Poll of the Day > Just bought $50 in bitcoin, AMA

(+) Yeah! (+)

nt
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What is that 0.000000001 coin
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SmokeMassTree posted...

What is that 0.000000001 coin

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Ballin
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What are your intentions?

OmegaTomHank posted...

What are your intentions?

Nothing, really. I'm treating it like fantasy football, where I'm just doing it for the fun of the ride, and if I lose it all then oh well, no harm no foul

Basically I'm treating it like lost money, where if I come back with anything then I'll call it a profit.
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Bought $50 of Eth at $468

It's at $425 now D,:
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So... You need bitcoin to hit like 50k to make any noticeable profit? And even that's hardly worth the effort.

Unless you plan on using it for something?
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Dynalo posted...

So... You need bitcoin to hit like 50k to make any noticeable profit? And even that's hardly worth the effort.

Basically to double it, it'd need to jump up to ~$27k. The "effort" was very low, again I'm just doing it for shits and giggles and expecting nothing in return.

Dynalo posted...

Unless you plan on using it for something?

Nah. If I profit then yay, if I don't then oh well.
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speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far
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helIy posted...

speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far

So like what exactly is "mining?" Is that just a fancy word for buying and selling for profit like stock market traders do? Or is that something else entirely? I keep reading stuff about people needing GPUs for mining, but I just clicked and bought $50 with no problem.
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Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far

So like what exactly is "mining?" Is that just a fancy word for buying and selling for profit like stock market traders do? Or is that something else entirely? I keep reading stuff about people needing GPUs for mining, but I just clicked and bought $50 with no problem.

Mining is decrypting stuffs.
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So basically you just wasted $50.

Lil69Leo posted...

So basically you just wasted $50.

I mean if it crashes down to zero in the next 15 seconds, then yeah, I did. But if it just hovers for several months and THEN crashes, then I wouldn't consider it a waste because it provides me entertainment during work to watch.

And if I profit then woo. But I'm not expecting to. As of right now, I am treating it like a lost $50.
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I tried to buy some last night but my payment declined. Super annoying.

It's time I switched banks.
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Veedrock- posted...

I tried to buy some last night but my payment declined. Super annoying.

It's time I switched banks.

Yeah there are two options, either directly link to your bank, or use a credit/debit card. I thought about linking my checking account with just the typical routing number + account number info, but when I tried, they didn't ask for that, they wanted me to log in with my online banking information that I use to log myself in to the bank itself.

I was like fuck that

Plus Chase Freedom Unlimited = 1.5% cash back! (Though it wouldn't surprise me if there was a crypto clause in there saying it doesn't qualify for the bonus, like money orders or anything similar)
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Muffinz0rz posted...

Lil69Leo posted...

So basically you just wasted $50.

I mean if it crashes down to zero in the next 15 seconds, then yeah, I did. But if it just hovers for several months and THEN crashes, then I wouldn't consider it a waste because it provides me entertainment during work to watch.

And if I profit then woo. But I'm not expecting to. As of right now, I am treating it like a lost $50.

Bitcoin will hit a million soon enough

Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far

So like what exactly is "mining?" Is that just a fancy word for buying and selling for profit like stock market traders do? Or is that something else entirely? I keep reading stuff about people needing GPUs for mining, but I just clicked and bought $50 with no problem.

mining uses your computer to earn bitcoins

you just bought bitcoins

i put together a computer out of old parts, not the best. a i5-6400, radeon 7950

i average around a dollar every 23-24 hours
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helIy posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far

So like what exactly is "mining?" Is that just a fancy word for buying and selling for profit like stock market traders do? Or is that something else entirely? I keep reading stuff about people needing GPUs for mining, but I just clicked and bought $50 with no problem.

mining uses your computer to earn bitcoins

you just bought bitcoins

How do you use your computer to earn bitcoins
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Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far

So like what exactly is "mining?" Is that just a fancy word for buying and selling for profit like stock market traders do? Or is that something else entirely? I keep reading stuff about people needing GPUs for mining, but I just clicked and bought $50 with no problem.

mining uses your computer to earn bitcoins

you just bought bitcoins

How do you use your computer to earn bitcoins

Download a program. But at this point the earnings are really small compared to the early days.
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FellWolf posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far

So like what exactly is "mining?" Is that just a fancy word for buying and selling for profit like stock market traders do? Or is that something else entirely? I keep reading stuff about people needing GPUs for mining, but I just clicked and bought $50 with no problem.

mining uses your computer to earn bitcoins

you just bought bitcoins

How do you use your computer to earn bitcoins

Download a program. But at this point the earnings are really small compared to the early days.

yup.

on an i5-6400 and a radeon 7950 i get about a dollar a day
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FellWolf posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

helIy posted...

speaking of bitcoin, i've mined about $19 so far

So like what exactly is "mining?" Is that just a fancy word for buying and selling for profit like stock market traders do? Or is that something else entirely? I keep reading stuff about people needing GPUs for mining, but I just clicked and bought $50 with no problem.

mining uses your computer to earn bitcoins

you just bought bitcoins

How do you use your computer to earn bitcoins

Download a program. But at this point the earnings are really small compared to the early days.

I literally can't fathom how a computer creates or does whatever to virtual data to then be turned around and sold for real, tangible dollars.

helIy posted...

on an i5-6400 and a radeon 7950 i get about a dollar a day

What's the program and can you use your computer while it runs?
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to be fair, bitcoin itself is not real or tangible.

it literally has no real value, only what people think it should be worth. this is why it's so volatile. it isn't backed by anything.
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Muffinz0rz posted...

I literally can't fathom how a computer creates or does whatever to virtual data to then be turned around and sold for real, tangible dollars.

Look it up. It's literally like a farm of computers decoding shit. You are adding your processing power to the farm

Disclaimer: I haven't research this
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helIy posted...

to be fair, bitcoin itself is not real or tangible.

Oh yeah no I meant like you can take that raw data, earn bitcoin, and then sell that bitcoin into cash in your bank account, which you can then withdraw and have it be, by definition, tangible.

FellWolf posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

I literally can't fathom how a computer creates or does whatever to virtual data to then be turned around and sold for real, tangible dollars.

Look it up. It's literally like a farm of computers decoding shit. You are adding your processing power to the farm

Disclaimer: I haven't research this

That's so fucking weird
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Bought yesterday at like 13.5k

Why haven't you invested yet?
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Unless BTC hits $100K over the next week, you probably won't see much anytime soon.

I invested $5 like in Sept...I now have about $13 bucks in my BTC acct.

Muffinz0rz posted...

Why haven't you invested yet?

Because buy.bitcoin.com is down.
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Veedrock- posted...

Muffinz0rz posted...

Why haven't you invested yet?

Because buy.bitcoin.com is down.

So is coinbase

The whole market is frozen at $16,299

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/bitcoin-price/
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I've gotten back into it for the first time since 2014. I got $10 in bitcoin then, which was 0.00221 BTC. I've been watching all this week, trying to figure out when to draw out.
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I bought $150 back in June and forgot to sell it. So now Im just basically writing it off for sheer curiosity on how high this shit will go.

Still can't buy. ;_;
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Veedrock- posted...

Still can't buy. ;_;

Yeah coinbase is super fucked up because of all the traffic. I still can't verify my ID which means I can't sell. I wasn't planning on selling anytime soon, because like the above poster said, I'm just watching out of sheer curiosity. But I can imagine people were super angry when it shot up to 19.5k yesterday and couldn't sell because of how messed up coinbase is.
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Muffinz0rz posted...

I literally can't fathom how a computer creates or does whatever to virtual data to then be turned around and sold for real, tangible dollars.

The way Bitcoin and most other cryptocurrencies work is by creating and maintaining a distributed ledger. Instead of a single organization holding the values of multiple bank accounts in their private database, the entire world can freely look at a ledger describing transactions of all the accounts in the ledger.

Each account is a public key, and the account owner has the private key. They sign the transaction using their private key and anyone can verify the signature is valid in no time at all, but forging the signature would require an unfeasible amount of time.

The problem is how do you prevent double spending? I can sign a transaction giving you the 1 BTC in my account and everyone can see it is valid. But I can also publish a transaction giving that 1 BTC to my other account and it will also have a valid signature. How do we determine where the money actually went?

This is where the ledger comes in. The ledger is a block chain. Each block contains several transactions and a hash of the previous block's header. This way, we have an ordered list of blocks of transactions to compute the current balance in each account. When a transaction is posted, we check to make sure it had that much money in the account to make the transaction valid. The network will not accept a transaction that spend more coins than an account possesses. So if I post two contradictory transactions only one of them can be accepted into a block.

If you are receiving money, you just wait to see if the transaction sending to your account appears in the block chain and then wait for more blocks appended after it cementing the transaction in the chain. Then you will know you received the funds. (You don't actually have to monitor the block chain, your wallet software will check to see if a transaction sent your wallet money and will display the balance once the transaction has reached an acceptable threshold of age in the chain.)

So how do these blocks get created? Well there are miners, they are functioning as the network validators. They are constantly recording valid transactions and adding them to the next block. They hash the previous block's header and include that as the pointer to the previous block and they include their own account where newly created coins and transaction fees will be deposited. Finally they have a custom field in the block called a nonce. They can put any value they want in this field, it normally starts at 0. Then they take this whole block of information and hash it. The resulting hash must be smaller than a predetermined target. If it isn't, the only data they can change is that arbitrary nonce. Then they hash the block again and again until they get below the target.

When they get below the target, they publish the block to the network. Everyone can quickly verify its contents, they can see it was made after the previous block as it has that block's hash included. They can see the transactions are all validly signed and come from accounts with the requisite funds. And they can see the entire block hashes to the target value. Everyone should accept it and use its header for the next block and begin hashing a new block of transactions to follow it.

The miner receives any transaction fees and also newly minted bitcoins added by the block. Bitcoins are generated and distributed to the network by block generation. Back in 2009, blocks created 50 BTC. Around four years later this halved to 25 BTC generated each block. And around 2017 it halved again to 12.5 BTC per block. Eventually no new Bitcoins will be generated and the network will only operate on transaction fees. Right now though the newly generated coins are why people are willing to invest in hardware and electricity to mine blocks.
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A few more points.

What happens if there are two blocks mined at the same time. Well the new miners have to choose one of those blocks to point their next block at. When the next block is mined it can only point at one block so the other block will be discarded by the network in favor of the longer chain of blocks. The longer chain takes more work (more hashing) to create so it is the more valid block. This is why you wait till your transaction is several blocks back in the chain to ensure it actually cleared and was posted in the ledger.

The protocol wants to maintain a block every ten minutes. But if more and more people are mining, and especially if they combine their mining power (by using the same set of transactions and the same wallet for the mining rewards and splitting up nonce values between each other) they can create blocks at quicker rates.

So the protocol routinely checks (every 2016 blocks) how much time is passing between block generation. If blocks are being created more often than every ten minutes, the difficulty is increased by decreasing the target hash value. If blocks are being generated less often than every ten minutes, the difficulty is decreased by increasing the target number. So despite there being hundreds of miners working together in coalitions to mine these blocks, the difficulty is maintained at ten minutes per block

I think bitcoin is intriguing, but I see this increased mining effort as a wasteful use of electricity and computer hardware. Graphics card prices are rising as a result, and graphics cards that have been run non-stop for a couple years hashing blocks are then being resold to recoup the hardware investment to reinvest in faster hardware. These worn out cards potentially have little life left in them after being put through the wear and tear of perpetual mining.


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Muffinz0rz posted...

Veedrock- posted...

Still can't buy. ;_;

Yeah coinbase is super fucked up because of all the traffic. I still can't verify my ID which means I can't sell. I wasn't planning on selling anytime soon, because like the above poster said, I'm just watching out of sheer curiosity. But I can imagine people were super angry when it shot up to 19.5k yesterday and couldn't sell because of how messed up coinbase is.

buy.bitcoin.com was back up this morning, but when I went to buy with a new credit card it failed again. The payment went through on my end as I got confirmation they put a hold on the amount I tried to buy, but they didn't authorize it on their end for some reason and they have a strict "we won't tell you why" policy. So now I'm locked out of those funds for a couple days and still don't have any bitcoin.

I'm super pissed about all this. Coinbase with direct debit might be my only option, but I'm hesitant about giving them my ID and more than that I'm not happy with the long trade delay (4-5 days) that direct debit has. Yeah they lock in the price at time of purchase, but then I can't trade it for other currencies or markets for several days at which point the opportunity is lost. Prime example: IOTA was $2.50 on Monday, then shot up to $5.50 on Tuesday. After that spike it dropped back down to the $3 range, but each day it'd climb into the $4 range in the day before dropping again each night. From what I observed it was a great opportunity to buy low and sell high, but I couldn't get in on any of it because I can't get a payment to authorize. If my first attempt was going through coinbase with direct debit I'd only just now be getting my bitcoin, but now IOTA has stabilized and climbing steadily again. Opportunity lost.

I just want it to work, that really shouldn't be too much to ask for.
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