Getting paid to do something you love, build beefy computers, hook them up into lans and pretty much sit on it does sound like a good business however I also wonder if all they do with the bitcoins they made is trade them in for USD dollars then eventually those Bitcoin to currency traders are going to have so much Bitcoins that they'll probably close shop. It will end up being like trading furbies. Eventually nobody cares anymore. So my question is why should I take my hard earned money and exchange it for Bitcoins if all I can do with Bitcoins is exchange them back into dollars or maybe I could get another bitcoin client going and trade my bitcoins back and forth...
Viola. This person is a perfect example of what I'm talking about. Let me ask you we6jbo, but would you mind running the miner and acquire some virtually for free?
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As for economic impact, I'm not suggesting at all that concentrated mining wealth is valuable for bitcoin. What I'm suggesting is that mining income in general is largely irrelevant to bitcoin. Mining is an important part of the underlying technology for bitcoins, but it really isn't what bitcoin is about. You seem to be really fixated on mining- I'm not fixated on anything. I just see the big picture. -you need to understand that mining is only as relevant to the bitcoin economy as physical printing of money is to the USD economy. It needs to be done, and done well, and then forgotten. Wrong. You can't compare mining bitcoins with printing of fiat money. It has no similarity at all. If you want to compare it to something you can compare it to mining gold. And although mining is incorporated into the network no one is forced to mine and those that do anyway do because they want the reward for creating blocks. And those who are after the reward are damn relevant to the future of BitCoins because if more people mine, more will own them, and more will trust them, and more will trade them even with those who don't have them. As long as people know they can trust dollar bills, they don't need to know where they came from to use them. Similarly as long as people can trust Bitcoin they don't need to understand mining to use it. To help you understand this, think of a typical USD bill. It's printed once, which is indeed part of the USD economy, but after that it is spent many, many, many, many times. The printing of bills itself, while an economic activity, is miniscule in comparison to the activity of the economy at large. This is how currencies work. I understand perfectly well how trust into a dollar came about but I wonder if you do to? Cause people didn't just decide one day "hey look at this dollar paper money thing, it looks nice and has nice properties, we should trust it and trade it" it's not how it happened and it's not how BitCoins are going to get trusted and traded on larger scale either. If you can't understand that people all over the world found and owned gold and then valued and trusted gold and only then was gold trusted and traded as money, if you can't see this you can't possibly follow the points I'm trying to make. What actually makes bitcoin succeed is its use as a medium of exchange. And the absolute best way to get it used as a medium of exchange is to get people to exchange things of value for it. By doing so, these people essentially back the fledgling bitcoin economy. Rather than gold in a bank somewhere, there is a worldwide network of people who are saying, "yes, I agree to use bitcoins as a valued medium of exchange. I agree to give and receive them in trade for other items of value." That worldwide network of people is the bitcoin economy. The way we grow the bitcoin economy is for more people to do this. None of this has pretty much anything to do with mining. No, it has everything to do with mining. Sure I agree with that the best way to get it used as a medium of exchange is to get people to exchange things of value for it. But I strongly disagree if you think people will voluntarily en mass risk their money to acquire them first simply because they'll recognize their properties. What I'm suggesting is that the more people get some from mining which besides paying your electricity bill is free the more people are out there who own some and play around with them and learn to trust them and can convince others to trade them for something else of value. That's how trust is built up. I really hope you can see the big picture that I'm trying to get across. Here's something I suggest doing--within your social group, suggest to people that they take a small amount of cash they are not afraid of losing ($50-$200) and invest it in bitcoin. Explain that investing in bitcoin now is comparable to buying shares in google or microsoft when it first launched. Remind people that bitcoin is new and still developing so this is a high-risk, high-reward scenario rather than something they should bet the house on. LOL good lucky with that. 50$ is one week of food for a single person with avg salary of 800$ per month in my country, not to mention 200$. That explains a lot. But while you laugh, people like me are building the bitcoin economy. If 72,000 people (the maximum possible) mined .1 per day and nobody else did anything, the bitcoin economy would collapse. It is the use of bitcoin as an actual medium of exchange that makes the activity of mining at all meaningful in the first place. And you should realize that at this point even one person putting 20€ of fiat currency into bitcoin has a bigger impact on the success of bitcoin than a miner who runs at .1 per day for 6 months. If 72,000 people did that(the currency exchange), we would have an extremely solid foundation of value for bitcoins as a medium of exchange. It doesn't take much. Sure we would but you convince 72k people to put 20€ into bitcoins and see where you get. Again you miss the big picture: If 72k people had some bitcoins and played with them and then learned to trust them they'd start making really small trades with their friends and communities. And eventually more and more people would get onboard. The ecenomy wouldn't collapse, it would flourish beyond imagination! Btw why is the limit 72k?
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I think you folks with good mining rigs shouldn't worry too much. All you have to do is wait out the rest of the miners once mining becomes unprofitable until they quit, then the difficulty will drop and you can main profitably again.
Except everyone will do that, then... No they wont. People are different. Some have a high pain thresholds and will be willing to wait longer and some have a lower pain thresholds and will give up quicker. Eventually it will even out so that it'll be just enough profit for just enough people. As soon as profitability declines the difficulty will fall. It's supply and demand.. You are incorrect. As profitability declines, so will the acceleration of difficulty, not the velocity of difficulty. If profitability turns negative, then so should the acceleration of difficulty, thus only then should difficulty decline. Yeah you are right but my main point still stands.
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I think you folks with good mining rigs shouldn't worry too much. All you have to do is wait out the rest of the miners once mining becomes unprofitable until they quit, then the difficulty will drop and you can main profitably again.
Except everyone will do that, then... No they wont. People are different. Some have a high pain thresholds and will be willing to wait longer and some have a lower pain thresholds and will give up quicker. Eventually it will even out so that it'll be just enough profit for just enough people. As soon as profitability declines the difficulty will fall. It's supply and demand..
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I think the biggest problem with gold was its fluctuation. You can put $20 on the face, because it could be worth $15 or $25. If we switch to gold, the gold need to be pegged to a value higher than its intrinsic value to guarantee face value. This would provide a shoring up of the currency (an absolute minimum value) and allow the face values to remain constant. Sorry but that's a myth and a complete fabrication by the history taught in government institutionalized schools. Dollar amount isn't suppose to represent a value but the weight of the coin. Much like 1 troy ounce equals 31.1034768 grams, back in the day when they used gold coins a $25 gold coin was equal to 1 troy ounce gold coin which was equal to 31.1034768 grams gold coin. So when the price of gold fluctuates what actually changes when pricing goods and services is the amount of weight you have to pay in gold for certain goods or services. It's only when the government took over of issuing and the regulation of how much a dollar amount stated on paper gold receipts actually represents in weight that the paper gold receipts conveniently called dollars and used as money instead of the actually gold coins became separate paper money only backed by gold. Today it's not even that, it's just some name on a paper with a number and the government tells you you have to use it and how much it's suppose to be worth. In a true free market prices of goods in services would be expressed in the weight of gold and silver coins and fluctuations would cause no problem at all.
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I think you folks with good mining rigs shouldn't worry too much. All you have to do is wait out the rest of the miners once mining becomes unprofitable until they quit, then the difficulty will drop and you can main profitably again.
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And it's also possible if you live in a small country called Slovenia of which most people haven't even heard of and with a population of just 2mio people one of them being me. I don't doubt your word that you tried but maybe you should have tried harder.
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If I own gold bars I can go to a local dealer, sell at spot price and buy what ever the hell I want and I can do so ALL OVER THE WORLD. Gold is still money, and the whole world knows it. You'll never get spot price, and there are very few places that will pay more than 90% of the gold value. It'll probably be closer to 70 or 80%. Same thing if you want to buy, most dealers will take a hefty profit. This is the main reason why I don't buy gold. Your best bet it to find another person to trade with, but then you have to find a way to make sure it's real and as pure as advertised. lol of course they pay spot if the gold bars or coins you have are pure. It's when you buy from them when you have to pay 3-5% or so more then spot. Have you ever bought or sold any bullion bars or coins? I know I have.
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I'm not a expert in financial dadada, but isn't gold harder to sell? With BTC we can actually use it as currency to buy things, who accepts gold anymore for bread and milk? (I know BTC isn't accepted either, but its getting there) I doubt BTC will ever replace an actual currency, I like to buy food myself. ![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif) If I own gold bars I can go to a local dealer, sell at spot price and buy what ever the hell I want and I can do so ALL OVER THE WORLD. Gold is still money, and the whole world knows it. Some US states are even trying to get bills passed that would make it so official again: from: http://le.utah.gov/~2011/htmdoc/hbillhtm/HB0317S01.htm 8 General Description: 9 This bill recognizes gold and silver coins that are issued by the federal government as 10 legal tender in the state and exempts the exchange of the coins from certain types of 11 state tax liability. It already passed the house and is in the senate now, and if they pass it and governor signs it gold and silver coins are officially money in Utah. And that's just one of the 10 or so states that are trying to pass something like that.
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Here's something I suggest doing--within your social group, suggest to people that they take a small amount of cash they are not afraid of losing ($50-$200) and invest it in bitcoin. Explain that investing in bitcoin now is comparable to buying shares in google or microsoft when it first launched. Remind people that bitcoin is new and still developing so this is a high-risk, high-reward scenario rather than something they should bet the house on. LOL good lucky with that. I strongly believe BitCoins has an insurmountable potential and is a truly great invention but even so I'm not willing to spend even 20€ on them with the way things are right now. But I do mine ~0.1 per day.
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@hazek the biggest problem with getting people into the bitcoin economy using mining is that the same number of of bitcoins goes into distribution through mining no matter how many miners you get, so in the end there's not a big impact on the economy. So wait a second, maybe it's me and I'm stupid but do I understand why what you're saying here can possibly do good for BitCoins. Are you saying that even though the same number of bitcoins go into distribution through mining it's better if less people mine and those new bitcoins get into the hands of a small minority then if we had more and more people mine and more and more people held at least some of them? Is that what you're saying? Again it could be me and it could be my stupidity but the way I understand your statement is that "we should try to get many people to offer something of real value to a small group of people who have something of yet little or no value"? Is that seriously your logic?
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How exactly have people convinced businesses to accept bitcoins before?
You should instead be asking: "How exactly have people convinced businesses to accept gold before?" and learn from history.
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Man it's frustrating to read your "we need more traders" posts when, and I already tried to explain this here, you actually need more miners and no one will listen. If you think traders will come in and "invest" large amounts of their dollars, euros and whatever else while a small group is holding the vast majority of the 5.6mio BitCoins just because BitCoins have "good properties" as a currency you are sorely mistaken. What BitCoins need is to be spread across many people in larger quantities who will eventually come to value them and will convince others who don't that they actually do have value and it's only then when you'll see traders come in and buy some and only after traders come in reputable businesses will think about accepting them. I mean do you think gold became money because a few kings held the majority of it and offered them to their peasants for their goods and services and the peasants willingly accepted them just because of the properties of gold? Of course not! Many many people found gold around the whole planet and some found more and some found less but all of them started to value it because of it's properties AFTER they found it. And then they started to trade it for other stuff and when it spread it eventually got accepted as money. I don't care if 50(imaginary number) original people who started BitCoins hold 4mio BitCoins right now. But that's me, someone who understands Austrian economics and the true value of this invention. But try convincing someone who doesn't. ![Roll Eyes](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif) That kind of person will only look at the number of bid vs ask offers and the volume and will only laugh at you.
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Read carefully. Maybe it's you who should read my posts more carefully. Do not introduce bitcoins and push mining them because it is not about mining, that is merely a small part of a superior currency.
First of all I can do what ever the hell I want. Second of all, do you seriously think businesses will accept BitCoins just because of their properties and not pay any attention to who actually has them and how much they're really worth? Introduce the currency and why it is better, mining will follow.
Sorry sir, that's not how gold became money, and it's not how BitCoin use as money will spread either. Study history. I can understand both of you, but I think it would be a lot more efficient to advertise to web merchants who are fed up with paypal fees. Imagine buying the adwords "paypal sucks" and linking to bitcoin.org ![Smiley](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/smiley.gif) Show me one business which wont pay any attention to their real value at this point determined by the various exchanges and will focus sololey on it's good properties? Do you really think a business will just decide: "Oh look a digital currency that has all the right rules and properties, lets gamble and sell our services for it and who cares if by the end of the month we can't buy anything for them!" Will ... never... happen. They'll look at the exchanges, at the volume, at the number of bid vs ask offers, they'll look at the number of nodes and then they'll look at the number of all the BitCoins currently existing and they'll come to the same conclusion as I did: "It's a way too small market with way to few people hoarding way to many BitCoins for them to have a stable or realistic price right now. I'm not going to risk my money with it." But new miners have little to no risk in trying out BitCoins. All they have to risk is some CPU/GPU time and the money to pay the electricity bill. And if they get some, hurray for them and if they don't who cares. And those who'll get them will value them because of it's properties and eventually they'll offer them in their own personal trades to other people they know and it will only snowball from there.. That's how you get BitCoins popular! I mean FFS just look at the gold rush period.. More miners is the best thing that could happen to BitCoins! Besides.. are you saying I'm not free to advertise BitCoins how ever I see fit? ![Roll Eyes](https://bitcointalk.org/Smileys/default/rolleyes.gif)
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It should be included in the explanation of bitcoin, but it shouldn't be the main point, more on the level of the block chain in importance, and the important thing about mining is that it keeps the network safe, and for that work you get a reward.
Any serious person who will look at BitCoins one the first things they'll notice once they learn about how it all actually works is what I now understand. And that is that right now there's around 3k nodes and 5,5mio coins out there. And these 5.5mio coins are being held a by a small minority, probably far less then 3k. And there's no way the trading price of $0.9/BTC is realistic with such a low volume and so many people sitting on their stash. And before you read my reply any further let me make it perfectly clear that I don't care how many who has. I understand what this invention is about. I'm an an-cap supporter and an austrian economist first and nothing would make me happier if the whole world would use a currency that couldn't get hijacked by governments and inflated at will. But that's not your typical user and never will be. If you want this invention to really take off you can not have a small minority who will sit on all the coins and suppress the supply in order to bid up the price because people just wont buy. What you need is more people who own some, not because they bought them, not because they charged them but because they also mined them. It's irrelevant why these people hold some as long as they do and if they trust BitCoins they'll start trading them with others and the volume in trades will build up and BitCoins will gain mainstream credibility. I mean do you really think gold became world wide currency because select few people had most of it when it was first discovered? Of course not! People all around the world found some, some found more, some found less, everyone though shared the same opinion about it and eventually they started to trade it as money. I have a feeling that there's a lot of brilliant minds on this forum when it comes to software and computing who utterly fail when it comes to history and economics and especially human nature. You got to understand these things if you want to see this invention really take off. p.s.: I call it an invention because I can't really call it a commodity because you can't make anything out of a BitCoin but it's also not a currency, not just yet.
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You're continuing to miss the point.
You should not market bitcoin as "Hey look, generate cash!"
It should be marketed as "Look at the improvements we've made over other currencies".
By marketing bitcoin as about mining, you're giving people the wrong idea. We can't afford for that to happen. Then nobody would take it seriously, and whenever it would be mentioned it'd be thought about as mining oriented.
Which, it's not.
Does it matter if it's mining oriented if people start using it because of that?
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Suppose you sell some bitcoins on mtgox and when you go to withdraw the proceeds, he says, no I think I'll keep them. Is your only recourse to eat the loss and take your business elsewhere? Can he really run his business "any way he wants"?
But what you fail to realize is that he can only do that to you because as soon as he robes one person... I trust him not to, but he'd get us all at once, not one at a time. I really don't care if you trust him or not. If he does something bad he'll do it only once and then the market will come with ways to guarantee it's far less likely or even impossible to happen again.
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You shouldn't market Bitcoin mining. Market bitcoins and their superiority to other currencies.
Focusing on mining will just flood the market with miners who just want to sell coins to get USD with no intention of using bitcoins.
LOL! Kinda like Gold miners flooded the market during the gold rush? You can't be serious?! Getting more miners could be the most important thing that could happen to BitCoins. More people mine, more people have BitCoins, more people have BitCoins more people will trade BitCoins and finally more people trade BitCoins more people and businesses will trust and accept BitCoins. Don't tell me you really think the market made a conscious plan to implement gold as money because of it's properties?
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Read our replies again. It doesn't matter who mines the coins, as that is not the main point of bitcoins. The main point is to have a better replacement currency, and you don't get currency for nothing in most cases. If I want USD I have to work for it or buy some with another currency. Same with bitcoins.
I don't understand? Are you objecting to a large number of new miners? p.s.: I understand perfectly well what the main purpose of BitCoins is. But I also understand how markets usually get there.
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