Another major hurdle I foresee as plaguing bitcoin is it's irreversibility of transactions.

I was just imagining an ebay-like auction site for example... that promoted/accepted bitcoins as a form of payment.

Anyone buying from an ebay seller (or craigslist/etc) is told to never send payment via western union. Mainly because it is irreversible.

What can bitcoin do to avoid this payment pitfall?

Nevermind unscrupulous ebay sellers... I can picture many a "businessman" in the brick and mortar setting that when confronted about a refund might respond "what payment?"...

Every miner most likely tells a few friends about their new endeavors. I know I did.

That seems to be the general consensus around here at least, is it not? That we need to focus on making bitcoin an accepted form of payment at as many institutions as possible. And ASAP.

Gold is the world standard in terms of holding a value.

But nobody can take their bar of gold to a store and buy a pack of gum.

Most everybody's gold is held in a vault. You rarely get to touch it. But you don't have to. You know you can't take a bar and go buy a car. But you don't care.

These qualities of gold are quite similar to bitcoin and it's intangibility.

I think we need to start thinking about catering to a more... swiss-bank-account-holder-type so to speak.

Let the world know that you can securely store your net worth and access it at anytime, for the cost of an average banking transaction fee and I would assume that investment into the bitcoin platform would skyrocket.

Why try to change bitcoin from what it already is? A store of value.

I think it would be a much easier and saner a goal to achieve first (making bitcoin an accepted store of value), before we strain the community too much in trying to tackle an incredibly competitive payments market. I mean... those companies work on margins of fractions of a percent. They have ties with big banks and government, most of whom most likely won't want to deal with us - at first at least.

Besides, we need people to have money invested in bitcoin in order to spend it first, right?!

Hello Bitcoiners!

You would not believe the overpowering feelings of joy, freedom, and enthusiasm I felt when I stumbled onto this wonderful idea that is Bitcoin.

I love reading about math, computers, money, and the internet. That, and bank fees really get under my skin for some reason. So I wanted to first say THANK YOU for contributing to it's cause.

Now for my question... what's up with this graph??? > http://www.videocardbenchmark.net/high_end_gpus.html

I tend to think their CPU benchmarking sister site is fairly accurate: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/high_end_cpus.html

So then tell me, guru bitcoiners... Why is it that a GeForce GTX 580 (apparantly clocking in at 3,819 somethings...? and their fastest GPU... cost ~$500) is worse at generating bitcoins than the Radeon HD 5970 (apparently clocking in at 2,599 somethings...? cost ~$900)?

The only correlation I can come up with is price. 5970 costs more, so it's better...

Does that mean that the Quadro 6000 (cost ~$3,800) would be even better still?

Thoughts?

Bingo!

This. Case closed.

I wouldn't start that trend... you'd have people waking up (or not waking up at all) dazed in the streets after being drugged at a bar for their bitcoin tattoo details!

Ok guys, what is it?

How old are you?

The poll is 100% private, nobody will ever know who voted for what.

The poll will be run for the next 3 days, and you can only see the results once those 3 days are up.

Agreed. If there is anything about bitcoin, PM me and I'll probably go. I live in the downtown core.

You're joking, right?

What'cha doin' with all those emates?! 

Thanks for the quick response elFarto!

How exactly would I know the previous block's hash? Is it posted somewhere once it is found? And which "block" are we talking about? The lottery (+50BTC) block? Or any block in particular?

Can somebody please explain the basics as to how bitcoins are generated?

What are the very minimum requirements for generating bitcoins in any programming language?

I assume it goes something like...

1. Download block of hashed information to crack from the network (where exactly?)
2. Repeat mathematical process on your machine until you crack it (what process?)
3. Submit for verfication (to where?)
4. Rinse and repeat?

Any information (or links to previous threads a noob might not know of?) you can provide would be greatly appreciated!

Did you delete the weekly report? I can't see anything in your first link..