thousands of dollars worth of equipment (and the know how) can make a living mining for them as well.

Thats where I get confused

Basically anybody can print money until all values have been claimed, then printing isn't possible any more and all coins have to be traded only.
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To the best of my knowledge, Bitcoins have a unique identification that either needs a unique password or something like that to claim ownership of it for someone to have access to it.

Mining works by using complex algorithms to seek out unclaimed Bitcoins for the user to then take ownership of it (obviously if it's already claimed then it's ignored), once you have it then no one can ever take it away from you barring hacking or other illegal things (which seems ironic given their main use), the process takes a very long time though (hence why you need a lot of stuff to do it) so don't think a regular desktop can make you easy money.
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it's like real money, except way more volatile