BitCoin / LiteCoin

[walm]

Genius!
Market makers - worth their weight in, well, ones and zeros.

[hairykrishna]

I wonder how many bitcoins Satoshi (the inventor) is still holding? He mined most of the early blocks and got something like a million coins. Is there any other 'currency' in the world where an individual is holding a few percent of it?

[z4chris99]

hairykrishna said:

I wonder how many bitcoins Satoshi (the inventor) is still holding? He mined most of the early blocks and got something like a million coins. Is there any other 'currency' in the world where an individual is holding a few percent of it?

i think the highest holder has about 110k coins... the winklevoss twins have about 90k

interestingly the highest holder has never sold any, and so i believe this is Satoshi mining.

[hairykrishna]

z4chris99 said:

i think the highest holder has about 110k coins... the winklevoss twins have about 90k

interestingly the highest holder has never sold any, and so i believe this is Satoshi mining.

That's the largest wallet I think - an individual has no limit on how many wallets they can own. There are over a million coins that were mined back in 2009 that have never been spent i.e. whoever mined them still has them, or they've been lost.

[RobbieKB]

A friend and I were going to buy some about 6 months ago but we decided against it. That would be hugely depressing but the thing is, they aren't easy to sell at the moment.

Mt.gox is the main trading hub for BTC and today they traded 672 in to GBP. That's nothing really.

[rufusgti]

RobbieKB said:

A friend and I were going to buy some about 6 months ago but we decided against it. That would be hugely depressing but the thing is, they aren't easy to sell at the moment.

Mt.gox is the main trading hub for BTC and today they traded 672 in to GBP. That's nothing really.

Is that not because nobody is selling them? When something is going up in value every day people tend to want to hang on. Which pushes the price up further. I don't believe they're hard to sell.

[Morningside]

eliot said:

...
You can also grow you own bitcoins - but the computing power required is increasing exponentially.

I would be very worried about a currency were you can grow your own - sounds a bit like QE to me.

...and how do you get the software for this?

[0to60tv]

I bought a couple of hundred quids worth of litecoins today as a punt...lets see what happens! What a pain in the arse to buy though!

I went PayPal - okpay - virwox - btc e

Got nailed on commission but couldn't really see any other way of getting them with 'real' money unless you can read Russian!

Lots if people selling them on eBay and the auctions seem to go for wildly varying prices £30-£40 each...

Anyhoo, I'm not holding my breath, I like a bit if a flutter, will see what happens!

[Esseesse]

rufusgti said:

RobbieKB said:

A friend and I were going to buy some about 6 months ago but we decided against it. That would be hugely depressing but the thing is, they aren't easy to sell at the moment.

Mt.gox is the main trading hub for BTC and today they traded 672 in to GBP. That's nothing really.

Is that not because nobody is selling them? When something is going up in value every day people tend to want to hang on. Which pushes the price up further. I don't believe they're hard to sell.

Disagree. That's one mentality, the other is that they've gone up in value quickly so people want to get rid of them before the huge drop.

I've heard they are hard to sell in that people have had to wait for months for the GBP (when selling on Mt.gox anyway).

[Bikerjon]

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I keep reading this "solving complex problems" line, but can anyone expand on that or give an example as I don't quite get it? Who's requesting for these complex problems to be solved? Do they pay a fee to access all that computing power?

[Esseesse]

Bikerjon said:

anonymous said:

[redacted]

I keep reading this "solving complex problems" line, but can anyone expand on that or give an example as I don't quite get it? Who's requesting for these complex problems to be solved? Do they pay a fee to access all that computing power?

It's like working out the next number in Pi. Gets increasingly hard the further you go. And yes, computing power costs money.

[Bikerjon]

Esseesse said:

It's like working out the next number in Pi. Gets increasingly hard the further you go. And yes, computing power costs money.

Yes I'm an IT bod so I know it costs money - just intrigued who is likely to need access to all that computing power? Companies? Universities? Any real-world examples of what it has been used for so far?

[hairykrishna]

Bikerjon said:

Yes I'm an IT bod so I know it costs money - just intrigued who is likely to need access to all that computing power? Companies? Universities? Any real-world examples of what it has been used for so far?

It's not being used for anything outside bitcoin. The miners computing power is essentially used to verify the block chain (i.e. the transaction log).

[B17NNS]

0to60tv said:

I bought a couple of hundred quids worth of litecoins today as a punt...lets see what happens! What a pain in the arse to buy though!

Do you have a link? Quick rundown of the process?

I'd be interested in a small punt on these.

[Bikerjon]

hairykrishna said:

It's not being used for anything outside bitcoin. The miners computing power is used to verify the block chain (i.e. the transaction log).

Thanks for clearing that up!

[LaurasOtherHalf]

B17NNS said:

0to60tv said:

I bought a couple of hundred quids worth of litecoins today as a punt...lets see what happens! What a pain in the arse to buy though!

Do you have a link? Quick rundown of the process?

I'd be interested in a small punt on these.

same here, i was at a party last night & we were discussing getting in with a grands worth each, probably litecoins as there seems to be the possability of them growing more.

it's just a punt obviously but rumors of them not being easy to sell puts you off a bit.

[V8A*ndy]

Surely some country will fire a super computer at this nonsense and hold the heap.

No?

It all seems like bks to me.

Well done to all those that got in early and getting cash out now.

[Some Gump]

Bikerjon said:

I keep reading this "solving complex problems" line, but can anyone expand on that or give an example as I don't quite get it? Who's requesting for these complex problems to be solved? Do they pay a fee to access all that computing power?

If you coud have solved this problem for yourself, i'd have given you a bit coin. Not very complex, is it?

[technogogo]

For any iPad users I found a great free online training course about Bitcoin:

https://appsto.re/gb/tXIsN.i

It certainly filled in several blanks for me.

[eliot]

My friend is mining about 0.2 bitcoins a day on one of the latest asic rigs. The GPU ones he built last month aren't powerful enough anymore, even though they were considered powerful a few months ago. He's invested a few grand in hardware and then quickly reinvested in asic stuff.
I think the boat has sailed for diy bitcoin mining. His office is like a sauna with the heat all these rigs are chucking out.