Bitcoins?

[budgie smuggler]

p1stonhead said:

These people were geeks doing computer calculattions to get a worthless currency which may exist one day. Yes it was real. It was piss easy back then my mate did it all the time but of course sold them when they hit like £6 or something.

Yes I mined a few coins around 2010 when I used to get electricity included in my rent but nowhere near that amount.

[hairykrishna]

Ayahuasca said:

It must be really galling to have had a load of bitcoin, then lost or sold them for peanuts.

That chap whose hard drive is in the landfill must be going out of his mind.

Having sold them isn't that painful. The knowledge that I definitely had some I couldn't be arsed to sort out selling which are now gone for ever is much worse. Last I heard the landfill bloke was talking about crowdfunding some kind of dig

[wst]

That landfill bloke is getting a lot of value out of leaving them there as he gets coverage in the newspaper about once a month and that's got to pay for a cheap night out. He just has to time the dig right so it's before the crash (though if there is a crash the newspapers can report about how relieved he is that he didn't have physical possession of them still or something )

[hairykrishna]

wst said:

That landfill bloke is getting a lot of value out of leaving them there as he gets coverage in the newspaper about once a month and that's got to pay for a cheap night out. He just has to time the dig right so it's before the crash (though if there is a crash the newspapers can report about how relieved he is that he didn't have physical possession of them still or something )

I think on balance he'd rather have the 100 million quid though.

[anonymous-user]

The CME bitcoin futures opened for trading last night

http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/equity-index/us-in...

It isn't really possible to make a wholly direct comparison with the previously launched CBOE futures, but most people will

Apropos nothing, at the time of writing, prices are

spot 18,933

CBOE Jan 19,280

CME Jan 19,460

[wc98]

LET ME FREAK you out for a second. You know what bitcoinis, right? I mean, no, but quickly, it’s a “cryptocurrency” that’s basically secret computer money. One bitcoin, which doesn’t actually have a real, physical form, is worth at this moment upwards of $16,000. But to get one, you either have to buy them from online exchanges or use specialized computing hardware to “mine” it. That last bit is where the freak-out comes in.

In a report last week, the cryptocurrency website Digiconomics said that worldwide bitcoin mining was using more electricity than Serbia. The country. Writing for Grist, Eric Holthaus calculated that by July 2019, the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network—remember BitTorrent? Like that—would require more electricity than all of the United States. And by November of 2020, it’d use more electricity than the entire world does today.

That’s bad. It means Bitcoin emits the equivalent of 17.7 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, a big middle finger to Earth’s climate and anyone who enjoys things like coastlines, forests, and not dying of mosquito-borne diseases.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/17/bitcoin-cli...

this will cause heads to explode in the green paradise that is california ,lol.

[jammy-git]

You know when planes were first invented? They were rubbish, could only carry one or two passengers, were really slow, accident prone, etc, etc.

Things improve as the demand increases....

[p1stonhead]

wc98 said:

LET ME FREAK you out for a second. You know what bitcoinis, right? I mean, no, but quickly, it’s a “cryptocurrency” that’s basically secret computer money. One bitcoin, which doesn’t actually have a real, physical form, is worth at this moment upwards of $16,000. But to get one, you either have to buy them from online exchanges or use specialized computing hardware to “mine” it. That last bit is where the freak-out comes in.

In a report last week, the cryptocurrency website Digiconomics said that worldwide bitcoin mining was using more electricity than Serbia. The country. Writing for Grist, Eric Holthaus calculated that by July 2019, the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network—remember BitTorrent? Like that—would require more electricity than all of the United States. And by November of 2020, it’d use more electricity than the entire world does today.

That’s bad. It means Bitcoin emits the equivalent of 17.7 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, a big middle finger to Earth’s climate and anyone who enjoys things like coastlines, forests, and not dying of mosquito-borne diseases.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/17/bitcoin-cli...

this will cause heads to explode in the green paradise that is california ,lol.

To be fair, everyone knows this already.

[TameRacingDriver]

Aye and those greedy gits are why my next graphics card will cost double what my last one did! (first world problems etc)

[Saleen836]

With all the news surrounding Bitcoins and CGT, how does it become liable when you buy a house with them?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/16/first-b...

I can understand how the seller becomes liable but will the buyer pay CGT on the property value?

[youngsyr]

Saleen836 said:

With all the news surrounding Bitcoins and CGT, how does it become liable when you buy a house with them?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/16/first-b...

I can understand how the seller becomes liable but will the buyer pay CGT on the property value?

No, as the Bitcoins have an easily obtainable market value, you would pay CGT on the gain on your Bitcoins used as the purchase funds up to the date of the property purchase.

[anonymous-user]

youngsyr said:

Saleen836 said:

With all the news surrounding Bitcoins and CGT, how does it become liable when you buy a house with them?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/12/16/first-b...

I can understand how the seller becomes liable but will the buyer pay CGT on the property value?

No, as the Bitcoins have an easily obtainable market value, you would pay CGT on the gain on your Bitcoins used as the purchase funds up to the date of the property purchase.

Correct. If you buy anything with a crypto currency (or give it away!) the gain for cgt purposes is calculated as if you had sold the currency at the market price.

[TTmonkey]

Someone tried to infect some of our works computers today with some bitcoin mining software.

Good idea, get someone else to buy the hardware and pay the electric bill.

[Trolleys Thank You]

wc98 said:

LET ME FREAK you out for a second. You know what bitcoinis, right? I mean, no, but quickly, it’s a “cryptocurrency” that’s basically secret computer money. One bitcoin, which doesn’t actually have a real, physical form, is worth at this moment upwards of $16,000. But to get one, you either have to buy them from online exchanges or use specialized computing hardware to “mine” it. That last bit is where the freak-out comes in.

In a report last week, the cryptocurrency website Digiconomics said that worldwide bitcoin mining was using more electricity than Serbia. The country. Writing for Grist, Eric Holthaus calculated that by July 2019, the Bitcoin peer-to-peer network—remember BitTorrent? Like that—would require more electricity than all of the United States. And by November of 2020, it’d use more electricity than the entire world does today.

That’s bad. It means Bitcoin emits the equivalent of 17.7 million tons of carbon dioxide every year, a big middle finger to Earth’s climate and anyone who enjoys things like coastlines, forests, and not dying of mosquito-borne diseases.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/17/bitcoin-cli...

this will cause heads to explode in the green paradise that is california ,lol.

Most mining is done only where it is economically viable to do so. Many of these places are next to cheap, over abundant supplies of renewable electricity such as Hydroelectric dams in China and solar farms. If anything, Bitcoin miners are supporting and making these otherwise low demand, green projects more profitable. Only a good thing if we want to transition away from fossil fuels.

[WitnessProtection]

Trolleys Thank You said:

Most mining is done only where it is economically viable to do so. Many of these places are next to cheap, over abundant supplies of renewable electricity such as Hydroelectric dams in China and solar farms. If anything, Bitcoin miners are supporting and making these otherwise low demand, green projects more profitable. Only a good thing if we want to transition away from fossil fuels.

I was pondering recently whether cryptocurrency mining (not necessarily BTC) or some other proof of work application could be used as some sort of load balancing mechanism during times when renewables are generating surplus energy? It didn't get much beyond that thought, but you could perhaps use tokenisation somewhere in the wholesale trade or emissions market systems? If you have some sort of "renewable coin" (aware there are a few already) as industry standard, and could guarantee such coins only came from renewable proof of work, could they be a store of value for transacting?

[wc98]

TTmonkey said:

Someone tried to infect some of our works computers today with some bitcoin mining software.

Good idea, get someone else to buy the hardware and pay the electric bill.

i take it you are based in china near some cheap environmentally friendly green energy sources

[anonymous-user]

Trolleys Thank You said:

Most mining is done only where it is economically viable to do so. Many of these places are next to cheap, over abundant supplies of renewable electricity such as Hydroelectric dams in China and solar farms. If anything, Bitcoin miners are supporting and making these otherwise low demand, green projects more profitable. Only a good thing if we want to transition away from fossil fuels.

That's quite a special feat of logic.

[mondeoman]

fblm said:

Trolleys Thank You said:

Most mining is done only where it is economically viable to do so. Many of these places are next to cheap, over abundant supplies of renewable electricity such as Hydroelectric dams in China and solar farms. If anything, Bitcoin miners are supporting and making these otherwise low demand, green projects more profitable. Only a good thing if we want to transition away from fossil fuels.

That's quite a special feat of logic.

[jurbie]

I think the argument is that mining operations should be set up next to wind farms so on those occasions when supply is outstripping demand, rather than paying the wind operator to shut down, as happens now, he simply starts mining bitcoin and earns his money that why. It makes sense on the face of it as paying someone not to produce electricity is utterly stupid but whether it would work in practise is a different question. Someone should probably ask the wind farm advocates in the power generation thread.

[simonrockman]

Bitcoin is low bandwidth but high on electricity consumption. You could support it with a cellular connection and a big power supply.

So if you modified an electric car so that the power, instead of going to the car went to the mining rig, you could rock up at a free charging point and spend the day mining.


You'd get paid to park.


Now *that's* a PH idea.

Simon