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[kaijyuu]

I might invest in some if they drop below ~$3 again. I'd love to double or triple my investment in like, a day.

[MrWiggles]

It hasnt dropped below 7 dollars in the two months.

[kaijyuu]

There goes another get rich quick scheme! Damn.

[MaximumZero]

So, why don't we hop on board for now, sell when the value gets high enough to bother with, and hop off before the wave crashes?

[Leafsnail]

Yes, be one of the idiots that helps drive the price up.  Hint: as a smalltime investor, you won't win.  It'll be someone who has lots of bitcoins and who is intentionally manipulating the market who will get the money and screw over everyone else.

[Fenrir]

Yes, be one of the idiots that helps drive the price up.  Hint: as a smalltime investor, you won't win.  It'll be someone who has lots of bitcoins and who is intentionally manipulating the market who will get the money and screw over everyone else.

You are right; we should form a syndicate.

Excellent idea, Leafsnail.

[mainiac]

So, why don't we hop on board for now, sell when the value gets high enough to bother with, and hop off before the wave crashes?

Because the odds are against you.  Sure you might make a 15%-20% profit but the market might bust and you'd lose everything.  You are a naive investor, you have less knowledge then the market average.  The odds are against you so don't play for keeps.

[MaximumZero]

You are a naive investor, you have less knowledge then the market average.

You don't seriously think I'm talking about getting absolutely filthy stinking rich, do you? No, I'm talking about using idle time on machines that you already have to make a couple bucks (and it probably wouldn't ever amount to much more than that,) and then cashing in and going off to do something else when a crash appears imminent. With zero monetary investment (aside from a nominal amount of electricity, as many computers are already on all the time, and I suspect that a lot of B12ers are the same way), you get a couple bucks. It's hard to turn down free money when you're as poor as I am, no matter how little the amount is.

[alway]

You are a naive investor, you have less knowledge then the market average.

You don't seriously think I'm talking about getting absolutely filthy stinking rich, do you? No, I'm talking about using idle time on machines that you already have to make a couple bucks (and it probably wouldn't ever amount to much more than that,) and then cashing in and going off to do something else when a crash appears imminent. With zero monetary investment (aside from a nominal amount of electricity, as many computers are already on all the time, and I suspect that a lot of B12ers are the same way), you get a couple bucks. It's hard to turn down free money when you're as poor as I am, no matter how little the amount is.

First of all, recall that the amount generated decreases over time. At this point, you would be making less than you would spend in additional electricity costs, even if your computer is otherwise on. The amount of electricity your computer uses varies based on what it is doing; your GPU and CPU aren't drawing nearly as much when idling (as a result, they are also cooler when idling). Full usage will also result in lower lifespans for your computer's components; you would be lucky if you broke even, let alone made money.

[mainiac]

You are a naive investor, you have less knowledge then the market average.

You don't seriously think I'm talking about getting absolutely filthy stinking rich, do you?

Um, no.  I'm just advising you against thinking that you can trade intelligently.  Keeping any value in an unknown market for arbitrage purposes is a worst investment then keeping it on a roulette table.

If you mine any bitcoins then I would recommend selling them immediately after mining and putting the money into a S+P market index stock fund.

[Scelly9]

I tried mining on my new gaming computer. It worked out to me making under two dollars a year.

[Skyrunner]

I tried mining on my new gaming computer. It worked out to me making under two dollars a year.

I suppose you would need dedicated machines tweaked for ciphers and cryptography to really get things going...

[Gantolandon]

I really think that most people seem to expect too much from Bitcoin. Maybe it's because of the name which seems to suggest something similar to euro or dollar and implies it should behave the same.

At its core, Bitcoin is a technical protocol to make financial transactions without any central authority to confirm that they really took place. As such, it performs nicely (clunky, enormous blockchain seems to be a problem, though). Transactions are almost impossible to be traced (because you can generate new accounts without any problem) and no one can freeze your assets, which makes it handy not only for black market transactions, but also for supporting sites similar to Wikileaks. Oh, and some grey areas, like online poker or porn. Tinfoil hat-types who hate credit cards can also benefit from its existence.

I don't know how the protocol would work if it were tied to a real currency, instead of creating an entirely new one, but I can see some benefits. It's nice that its actually harder to pull a shitload of money out of thin air and everyone knows how much coins there is in any given moment. Giving money to the people who encrypt blocks makes sense, even if it means that early adopters probably wallow in their virtual currency right now. Still, it makes for a strange economy which by no means resembles the one we know.

Obviously, it won't be backed by anything in our lifetime, but frankly I'm not sure why it should. It is sufficiently scarce - the algorithm doesn't let to just spawn bitcoins and, as far as I know, it still hasn't been cracked. Moreover, its scarcity is more predictable than anything we know. No one is going to strike a motherlode and inflate the currency. It's really hard to make them from nothing silently. All transactions are saved in the block chain, so if someone is hoarding a huge stash, it's quite simple to detect.

The price volatility is a problem, but not it's not crippling if bitcoins are used as they should. I'm baffled why so many people seem to treat them as an investment - mostly because hoarding cash has never been safe or particularly fruitful, not even with euro or dollar. It's safer to either convert or spend them immediately after transaction. Speculation is like Vegas, only without booze and hookers.

[G-Flex]

I'm baffled why so many people seem to treat them as an investment - mostly because hoarding cash has never been safe or particularly fruitful, not even with euro or dollar. It's safer to either convert or spend them immediately after transaction. Speculation is like Vegas, only without booze and hookers.

Probably because they aren't cash. If you look at the price (dollars per bitcoin), it's been pretty volatile, very unlike an actual stable currency, and I wouldn't doubt that some people have made a lot of money in true pump-and-dump fashion by being early adopters and selling when the price spikes.

[MrWiggles]

So my Wallet has been trying to synch to the networks for quite a number of hours.