Bitcoin Forum

Suspended. Better contest coming soon.

Heh - that might attact a few bots potentially, but the prize is small enough not to matter.

I had a laugh yesterday. While in SuperCheap Auto some guy was yacking loudly on the phone about some stock he was buying that didn't seem likely to move from $31. (Meanwhile I was looking in vain for some strip LED lighting for the headlights so I would be more visible when the lights were off - bronzeish coloured cars hard to see - looks like eBay's where I'll have to shop.)

Anyway when he hung up I swung by and asked. "You seem to be into financial stuff. What's your opinion on BitCoins" to which the answer was "What's a BitCoin" and I said "It's a new Peer to Peer currency that's been invented. It could be interesting to read about." and we went our own way.

He almost assuredly thought I was a wierdo - Clippy personified perhaps? (And he'd be right.) But nonetheless I was curious to see what his reaction would be. Most likely he's forgotten the name even before he got to the checkout.

Anyone got similar stories?

Edit: Peaches.

I have mentioned Bitcoin to some gold junkies and pseudo-libertarian types. They eat it up. I don't know how far they act on it though. : P

Careful with the wording! That means that even if I am post #10,000, #10,001 or even #100,000 I would meet your criteria.

The question is, how long until this thread becomes a resource blackhole?

Whoever reaches post 9,999 first?

It is doable - see this Australian thread (NSFW possibly) thats up to 17,086 posts... http://www.zgeek.com/showthread.php/9800-Random-Picture-Thread!/page1140

:/ No need. It is possible though pointless.
You could rename the thread title to something like: Lounge [Bounty inside]

I put 1 BTC down for the one who reaches the post number 99 first and it is only valid for 72 hours from timestamp of this post.

Now, lets see, who wants to share music?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKdck1OOM0 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAKdck1OOM0)

@Board admins/mods: Any way to insert videos on the post? Like [youtube]VIDEO_ID[/youtube]

The slower it goes, the more valuable the award.

Award increased to 6 BTC. Feel free to pledge and I'll put it in a dedicated pot.

My picture is me with a cowboy hat and shotgun. I wouldn't say that I'm a "pseudo" libertarian, but I'm certainly not a techie person.

Although, my time has been so consumed lately by Bitcoin and learning more about it that my girlfriend has become quite annoyed at how much energy I devote to it. We just took a trip to south Florida the past couple of days, and she was amazed (misleading euphemism?) at how I could always bring the conversation back around to Bitcoin.

There is little incentive to lenghten the thread then. You should let the pot sweeten. make an address, send the 6 btc to it, and publish it here.

Then not only can anyone see the prize by just checking it on blockexplorer, anyone can sweeten the pot! :)

You are my new hero :)

Yeah I think my friends are getting pissed off about talking about btc too.

It's almost like a religion....

Or Amway.

Scarey!

Well, I only ever mention Bitcoin to people when talking about financial stuff, how awesome the internet is, or when I know the person very well and they may possibly care. It feels like how I used to talk about private bittorrent trackers to my friends. They're either amazed or they look at me funny.

Till we get close to the target post this isn't a competition but a colective effort towards a shared goal.

Btw, you probably should add a rule stating people can't post twice (or more) in a row, whoever posts the post just before the target can't win.

I have mostly been trying to skip the whole "how it works" since well...  I am one of those geeks where the first thing I did to understand it was go and read the spec. It still took me a while to get all the details straight. Its very easy to look at bitcoin and think "ok so I need to mine coins".... and I think thats actually a hinderance once people see how hard that actually is.

That said, it seems to be a split between people who really, truely don't care, and people who go "hell yes! Fuck the fed! I need to get into this". Not an even split, but a split. Most people don't care, or worry about "how do you get the money back out".

Course, I can't imagine wanting to buy dollars with my precious bitcoins. Why regress?

There are also people who think it's a cool idea, but probably a scam.

I haven't told many people, so these statements of mine don't come from much of a sample set.

There is also a fair share who like it for the ease of transferring and speed / safety. Then a good portion like it for everything involved with it.

I'm usually able to talk my friends into trying something if it's even a halfway decent idea. So far I've gotten my best friend to dip his toe into the bitcoin pool but I haven't yet tried talking my other friends into it yet. There's not yet enough utility in bitcoins to make the average person feel benefited. I'll probably clue them in once I feel the tipping point to mainstream acceptance is upon us. If I tell them too early they're liable to get bored, call it a dud, and bail. Most people aren't into long-term thinking, unfortunately.

Agreed. I was thinking the same thing. Plus I have some friends that are interested but paranoid because of their jobs and that btc could become illegal fairly soon.

Yeah, I have a friend who got into it and started calling it a "two bit con" because he couldn't generate any blocks with his i7 processor. Although I had another friend who told me it sounded like we were just trying to invent money, but was in disbelief when I told him I got web hosting, donated money to the Japanese Red Cross, and bought a Chinese cartoon, all for Bitcoins. I've only been into it about two weeks. But I'm glad that I'm into it.

Vacation canceled.

Yeah I'm about to order a china girl express too.
I'm making money on a Ponzi scheme (see sig).
Pretty awesome.

A month+ vacation canceled? That's quite a schedule to go back on. Where were you going?

A month long fast at the lake.

Actually, it took a while with no downlines, but, I did make half again my investment back.
Though the one guy I know who does run a small buisiness selling stuff online, and a couple who are thinking about it, are all interested in accepting bitcoins.

So once they have a few, i bet I can convince em to invest lol

Though, is it really a ponzi scheme if it doesn't try to convince people that there is some sort of real economic activity going on to support it? The randomizer is pretty unapologetic about what it does.

Is this something you do often?

http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1663664 (http://forums.whirlpool.net.au/forum-replies.cfm?t=1663664)

Just thought I would leave this here for everyone to look at. Basically on the largest site about the internet in Australia bitcoin got a bad reception.
A memorable quote from the thread was  " I love paying tax"   :D

I nearly choked on my bitcoins at that one.

Yeah, hard to argue with people that think the dollar is still backed by gold.
Not saying that btc is easy to grasp or a sure thing but some people won't even try.
I think it also hurts us when you look at some of the things for sale.
Drugs etc but it's not any different than cash.

My opinion of Australians just dropped by about 40 bitcoins.  I hope the ones on Whirlpool are not a good representative of the Aussie populace.  :(


***
TIME ELAPSE
***

Actually, after reading through the entire 12 pages of posts, there were only a couple who were spouting economic nonsense.  Most just seemed to have difficulty understanding the benefits.  Probably because Australia isn't facing as serious currency problems as the US.

I understand that it is hard not to respond to sarcasm and ad hominems in kind, but it doesn't help convince people of bit coins.  And while the two posters "lolwut" and "meanwhileinaus" had some great information about and arguments for bitcoin they left their audience rather jaded.  Several other bit coiners managed to keep their cool and spark some interest.  If we want to see bit coins adopted we really need to respect people's rights to disagree and even their right to remain willfully ignorant.  Insults only raise defensive emotional and psychological barriers and will turn people off from bitcoins for good.  Also, try to separate libertarian/anarchist style arguments from bitcoin if you think the audience is going to be turned off by your zeal (as much as I agree with it).  There are plenty of benefits of bitcoins even for non-libertarian and anarchists, no?

Anyway, that's just my two milliBits on the issue.  :)

Did anyone else greatly appreciate that these two were posted in a row?  Because I sure did :)

I would assume that a lot of people on that site are the smarter / more informed Australians but you're completely right about their currency not suffering (now) like the US.
Also on your point separating political debate from economic and currency. You are going to turn off some people. In the long run they go hand in hand but you don't have to push your views up front. Also it is possible to have bitcoin in a communist, facist, capitalist , liberterian or whatever government.

Exactly.  I'm not saying deny your opinions or pretend to be something you are not.  But if the goal is adoption of bitcoins by as many people as possible we have to target more than just the libertarian anarchists and to do that you can't inseparably wrap bitcoins in the cloak of anarcho-capitalism.  It won't take.  We have to present bitcoins as something that people of all political philosophies can use and then later you can try to persuade them to libertarianism or anarchism or creationism or whatever. 

+1

Do not want.

Who cares?  People are free to believe what they will.

Ditto.  This is definitely a resource blackhole.  I feel sorry for the webhost.  It could even be possibly considered some new type of virus.

That thread is 9 years old and still going :o

We have some things in common bro. I'v been driving my lady crazy turning everything into a story about bitcoins.
  ::)

The reward is still going and rising, heh. $10 at current rates.

Wow, even the lowest bid on Mt Gox depth table is above $1 now.

I will still be happy to buy your bitcoins for under $1 if you are looking to sell :) lol

That's a good thing.

The rise in bitcoin prices is interesting. Anyone want to bet on when the next bull run will start?

At $4 a bitcoin, the current reward is getting harder to resist.

Indeed

I think this game would be better if you add some randomness.  Such as random payouts every so often with random payout amounts.  That gives people more incentive to post now even though it is well below 9999.  Randomness is what makes addictive mmorpgs.

Also, 9,999 posts is a lot of posts, so your bitcoins are probably safe and will stay in your wallet.  :)  Perhaps you should reduce it to 999?  You could reduce the reward too, if you wanted, but it's far more likely we'll make the 999 mark.  Anyway, your money, your call.  Just my suggestion.   :D

So, tell me. How much BTC do you guys have so far?

Haha, only 1.93 BTC. I'm a poor 15-year-old kid. I got 15 BTC for writing something, gambled it up to 30 BTC, then gambled it down to 0 BTC.

Then the price went up to $8 BTC and I felt stupid.

You need to encrypt that 1.93 BTC and bury the key in your backyard. : P

I had 200 BTC at one point but I spent it all. Fortunately, I've managed to raise it back up to 80 BTC.

i got 'round 18.5 BTC at the moment, part is what is left of my rewards for translating the Bitcoin WP article to Portuguese, and a few cents i got from pooled mining

I have all of 2.  My hashing machine is a laptop, which means it doesn't really mine very quickly.

Heh, I used to CPU mine with my laptop at night, and every morning I'd wake up to maybe .03 BTC earned. It just wasn't worth it to me, even though it's only a processor, laptop that's normally plugged in anyway, and my parent's electricity. I was also worried about the CPU overheating and burning out quicker, as it was burning (over 180 Fahrenheit) each morning.

So simple indeed  ;)