Bit Coins

[domwatts]

My brother told me about bit coins, basically it's a form of online currency so can be used to buy stuff with off the internet. But what intrigued me more was that you can "mine" these coins, technically for free after the hardware is bought (there is ways of doing it on a web page though). In short I was wondering whether anyone knew anything about them or wanted to find out more about them as well? I should also mention that many people go into mining pools to gain more coins quicker so that also could be a good idea?

 

[MaDIIReD]

Well, you're a little late to the party
Used to be you could mine bitcoins with your home PC, but now you need to buy (as you said) specific hardware. This hardware is expensive and I'm not sure how long it would take to mine that all back. Besides, the bitcoin is very unstable. It has wild swings in it's value sometimes going up or down 200$ in value in a single day. Who knows how long the bit coin will last for. It might stay around for a long time, or be gone in a few months.

 

[Ghundra]

As MaD said Bitcoin is an extremely dangerous stock/currency to get into at the moment, I would avoid it until it starts to level out sometime in the future.

 

[aeroblitz]

Plus if you mine on-top of the specific hardware you need for max efficiency, you gotta pay for the massively increased power usage.

 

[meggawatts]

-snip-

If you are going to talk about news, you should get your facts straight. No one from MT. Gox committed suicide. They are all currently going through bankruptcy court. However, Autumn Radtke the CEO of First Meta, another bitcoin exchange, did in fact commit suicide and had nothing to do with Mt. Gox.

Also initially they lost 850,000 bitcoins, 100,000 of which were owned by Mt. Gox, which was eventually brought down to 650,000 after finding some bitcoins they had stashed away (worth about $116 million). These lost coins were about 7% of all bitcoins in the world, and were worth about $473 million.

Now, back to the original question.

Personally I feel like bitcoin and other crypto-currencies are a good investment, but you really have to play the long game. Bitcoin mining is basically impossible on consumer grade pc hardware these days, so it can be fairly expensive to get mining at profit. This forum may not be the best place to seek advice since I think me and ante are the only ones that mine any kind of coin at the moment.

 

[ScoobyDeezy]

Like has been said, the currency side of BitCoin is really up in the air. It's interesting, but you won't get rich from it. For starters, the value is totally arbitrary. It's made up. Most miners won't ever get nearly back what they invested into a mining machine. And since the IRS has ruled that bit coins are personal property and not currency, they can be taxed like stocks and other property (setting a precedent for things like Gold to be taxed as well, by the way), so it's as free from government intervention as was previously hoped. As far as BitCoin currency goes - meh. I'm not interested.

But the currency is not the cool thing about BitCoin. The cool thing about BitCoin is the blockchain. The Blockchain is something brand new. It is a digital revolution that - regardless of what happens to BitCoin - is going to transform the digital landscape. The things that people are building on TOP of the BlockChain - the potential it has - is amazing. I won't rant, but it's going to be cool to watch.