Posted on 10/25/2013 8:16:36 PM PDT by Errant
Bitcoin mining difficulty is increasing now exponentially with more and more ASIC miners coming online. Today the difficulty increased by 45% to 390 million. In a little over 2 days, difficulty level is predicted to increase by 300% to 1.6 billion. When I first started paying attention in May of this year, the difficulty level was only 10 million.
Not sure what this will mean for bitcoins or the price theroof. I'm curious what those Freepers who mine or have bitcoins think?
Litecoins can’t be mined by ASIC machines, yet. So yes, they are still profitable to mine using GPU based miners. There are four times the number of litecoins able to be eventually mined as bitcoins. Their current price is $2.
Sorry, I don't know anything about those.
:-)
Why would you say that? Sure, this stuff is not as safe as gold—but who knows, it could take off. Why would you wish failure on them?
You would have to buy, exchange, or mine for them.
At the current difficulty, it takes about 120 giga hashes processed per second mining for a solid week to find one bitcoin.
You lost with the hash comment.
Think of hashes as encrypted stings that get "cracked/processed" to find bitcoins. A Pentium 7 processor should be capable of doing about 50 mega hashes a second. At the current difficulty, it would take it 46 years running 24/7 to find one bitcoin.
That I don’t know, but I believe the blocks were generated and placed in the public domain in the beginning. Also, initially, the difficulty level was easy so even CPUs were used to mine. A well know story is how back then, it took thousands of bitcoins to buy a single pizza.
I’m probably wrong about the Pentium 7. It probably can do twice what I said above, so it may only take it 23 years to find a bitcoin. ;)
Ok, I watched the video (why not just use solid Gold or Silver) it would function the same (limited qty.) and actually be backed by real world value..?
The disadvantage is dependency upon the internet. But then most everything now depends upon it. In a Madmax scenario, they aren't going to be worth much.
Still, they offer a lot of utility. Especially to those who live in countries enacting capital controls. Bitcoins started their first big rise in price during the Cyprus financial crisis.
you can either mine them...
buy them from someone that mined them...
or provide services in exchange for them
it’s like dollars that cannot be forged and are virtual.
You are correct. If Bitcoin can be said to "backed" by anything it would be its convertibility into generally-accepted currencies. Those currencies, in turn, derived their acceptance and value from their original status as gold-backed.
You are correct. That which the socialists cannot control, they will regulate unto destruction.
I would not touch bitcoins with a 10 ft pole. If you want to throw money away private message me for my address and you can just send the money to me. :-)
Money:
1. You are afraid to give out your address to receive money.
2. Businesses test your Franklins to see if they are counterfeit.
3. Transactions of over 100 Franklins are reported to the government.
4. You are not allowed to take more than 100 Franklins out of the country.
5. Travel with "large amounts" of Franklins inside the USA and they are subject to being confiscated pending a lengthy determination of their source.
6. Hefty charges for ATM transactions, wiring funds, insufficient funds, checks, and etc.
7. Fear of being robbed on the street or in your home.
8. Regulated Banks must be FDIC insured.
9. Printed out of "thin air".
10. Value decreasing daily (One Bitcoin is now worth Two Franklins).
Bitcoins:
1. None of the above.
My address if someone wants to send me some: 1D9P1gbfiwy4JyQKRDUVEfJF7FKmDFVkKH
Just sayin'... :-)
That may be, but I’d rather have gold or silver ;).
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